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Origins of the pirate accent


Molly O'Mally

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'course i had always heard tha most of the modern nautical lingo...came from the mis-pronuoncin of english terms.....boatswain to bo'sun....cockswain to cok'sun...and so on....most of the midshipmen woud ahve been irish,welsh and scottish...being that they had all the need for the jobs at the time...as well as lower class english...mix all that together...they were lucky to have understood anythin at all!...so it seems to me the piratical accent we so fondly think of today probably came from just bad grammer...and stuck... :lol:

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I'd have to guess it's mostly due to Robert Newton as well. IMDB lists him as having been born in Dorset...he probably just did what came naturally, but amped it up for his characters. I'm curious what he sounded like as Bill Sykes in "Oliver Twist". Haven't seen that version.

Talk about leavin' yer mark on the world...

Well I can't be sayin' fer Oliver Twist, but as the British agent in "Around the world in 80 days", He be soundin' every bit as Long John Silver. Same accent, same shifty eyes, different costume.

PIRATES!  Because ye can't do epic shyte wi' normal people.

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Oh, I gotta go to work and it's 35 F and freezing sleet. This should make for interesting driving today. I wonder how many wrecks I'll see.

Anyway; I enjoy reading through broadsheets and letters of the time, and watching the phonetic pronunciations of words. From English publications, you get 'murther', etc. And some indications of what usual 'English' may have sounded like. The phonetic spelling is useful. 'Heere arre thee playtes", etc.

I stopped by my local watering hole last week for a couple beers (well, four. Six. Okay, ten. Or twelve. Something like that) and was talking to a guy in his 60s, a retired millwright from somewhere in one of the Carolinas. The news came on the bar TV with a report on a local killing, and this guy shook his head, clucked his tongue, and said (phonetically):

"Tha(y)t shurley is a te-rebb-ulle(h) MURTHER".

Pauly caught a bullet

But it only hit his leg

Well it should have been a better shot

And got him in the head

They were all in love with dyin'

They were drinking from a fountain

That was pouring like an avalanche

Coming down the mountain

Butthole Surfers,

PEPPER

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I only just ordered my own copy, so can't put the potential wisdom therein to use in this discussion, but The Pirate Primer just came out. 480 pages, all dedicated to pirate-ese.

After reading this I went immediately and ordered my own copy. I love it!

Might not be the most historically acurate book but I lot of the phrases have been gleaned from books and writings of the GoAP. 2 Thumbs up.

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