How the translation rules work
Pig Latin follows two simple rules depending on how a word starts. A word beginning with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u) just gets "way" appended: "apple" → "appleway". A word beginning with one or more consonants has that entire leading cluster moved to the end, followed by "ay": "pig" → "igpay", "hello" → "ellohay", and "string" → "ingstray" because the full three-letter cluster "str" moves together.
The one special case is "qu", which moves as a pair rather than splitting the u away from its q — so "quick" becomes "ickquay", not "uickqay".
What stays intact
A capitalized word produces a capitalized Pig Latin word — "Hello" becomes "Ellohay", not "ellohay". Commas, periods, and quotation marks attached to a word stay exactly where they were, and line breaks and spacing are left alone, so a paragraph keeps its shape even though every word inside it has changed.
Frequently asked questions
What are the actual rules?
Vowel-starting words get "way" added to the end. Consonant-starting words have that consonant cluster moved to the end plus "ay". That's the whole system, aside from one exception with "qu".
Why does "quick" become "ickquay" and not "uickqay"?
The letter combination "qu" is treated as a single unit, since "u" almost always follows "q" as part of the same sound. So the cluster that moves is "qu", not just "q", giving "ickquay" rather than splitting the u away from its q.
Can this be decoded back to English?
Not reliably, so there's no decode mode here. Different words can land on the same or similar Pig Latin output, and there's no way to know for certain how long the original consonant cluster was — a decoder would just be guessing.
Does it keep capitalization and punctuation?
Yes — a capitalized word stays capitalized, and punctuation stays attached to the word it was next to.
What happens with numbers or contractions?
Numbers pass through untouched, since the rules only apply to letters. Words with an apostrophe in the middle, like contractions, are left alone too — splitting them correctly is ambiguous enough that leaving them as-is beats guessing wrong.