“ARG! Ahoy mateys! Raise th' sails ye scurvey dog! Drop th' anchor and be prepared t' walk th' plank.”
No one could look at that sentence and not instantly know what type of person is speaking. It's the pirate, of course. The dialect is iconic to our loveable, swashbuckling rogue. But how did it come about?
In honor of talk like a pirate day, I decided to look into it. What I found is that this is not what most historical pirates sound like.
Many pirates in the Caribbean hailed from different countries, though most were from Britain or France. A great example of the many different nationalities on one ship is Henry Morgan’s crew during his raid on Portobello in 1668. They were a mix of British, Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese, Mulatto, and Black. All had their own prefered languages and accents.
Even those hailing from Britain talked differently depending on which region they came from. The iconic speech we know today derives from the West Country English dialect, but it certainly wasn’t the only one on the seas.
So how did one way of speaking become synonymous with the rugged sea pirate? The answer lies with a man named Robert Louis Stevenson. His book Treasure Island is one of the main reason for why pirates are associated with treasure maps, peg-legs, and pet parrots. What really cemented pirate speech, however, was Robert Newton’s portrayal of Long John Silver in the film adaptation of the novel.
Newton’s use of the West Country dialect would only be emulated throughout the years in other films. Many characters from Captain Blood to Captain Hook, are no doubt examples of these.
Besides language and dialect, Pirates used many words that would be foreign to anyone not knowledgeable in seafaring. You can check some of them out in the link below!
http://reference.yourdictionary.com/resources/pirate-terms-phrases.html
This is the jist of what I found out over the weekend, most of which is from the book Under The Black Flag by David Cordingly. I love history and it gives me a greater appreciation of the times, but just because stereotypical pirate speak may not be entirely historically accurate doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it.
So git out tharr, put on ye cap, feed yer parrot, chug some grog, and speak some pirate.
