Pig Latin Translator
Translate English to/from Pig Latin.
Overview
Pig Latin is a playground language game in which the leading consonant sound of each English word is moved to the end and followed by "ay". Words beginning with vowels get "way" or "yay" appended. "Pig" becomes "igpay", "Latin" becomes "atinlay", "ello" becomes "elloway".
It's a classic schoolyard cipher, a fun introduction to phonetic rules for kids, and a frequent appearance in coding exercises and ARG puzzles. The translator handles capitalization and punctuation cleanly and can also reverse the process where the encoding is unambiguous.
How it works
For words that start with a consonant or consonant cluster, all leading consonants are stripped, moved to the end of the word, and "ay" is appended. "Pig" → "ig" + "p" + "ay" = "igpay". "String" (starts with the cluster "str") → "ing" + "str" + "ay" = "ingstray".
For words that start with a vowel, the rule varies by dialect: most commonly the word is left intact and "way" (or "yay" or "ay") is appended. "Apple" → "appleway".
Examples
Input: pig latin
Output: igpay atinlay
Input: hello world
Output: ellohay orldway
Input: apple
Output: appleway
Input (decode): ellohay
Output: hello
FAQ
Which suffix does the tool use for vowel-initial words?
The default is "way". A toggle switches to "yay" or "ay" if you prefer that dialect.
Does it handle Y as a vowel or consonant?
Y is treated as a consonant when it starts a word ("yellow" → "ellowyay") and as a vowel otherwise. This matches the most common convention.
Can decoding be ambiguous?
For most consonant-initial words decoding is unambiguous. For vowel-initial words with "way" appended the original is recoverable. Heavy punctuation or unusual capitalization can confuse the round-trip.