Pig Latin Totally Explained

Everything about Pig Latin totally explained

Pig Latin is an English language game where the initial consonant sound of an English word is placed at the end and an ay is affixed (Ex.: "banana" would therefore translate to anana-bay), to both obfuscate the encoding and to indicate for the intended recipient the encoding as 'Pig Latin'. The reference to Latin is a deliberate misnomer, used only for its English connotations as a 'strange and foreign-sounding language'.
In Britain this term more often applies to the type of backslang used by the criminals of 19th century London and used as a playground game today, which was based on turning words backwards), or Butcher's Backslang which was common in English butchers' shops at least until World War II. Prior to this, Benjamin Franklin was known to use a version of Pig Latin in some publications. Pig Latin is usually used by children for amusement or to converse in (perceived) privacy from adults or other children. Conversely, adults sometimes use it to discuss sensitive topics they don't want very young children to overhear. A few Pig Latin words — , , and — have been incorporated into English slang.

Rules and variations

The usual rules for changing standard English into Pig Latin are:

For words that begin with consonant sounds, move the initial consonant or consonant cluster to the end of the word and add "ay." Examples:
- button → utton-bay
- dough → ough-day
- happy → appy-hay
- loser → oser-lay
- question → estion-quay
- star → ar-stay
- three → ee-thray
- trash → ash-tray

For words that begin with vowel sounds (including silent consonants), simply add the syllable "ay" to the end of the word. In some dialects, to aid in pronunciation, an "h," "w" or "d" is added to the suffix; for instance, Eagle could be eagle'hay, eagle'way, or eagle'day. This will often create ambiguous translations (inner'way could mean "inner" or "winner"). Using the homophone "ue" instead of "way" can eliminate this.

Amsterdam → Amsterdamway

eagle → Eagleway

orange → Orangeway Transcription varies. A hyphen or apostrophe is sometimes used to make retranslation to English easier; for instance: ayspray is ambiguous, but ay-spray means "spray" and ays-pray means "prays."

Pig Latin in programming

A common exercise in programming classes to teach the concept of recursion is to define a procedure or function that, when given a word in normal English, yields the Pig Latin equivalent. The simplest way to write such a procedure is to set a base case for words beginning with vowels (add "ay"), and a recursive case that moves the first letter to the end of the word for re-evaluation.

Internationalization and localization encoding

The common internationalization and localization encoding used for Pig Latin is x-pig-Latin or x-lap. It isn't defined in any language specifications and is considered experimental, hence the 'x'. The proper way to get it to work on Linux and other operating systems which support the standard gettext application is to set the po file to: en_US@piglatin.po.

Pig Latin in other languages

In Bernese German, a variety of Pig Latin called Mattenenglisch was used in the Matte, the traditional working class neighborhood. Though it has fallen out of use since mid 20th century, it's still cultivated by voluntary associations. A characteristic of the Mattenenglisch Pig Latin is the complete substitution of the first vowel by i, in addition to the usual moving of the initial consonant cluster and the adding of ee.
In Khania, Crete, Greece the local "Splantziana" places the vowels of every word before the consonants. Thus the word στόμα becomes όσταμ and άριστα becomes άϊραστ. Sweden and Norway have the Rövarspråket ("Brigand/bandit language"). To use it, just double-spell all consonants in each word and put an 'o' in between. The word "Rövarspråket" then becomes "Rorövovarorsospoproråkoketot". In the same way the Swedish P-language is doubling the vowels and puts a "p" in between with the result "Röpövaparspråpåkepet". French has the loucherbem coded language. It was used by some butchers (boucher in French). Similarly to Pig Latin, take the leading consonant cluster to the end of the word, then add l at beginning of word, and adding em to the end of the word. Venezuela uses a variant where the nonsensical word "cuti" is inserted before every single sylable. This was most recently used in a 2005 television advertisement for Digitel cellphones, which had an off-screen voice saying,

"cuti-Ha cuti-bla cuti-has cuti-ta cuti-por cuti-los cuti-co cuti-dos. ¡cuti-Por cuti-só cuti-lo cuti-cien cuti-to cuti-cin cuti-cuen cuti-ta cuti-mil cuti-Bo cuti-lí cuti-va cuti-res!"

The screen, by the time the voice had finished, displayed the full decoded message: "Habla hasta por los codos. ¡Por sólo ciento cincuenta mil Bolívares!" (Talk all you want. For only one-hundred fifty thousand Bolívares!) Argentina uses an unnamed variant (not be confused with "lunfardo"), where syllabes are revert. For example the word "payaso" (clown) is "yosapa", "chorizo" (sausage) is "zochori", "pileta" (swimming pool) is "tapile", "casa" (house") is "saca", etc. Peru uses the same variant. For example, "playa" is "yapla" and mujer is "jerma" and chofer is "fercho". In Brazil, specifically in Rio de Janeiro, there's the teteca, which is a variation named after Catete, the neighbourhood where it allegedly began being used. To use it just revert the order of the syllables in the word:

Brasil → sil-bra or rasil-bay

favela → lavefa or avela-fa The reverted syllables keep the phonetic sound of the original word, thus the 's' in "sil-bra" sounds like a 'z'.
In Indonesia, the slang dialect prokem makes heavy use of words with the syllable -ok- inserted and the last syllable moved. For example, the standard Indonesian word Bapak ("Father") is broken into B-ok-apak and the last -ak is deleted, resulting in Bokap.
In Finland Kontinkieli, "kontti language" serves similar purposes. Word "kontti" is added after every word and the first syllables of these words are switched. Me olemme Suomesta (We are from Finland) in Kontinkieli would be Ko mentti kolemme ontti komesta suontti.

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