Pirates Didn't Really Talk Like That - Cheddar Explains

From cartoons to the classic Hollywood films, we've always had an idea of how Pirates talked. They said "Argh" and had people "walk the plank!" Cheddar Explains why pirates never actually talked like that and how it was decided they did...

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[seannborba]

Eveyone knows pirates say "I'm the captain now"

[writerpatrick]

Some pirates actual did talk something like that. There's an obscure Irish dialect that sounds somewhat similar and at the time Ireland had many shipyards. Irish playwright J. M. Synge used it in Playboy of the Western World. Instead of using "yes" they would say things like "I be.." or "I do..." which is where "Aye" would have come from. Not all pirates talked the same, just as not all sailors today talk the same. But regional dialects would have influenced how some pirates spoke.

[DyslexicMitochondria]

What'd the pirate say on his 80th b'day?








Aye Matey

[ironcrossadmiral]

The only legitimate "pirate-speak" would be "aye" meaning yes, which is just how orders are relayed. Screaming yes is much harder to hear over aye, thus aye was used. It's also more formal (think "nays" in congress and such) and a vessel is run in a formal manner, pirate, naval or otherwise for the sake of keeping order.

[phyphor]

Oh, bless. Thinking a Bristol accent would be anything like Dorset because they're only 80 miles apart.

British accents differ across much shorter distances than that!

[MrTHotz]

The South West of England is a peninsula and had frequent ports for ships to stop by (most western part of England). Think Pirates of Penzance, Jamaica Inn and as mentioned Plymouth, Bristol & Dorset. I think the mix of all the accents together on long voyages would have caused a blending of them into a concotion of what we are used to now hearing - I'd wager that a combination of the South West accents and their characteristics helped Newton shape his accent in Treasure Island.

[michaelsanchez]

Are you ready kids?
Aye aye captain!!!
I can't hear you!
Aye aye captain!!!

[wingweaver]

Thank you! Thank you! No one ever mentions Anne when they talk about Pirates. She is my absolute favorite and she's always left out.

[AlashiaTuol]

Everybody's been cribbing all pirate linguistics off of one performance of one fictional character. So basically, the pirate accent was created by the creators of Hollywood cheating off each other's writing assignments.
👏👏👏 Well done, Hollywood.

[katyoutnabout]

Pirates needed to conceal the fact they were pirates, so their accent couldn’t have been too different from others while on land. But just like any fisherman will tell you, there’s a while new world of language at sea.

[alqui]

2:04 She said "Yo Ho Yo Ho"!?!? 🤭
The Sentence says "Yo-Ho-Ho" 🤣

[VariableThisIsKnife]

2:08 "Yo ho-Yo ho" ?? are you shitting me Cheddar? I can't decide if this is worse than that 'Cities Thwart Terrorism' video where the narrator thought that CCTV stood for "closed captioned television"....twice.. Ugh.

[AbnormalWrench]

I'm going to go with the latter assumption. Everyone at sea spoke like that.

[frislander]

Wow you angled that map so well to miss out that Bristol's also coastal. But either way at least minimally your stereotypical smuggler is Cornish, a la Pirates of Penzance.

[TheSentinel]

yoho yoho? NAY LASSIE, TIS YO - HO -HO!

[mr]

"Their speech would have been that of an underclass British sailor, but with an extra dose of curse words, amplified by a mix of slang ..."
Look, you can only swear so much in one sentence. Being British, underclass, and a sailor is basically swearing every other word, so if you add any more you'll never be able to understand them.

[tomboz]

There's me thinking you weren't going to mention the west country at all.


Cos "Pirates never spoke like that" isn't necessarily true...it depends where they came from (of course).

[edwardnygma]

Just wanna say that pirate is a course on the language learning app Mango.

[fireaza]

A pirate walks into a doctor's office with a steering wheel down his pants. The doctor says "What's with the steering wheel?" and the pirate says "Yarr! It's drivin' me nuts!"

Q: Why wasn't the pirate allowed into the movie theater?
A: The movie was rated "ARRRR!"

[Killrballoon]

Being from Dorset myself, I can confirm we are all pirates (also it’s known as a West Country accent)