Gibberish Translator (Ubbi Dubbi, Opish)

Ubbi Dubbi, Gibberish and Opish are playground language games: you add a nonsense syllable to every word so that adults (or other kids) cannot follow. Ubbi Dubbi, made famous by the 1970s children’s TV show Zoom, puts “ub” before each vowel sound; Gibberish puts “idig” there; Opish adds “op” after every consonant. This translator encodes a message in any of the three and decodes it back, keeping capital letters and punctuation.

How to use this tool

1. Type your message.
2. Choose Ubbi Dubbi, Gibberish or Opish.
3. Choose English → game language to encode, or the other way to decode a message.
4. Copy the result and share it with someone who knows the game.

Formula

Ubbi Dubbi: “ub” + each vowel group · Gibberish: “idig” + each vowel group · Opish: each consonant + “op”

A vowel group is a run of a, e, i, o, u; y also counts as a vowel after a consonant inside a word (happy → hubappuby) but not at the start (yes). A final silent e, as in make or apple, gets no syllable because it is not spoken. Decoding reads each word left to right and removes a syllable only where the encoder would have put one, so words that naturally contain “ub” or “op”, such as rubber, tube and stop, come back correctly. A capital at the start of a word moves to the added syllable (Apple → Ubapple).

Example

In Ubbi Dubbi the sample “Hello friends, meet me after school.” becomes “Hubellubo frubiends, mubeet mube ubaftuber schubool.” Decoding that line gives the original back.