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How Did Real Pirates Talk?
The Origin of Pirate Talk ‘Ahoy, Matey!’
both groups tended to be from riverfront neighborhoods around London. How Disney Started It All Modern “pirate speak” can actually be traced back to a single movie: the live-action Disney movie of the 1950s, “Treasure Island,” starring Robert Newton as fictional pirate Long John Silver. Woodard explained, “Newton’s
Talk Like a Pirate Day on Sept. 19 has been a favorite silly holiday since it was created in 1995. But while it’s an opportunity for vloggers, radio hosts, and everyday people alike to let loose with a few hearty shouts of “arrrr,” the holiday certainly raises a couple of questions …
Did pirates really talk like that? And why do we think they do?
The truth is that nobody really knows what a typical Caribbean pirate sounded like. Historian Colin Woodard, author of “The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down,” told National Geographic, “There isn’t much in the way of scientific evidence in regards to pirate speech.” No audio recordings of pirate speech exist, and most witnesses have only written down small sets of quotes from pirates. Pirates didn’t really write, either. There’s “almost nothing written by pirates themselves, with the exception of educated people who ‘went pirate’ and, therefore, probably didn’t exhibit pirate speech patterns,” Woodard said. Our best guess? Many scholars suspect that English-speaking Golden Age pirates must have spoken exactly the same as English- speaking merchant sailors of the time. After all, large numbers in
performance — full of ‘arrs,’ ‘shiver me timbers,’ and references to ‘landlubbers’ — not only stole the show, but it also permanently shaped pop culture’s vision of how pirates looked, acted, and spoke.” After that movie, “Newtonesque” pirates were seen everywhere, from Captain Hook to Captain McCallister of “The Simpsons.” Still, there is a little truth in some pirate phrases. Not unlike the Canadian “eh,” “arr” was an affirmation in the English West Country during the early 20th century. Some phrases, such as “me hearties,” were simply universal 18th-century nautical terms. Although “pirate speak” today is mostly Hollywood magic, it’s still fun! Give it a try this September, and we’re sure it’ll make you smile — even if the true pirate dialect is much more mysterious.
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