What Pig Latin is
Pig Latin is a word game for English speakers. It has nothing to do with real Latin. You change each word by a simple rule, so the result sounds like a strange foreign language but anyone who knows the trick can follow it. Children use it as a secret code in front of adults, and adults use it for jokes, puzzles and party games.
The basic rule fits in one sentence: move the opening consonants to the end of the word and add “ay”. So “pig latin” becomes “igpay atinlay”, which gives the game its name in its own language.
How to use the translator
- Type or paste English into the English box. A sample sentence is there to start with.
- The Pig Latin box updates with every key press.
- Choose the Ending for words that start with a vowel: way (eggway), yay (eggyay) or ay (eggay).
- Press Copy to put the result on your clipboard, or Download to save it as a text file.
The note under the tool tells you how many words were translated.
The rules this translator follows
- Consonant start: all consonants before the first vowel move to the end, then “ay” is added. “school” becomes “oolschay” and “string” becomes “ingstray”.
- Vowel start: the word stays whole and gets the ending you chose. “apple” becomes “appleway”.
- qu stays together: “quiet” becomes “ietquay”, not “uietqay”.
- y depends on position: at the start it is a consonant, later it is a vowel. “yellow” becomes “ellowyay” and “rhythm” becomes “ythmrhay”.
- Capitals are kept: a capitalized word stays capitalized (“Hello” becomes “Ellohay”) and a word in all capitals stays in capitals (“NASA” becomes “ASANAY”).
- Punctuation and numbers stay put. Only letters are moved. Hyphenated words are translated part by part.
Examples
Every result below was produced by the tool on this page with the default way ending.
| English | Pig Latin |
|---|---|
| pig | igpay |
| apple | appleway |
| quiet | ietquay |
| rhythm | ythmrhay |
| Hello, World! | Ellohay, Orldway! |
| Thank you very much | Ankthay ouyay eryvay uchmay |
| The quick brown fox | Ethay ickquay ownbray oxfay |
| Hello friend, do you speak Pig Latin? | Ellohay iendfray, oday ouyay eakspay Igpay Atinlay? |
With the yay ending, “Eat your vegetables” becomes “Eatyay ouryay egetablesvay”. With the ay ending, “egg” becomes “eggay”.
Why it only works one way
Going from English to Pig Latin is easy because the rules are fixed. Going back is not. The rules remove the information about where the word began. “artsquay” could come from “quarts” or from “squart”, and “away” could be “a” plus “way” or “wa” with the w moved to the end. A person solves this by knowing which words are real. A translator would need a full dictionary and still guess wrong sometimes, so this page sticks to the direction that is always correct. Reading it back is the fun part anyway.
Tips and limits
- Say it out loud. Pig Latin is meant to be spoken. Written down, it looks harder than it sounds.
- Short words are the hardest to decode. “I” becomes “Iway” and “a” becomes “away”, which listeners often mistake for real words.
- Contractions keep their apostrophe: “don’t” becomes “on’tday”.
- Only English letters A to Z are moved. Accented letters and other alphabets are left as they are.
- Silent letters are not special. The rule works on spelling, not sound, so “honest” becomes “onesthay”.
Other ways to do it
You can play Pig Latin in your head with practice: find the first vowel, move what comes before it, add “ay”. In Excel or Google Sheets, one cell of text can be converted with a long formula using REGEXEXTRACT in Sheets, but whole sentences are fiddly. In code, a regular expression such as ^([^aeiou]*)(.*)$ splits a word into the part to move and the part to keep, which is close to what this page does in your browser.
For other playful ways to hide or reshape text, try the reverse text generator or the Morse code translator. If you need to spell a word clearly rather than disguise it, the phonetic spelling generator gives you “P as in Papa” style scripts.