Question

I’ve been creating a Pig Latin translator for a group project for university (we don’t have to actually make a translator, just manipulate a string in any way we’d like, and I chose this).

The input into my translator is a Latin prayer, the first two lines of which are:

credo in unum deum 
patrem omnipotentem 

I’ve created my translator with the following code:

public static void pigLatinify(String fname) throws IOException 
{
    File file = new File("projectdata.txt");

    try 
    {
        Scanner scan1 = new Scanner(file);
        while (scan1.hasNextLine()) 
        {
            Scanner scan2 = new Scanner(scan1.nextLine());
            boolean test2;
            while (test2 = scan2.hasNext())
            {
                String s = scan2.next();
                char firstLetter = s.charAt(0);
                if (firstLetter=='a' || firstLetter=='i' || firstLetter=='o' || firstLetter=='e' || 
                        firstLetter=='u' || firstLetter=='A' || firstLetter=='I' || firstLetter=='O' || 
                        firstLetter=='E' || firstLetter=='U')
                {
                    String output = s + "hay" + " ";
                    System.out.print(output);
                }
                    else
                    {
                        String restOfWord = s.substring(1);
                        String output = restOfWord + firstLetter + "ay" + " ";
                        System.out.print(output);
                    }
                }
                System.out.println("");
            }
            scan1.close();
        } 

        catch (FileNotFoundException e) 
        {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

It outputs the entire prayer well, with the following output for the first two lines:

redocay inhay unumhay eumday 
atrempay omnipotentemhay

However, in true Pig Latin, monosyllabic words stay the same and have “-hay” added to the end, so “it” becomes “ithay”, “egg” becomes “egghay”, but multi syllabic words have “-way” added to the end instead, so “archery” becomes “archeryway” and “ending” becomes “endingway”.

Is there a way for Java (and the scanner class I’m using) to detect if a word is monosyllabic?

At this point I’ll also point out I’m only a beginner programmer, so if there is but it is extraordinarily complicated, feel free to just say that!!

Answer 1

What about getting the number of syllables like this:

/**
 * Get the number of syllables for a given word
 * @param s the given word
 * @return the number of syllables
 */
public static int getNumberOfSyllables(String s) {
    s = s.trim();
    if (s.length() <= 3) {
        return 1;
    }
    s = s.toLowerCase();
    s = s.replaceAll("[aeiouy]+", "a");
    s = "x" + s + "x";
    return s.split("a").length - 1;
}