Pig Latin is a language game or cant in which words are altered by adding a fabricated suffix or by moving the onset or initial consonant or consonant cluster of a word to the end of the word and adding a vocalic syllable (usually -ay or /eɪ/) to create such a suffix. For example, in English, "she does not know" would become "eshay oesday otnay owknay". The objective is often to conceal the words from others not familiar with the rules. The reference to Latin is a deliberate misnomer; Pig Latin is simply a form of argot or jargon unrelated to Latin, and the name is used for its English connotations as a strange and foreign-sounding language. It is most often used by young children as a way to confuse people unfamiliar with Pig Latin, such as adults. Pig Latin exists in various languages across the world.
Origins and history Early mentions of Pig Latin or Hog Latin describe what is known today as Dog Latin, a type of parody Latin. Examples of this predate even Shakespeare, whose 1598 play, Love's Labour's Lost, includes a reference to dog Latin.
Costard: Go to; thou hast it ad dungill, at the fingers' ends, as they say.Holofernes: O, I smell false Latine; dunghill for unguem.
An 1866 article describes a "hog latin" that has some similarities to current Pig Latin. The article says, "He adds as many new letters as the boys in their 'hog latin', which is made use of to mystify eavesdroppers. A boy asking a friend to go with him says, 'Wig-ge you-ge go-ge wig-ge me-ge?' The other, replying in the negative says, 'Noge, Ige woge.'". This is similar to Língua do Pê. Another early mention of the name was in Putnam's Magazine in May 1869: "I had plenty of ammunition in reserve, to say nothing, Tom, of our pig Latin. 'Hoggibus, piggibus et shotam damnabile grunto', and all that sort of thing", although the jargon is Dog Latin. The Atlantic January 1895 also included a mention of the subject: "They all spoke a queer jargon which they themselves had invented. It was something like the well-known 'pig Latin' that all sorts of children like to play with."
The modern version of Pig Latin appears in a 1919 Columbia Records album by a singer named Arthur Fields. The song, called "Pig Latin Love", is followed by the subtitle "I-Yay Ove-Lay oo-yay earie-day". The Three Stooges used it on multiple occasions, most notably Tassels in the Air, a 1938 short where Moe Howard attempts to teach Curly Howard how to use it, thereby conveying the rules to the audience. In an earlier (1934) episode, Three Little Pigskins, Larry Fine attempts to impress a woman with his skill in Pig Latin, but it turns out that she knows it, too. No explanation of the rules is given. A few months prior in 1934, in the Our Gang short film Washee Ironee, Spanky tries to speak to an Asian boy by using Pig Latin. Ginger Rogers sang a verse of "We're in the Money" in pig Latin in an elaborate Busby Berkeley production number in the film Gold Diggers of 1933. The film, the third highest grossing of that year, was inducted into the National Film Registry and that song included in the all-time top 100 movie songs by the American Film Institute. Merle Travis ends his song "When My Baby Double Talks To Me" with the phrase, "What a aybybay", where the last word is Pig Latin for "baby". Anita O'Day (born Anita Belle Colton), who suffered from chronic lack of money at the beginning of her career, applied Pig Latin to her stage name, based on the word "do". A 1947 newspaper question and answer column describes the Pig Latin as known today. It describes moving the first letter to the end of a word and then adding "ay". Two Pig Latin words that have entered mainstream American English are "ixnay" or "icksnay", the Pig Latin version of "nix" (itself a borrowing of German nichts), which is used as a general negative; and "amscray", Pig Latin for "scram", meaning "go away" or "get out of here".
Rules For words that begin with consonant sounds, the letter or letters that make up that sound are moved to the end of the word, then "ay" is added, as in the following examples:
"pig" = "igpay" "latin" = "atinlay" "clown" = "ownclay" "banana" = "ananabay" For words that begin with vowel sounds, "way" or "yay" is added to the end:
"a" = "ayay/away" "open" = "openway/openyay"
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