On page 258 of "
The Annubis Gates" by Tim Powers, the hero, Brendan Doyle, is leafing through some ancient manuscript .. when he comes across
this message, written in
his own handwriting from his
future self!
IHAY ENDANBRAY ANCAY OUYAY IGITDAY*
Can you read it?
I had some faint recollection of a child's (or gypsy's) speech code, where everything ends in -AY. After some Google searching I got it:
Pig Latin!
There is an urban myth that
Google Translate has Pig Latin as one of its languages and I checked: it's not there, but ...
This site, however, translates from
English to
Pig Latin - did you know that
web becomes
ebay? It turns out that translating
Pig Latin back into
English is hard, and
not deterministically possible, as different words in English can map to the same word in Pig Latin (for instance, "oat" and "two" may both translate to "oatway").
Andway ownay erehay isway away ideovay eway ooktay esterdayyay.
---
* Hi Brendan, can you dig it?
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