Tutnese

From category: Word Games

Tutnese, like its cousins Ubby Dubby and Pig Latin, is a language game which has earned the nickname of "Pig Egyptian" (to go with Pig Greek and Pig Latin, above)

Like its cousins, it can be played by children and is fundamentally centred around translating words on the basis of non-vowel letters into individual syllables, e.g. the letter b comes bub. This applies to just about every consonant in a word and can confuse others in the vicinity even though the speaker or author is - in a manner of speaking - spelling it out!

As a voice itself, 'Pig Egyptian', or Tutnese is an interesting programming exercise and may be useful for the odd text you want to obfuscate, translate or just ruin!

Why is so difficult to program? Well, the trick is that you can end up with cascading translations, unless you are either very careful (like I was) or you translate letter by letter.

For example, take H. H becomes Hash when translated to Tutnese. If you then run the S translation - S becoming Sus - you'll end up with Hasush, which isn't the aim at all.

You can examine each of the letter individually, or you can apply liberal regular expressions (the trick is to change H and similar letters into an intermediate stage, e.g. hah, then pick it up later after you've done S)

It is possible to translate a few words/phrases, and whole webpages, using this voice. Please see the main page to use these features.

Related links

• The entry for Tutnese (Pig Egyptian) on Wikipedia