About

Pig Latin is a language game that applies deterministic transformation rules to English words. The algorithm is deceptively simple until you encounter consonant clusters like str, qu digraphs, capitalization transfer, and trailing punctuation preservation. A naive implementation breaks on words like "square" (correct: aresquay), "rhythm" (where y functions as a vowel), or "I'm" (contraction with apostrophe). This converter implements the full canonical ruleset including qu-cluster handling, capital letter migration, hyphenated compound words, and punctuation anchoring. It does not handle proper nouns or acronyms differently from common words. Input is assumed to be standard English text.

Pro tip: Pig Latin has no single authoritative standard. Regional variations exist. This tool follows the most widely accepted ruleset where words starting with vowels receive the suffix yay and consonant-initial words rotate the leading cluster and append ay. Edge case: all-consonant strings (rare in English, e.g., "nth") move the entire word and append ay, producing nthay.

Formulas

The Pig Latin transformation applies a piecewise function to each word W based on its leading phoneme structure:

{

f(W) = W + yay if W[0] ∈ {a, e, i, o, u}f(W) = W[k:] + W[:k] + ay otherwise

Where k is the index of the first vowel in W. The vowel set V = {a, e, i, o, u}, with y included in V when its position j > 0 (i.e., y is not the first letter). The qu digraph rule extends the consonant cluster: if W[k − 1] = q and W[k] = u, then k = k + 1.

Capitalization is transferred via a bitmask: capture the case pattern of the original word, apply the same pattern positionally to the transformed word. For all-caps words, the entire output is uppercased. Trailing punctuation is captured by the regular expression pattern = /([a-zA-Z']+)([^a-zA-Z]*)$/, stripped before transformation, and reattached after.

Reference Data

English Word	Leading Sound	Rule Applied	Pig Latin Result
apple	Vowel (a)	Append yay	appleyay
banana	Single consonant (b)	Move b, append ay	ananabay
cherry	Cluster (ch)	Move ch, append ay	errychay
string	Cluster (str)	Move str, append ay	ingstray
queen	Cluster (qu)	Move qu, append ay	eenquay
square	Cluster (squ)	Move squ, append ay	aresquay
rhythm	Cluster (rh), y as vowel	Move rh, append ay	ythmrhay
egg	Vowel (e)	Append yay	eggyay
I	Vowel (I)	Append yay, preserve case	Iyay
Hello	Single consonant (H)	Move h, capitalize new first letter	Ellohay
HELLO	All caps (H)	Preserve all-caps	ELLOHAY
hello!	Single consonant, trailing punctuation	Move h, keep ! at end	ellohay!
well-known	Hyphenated compound	Convert each part independently	ellway-ownknay
I'm	Vowel with contraction	Append yay, preserve apostrophe	I'myay
school	Cluster (sch)	Move sch, append ay	oolschay
three	Cluster (thr)	Move thr, append ay	eethray
nth	All consonants	Move all, append ay	nthay
yellow	Consonant y at start	Move y, append ay	ellowyay
my	Single consonant (m), y as vowel	Move m, append ay	ymay
the	Cluster (th)	Move th, append ay	ethay

Frequently Asked Questions

The converter treats "qu" as an inseparable consonant unit. When scanning for the first vowel, if a "q" is followed by "u", the "u" is consumed as part of the consonant cluster rather than being treated as a vowel. So "queen" becomes "eenquay" (moving "qu" to the end), and "square" becomes "aresquay" (moving 'squ'). This follows the standard phonetic logic that "qu" in English always produces a single /kw/ sound.

The converter follows the positional rule: "y" at the start of a word (position 0) is treated as a consonant, because it functions as a consonant phoneme in that position (e.g., "yellow" → 'ellowyay'). When "y" appears anywhere else in the word, it is treated as a vowel (e.g., "rhythm" → the first vowel-like character is "y" at index 2, so "rh" moves to give 'ythmrhay'). This mirrors standard English phonology.

The converter captures the case pattern of the original word before transformation. Three cases are handled: (1) All-uppercase words like "HELLO" produce all-uppercase output "ELLOHAY". (2) Title-case words like "Hello" produce title-case output "Ellohay" - the first letter of the result is capitalized and the moved consonant(s) are lowercased. (3) All-lowercase words remain lowercase. The algorithm maps the capitalization to the new character positions rather than preserving absolute positions.

Trailing punctuation (periods, commas, exclamation marks, question marks) is stripped from the word before conversion and reattached at the end of the Pig Latin result. Hyphenated words like "well-known" are split at the hyphen, each part is converted independently ('ellway-ownknay'), then rejoined. Contractions with apostrophes like "I'm" treat the apostrophe as part of the word body and convert accordingly ('I'myay'). Leading punctuation such as opening quotes is preserved in position.

Words with no standard vowels (and no "y" functioning as a vowel after position 0) are treated as an all-consonant edge case. The entire word is moved and "ay" is appended. For example, "nth" becomes "nthay". This is a rare case in English but the algorithm handles it gracefully rather than producing an error. Words like "by", "my", "gym" do contain "y" as a vowel and are handled normally.

Numbers and non-alphabetic tokens (e.g., "42", '@#$') pass through unchanged. The converter only transforms tokens that contain at least one alphabetic character. Mixed alphanumeric tokens like "hello123" will have the alphabetic portion converted while non-alpha trailing characters are preserved. Non-English characters with diacritics (é, ñ) are treated as non-vowel characters and may produce unexpected results. The tool is designed for standard ASCII English text.