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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Not really, what is missed in this video I suspect because the creators haven't actually read the book is John Silver is from Bristol in the West country so when Newton was cast he also being from the West country just spoke with the accent he grew up with. So everyone is modeling their pirate on the archetype of the romantic pirate
Blackbeard was from Bristol and his diaries are written in a surprisingly similar way to the Newton Bristol/pirate accented way of talking.So Hollywood isn’t always so wrong in some ways.I think it helped Newton was from Blackbeards home town!That’s why he used the West county accent.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Also, I think it was their cable vs streaming episode where the guy kept saying "AKA" to mean "in other words" ...which is not at all what AKA means.. Or trying to say that the term "bottle episode" came from "pulling an episode out of a bottle" instead of the actual "ship in a bottle" origin. ...shit's just plain ignorant. Makes me not want to trust the rest of the facts these little info-videos nearly as much.
@@VariableThisIsKnife they're interesting videos, but with the errors we spot in the scripts, we can't help wondering what errors we're accepting as fact. It does not instil confidence. I blame those millenniums. ;-)
"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.
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!"
She says that just because the pirate biographer didn't mention accents, then they must have not had an accent. That's nonsense. The biographer might not have thought to mention accents because he probably wasn't thinking people 200 years later would be interested in that topic. Also, you must remember that the common non-rhotic accent in England today wasn't that common back then. Lots of people rolled their r's just as Newton portrayed in his films. (Read Shakespeare in his original dialect, for example).
Wrong, madam, wrong! May I remind you that: 1. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Based on the evidence we have, or lack thereof, what we can say for certain is that we don't know how pirates talked; we *can't* say for certain that they didn't talk like that. 2. We don't know who wrote "A General History of the Pyrates"; we don't know how accurate it is, and if it was indeed written by Daniel Defoe (to whom it's often attributed), it could very well be a work of fiction, and in that case it wouldn't be a reliable source of how pirates talked. 3. On the other hand, it could be that of the many sources "Treasure Island" was based on, one was folklore, and in that case it could be quite an accurate source for pirate talk. In the end, if we don't know, we don't know: your rebuttal is as unsubstantiated as current pirate talk could be.
I’m FROM Dorset. No one there talks like that as far as I’m aware. Then again, I was raised upper middle class. For a long time in England, class had a big impact on speech. With globalization and the advent of public schooling, most British speech seems to be becoming more and more blended. Even regional dialects seem to be more fused. It’s not fully homogeneous by any stretch of the imagination, but it does appear to be trending that way.
It was first really popularised by Robert Newton in Treasure Island 1950 where he spoke in his native Dorset accent and dialect. Some famous pirates spoke with a Welsh accent, possibly the most famous or infamous ones being Henry Morgan and Black Bart (Barthlomew Roberts).
The irony is. The two most successful pirates in history were from Wales and had Welsh accents. Captain Morgan & Black Bart ( or Barty Ddu), who himself interestingly spoke Welsh (Cymraeg), had his crew swear allegiance on a Welsh Bible, who was the one responsible for writing the world famous Pirate Code adopted & adapted by other pirates.
Sorry American girl, you've got it wrong. It's likely that many pirates would have spoken with strong West Country accents (aka pirate talk) as that's where a lot of Britain's ports are and sailors were from. In fact, they would probably have spoken in dialects that would be hard for us to understand now. Sir Francis Drake is well known to have amused Elizabeth 1st's court in London with his strong Devonian accent.
As with westerns, we should all keep in mind that the popular version of pirates in the media is myth and fantasy. Fantasy pirates often do talk like Robert Newton because they are fantasy pirates, based on literary and cinematic models. Real pirates were not all British or even English-speaking. In the Golden Age, they would have spoken scores of dialects of English and French, Dutch, Welsh, Portuguese, and Spanish. In addition there would also been, during and outside this period, Arabic, Venetian, Turkish, Chinese...
English is not my primary language and when I was 9 years old, an older cousin laid on the table 10 dollars and said it will be a reward if I correctly pronounced the title of a novel he was reading. It was Treasure Island. I failed to pronounce the 'Island' part properly even though I knew its meaning. I lost the 10 dollars reward. That moment spurred me onto a journey of daily-reading all fiction and nonfiction I could lay my hands on.
Most people think of the golden age of piracy, I think of the Worst Generation. Blackbeard, Eustis Kidd, Trafalgar Law, Jewelry Bonny, Scrachman Apoo, Killer, X Drake, Capone Bege, Basil Hawkins, Urouge, Roronoa Zoro, Monkey D. Luffy.
Oo-arr is basically "oh yes", generally affermative in rural Somerset in England. Also there's a strong association between Cornwall and pirate types, so there are lots of connections to the south west. In Cornwall folk would hang a lantern low on a cliff to look like a lighthouse further away to draw ships on to the rocks. Not typical piracy, but certainly underhanded, and you can see how it all gets conflated.
Recruited in London also doesn't mean from London. As now, many people move to the capital to find work, etc... All in all I think the accent holds up as fairly likely!
Shakespeare had a Birmingham accent basically. You can be well spoken with a regional accent. BBC radio is when it starts to get more standardised remember.
The Plank was usually used for Boarding the Ship from a Dock, and usually wasn't attached, and would have to be pulled aboard when leaving port. There was no feasible way to "Walk the Plank" when it would have to have been firmly attached in order to do so.
Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake, two early pirates are from Devon and would of spoken with a similar accent so I dought if the stereotype came just from an actor
At 1:12 "They were some of the most notorious pirate out at Sea even when they were alive" did you heard what you just said? "even when they were alive" They have to be alive to be notorious even more so in comparison when they're dead.
? What you said doesn't mean anything.... "Notorious definition : famous or well known, typically for some bad quality or deed." Of course you can be notorious after your death and relatively unknown when alive, maybe I misunderstood you
It is a very dumb statement. For the very same reason you just said. They have to be very notorious to be able to gather their reputation in the first place and that it's obvious they have to be alive to do that at that time. It is a stupid statement. "even when they were alive" I don't think that would work out if they started when they were dead to be notorious.
i think we'd all forgotten how pirates from the 1620s and onward spoke. as in faded away. and someday in 1883 "Treasure Island" came out and set a different tone to pirate speak. the language we all know today.
You keep illustrating clips from _Pirates of the Caribbean_ but only one character actually spoke that way; the rest talked normally based on their accents.
Closest we got was Blackbeard in Black Flag. “…bones for caaaaarrrgggghhhhhh” I love that shit. It’s the only arrggghhh in the game, and it’s totally unintentional. It gets better. In ACIII, Connor assassinates William Johnson…who makes a cameo in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Master of Ballantrae”
i served aboard gators, cans, partied with bubbleheads, and then didn't realize until i transferred to a bird farm snipe div that there really is a jargon unique to sailors, even now-a-days, and can vary from deck, engineering, to CIC and air. sit down in a Legion bar, or any venue where some old sailors have gathered, and listen. it's a whole 'nother language.
Well, the accent used for Benjamin Hornigold in "Assassin's Creed: Black Flag" is arguably the most accurate portrayal of how pirates spoke in those times, also to note the actor who portrayed Blackbeard in the game said he actually struggled with getting the old Bristol accent correct because it hadn't been used in the UK for a hundred years so Blackbeard's accent was mostly guesswork.
But real cowboys and real pirates are not like the Hollywood versions. Real pirates are terrorists. And real cowboys are not cowboys at all. They are cattle herders.
Famously Elizabeth the 1st in the years building up to the Spanish inquisition, gave all pirates who attacked Spanish merchant ships in the Atlantic safe harbour in England’s ports. Which earned her the nick name of “pirate whore” in Spain
Excellent work. Now, you should explain how the mortal enemies of the pirates, the ninjas, actually spoke. Here are two examples of ninja speak from the popular culture: "... ... ... ... ..." and "PIZZA TIME!"
Similar to its use in Dutch, the G in "Aaarrgh" implies a throaty and exaggerated transition between vowel sounds. Like the Dutch name "Giersbergen", which is (slightly different based on compensation for my non-American accent) phonetically closer to "Here's-bear-hen", each "H" coming from the very back of the throat.
"Belay this nonsense. Shiver me timbers, I've never cast me eyes on such tales to twist a mind like a Cornish pretzel. Now wench, to the Galley and fetch me a Grog."
But Robert Newton spoke perfectly good RP and didn't have to use the accent of his birthplace. He _chose_ to do so because it made perfect sense that the character would speak in that general dialect. If anything it's Stevenson's choice to give the character that backstory which decided the accent.
Robert Louis Stevenson's middle name is not pronounced that way. It was the original French pronunciation (as it still is in most of the World). If was pronounced with an "s" ending, then it would have been spelt "Lewis". As far as the rolling "r" of Pilot-speak, then according to Iszi Lawrence, that was real and arose because so many of the pirates largely came from the South West of England and it's similar to the local accent. She appeared and was credited as a Historian on the Netflix documentary "The Lost Pirate Kingdom".
Not ‘thanks to Hollywood and pop culture pirates never talked like that’ that implies that Hollywood and pop culture somehow impacted how real pirates talked. You guys mean ‘despite Hollywood culture’
I recall the Wall Street Journal publication back in the 1980s printed an article that dispelled many of the accepted folklore about pirates; even going into the wardrobe the pirate captains would generally wear. Dispelling the myth of *walking the plank* was a memorable one from the WSJ article.
Many sailors and seamen were from the same part of coastal England that Robert Newton came from and so yes many did speak with a Cornish or Pirate accent. This video gives the impression that they spoke with a modern proper British accent and that simply not true.
You know what else I think? Given however long they spent in a certain place, I'd imagine that their own native dialect and speech would have turned into a kind of "patois" of sorts, basically some words and phrases of wherever they put into port would begin to integrate into their own after some time, this is a likely possibility given how some accents "shift" when they've been in another country for a while and they start talking like the locals and such.
I think the pirate talk is neat, I thought that maybe the real pirates spoke like that but not constantly every day. I thought pirate talk was they’re slang that they used some times like we do today.
A pirate walks into a bar with a steering wheel hanging out of his pants. The bartender asks he what’s up with that. The pirate answers, “I don’t know but it’s driving me nuts!”
Aye aye probably was used, because everyone in the navy says that. I should know, I have family that has served in the US Navy. And "aye" just means "yes," in a more formal sailor talk.
I've seen it claimed that piracy in the mediterranean was so prolific that it developed a lingua franca among pirates called franco, a blend of southern european and northern african dialects
argh is a filler word for swearing used for writing. If you've ever noticed the lack of swearing by sailors in kids shows but an overabundance of argh, then that is why. Its like how outlaw cowboys didn't say rassen-frassen.
she says pirates said "Yo ho Yo ho". That she read that out in the sound booth without realizing it was wrong makes me wonder if she knows what she is talking about
This really doesn't address very clearly the concept of who pirates were and only seems to acknowledge English pirates. Pirates can be from any culture. In the colonial era pirates were mostly English, French, and Spanish who lived lawfully within their own country but we're allowed to kill and steal from merchant vessles from the other nations who were all at war or in conflict with each other throughout most of this period.
@@Thames.Chiratt The main risk with file sharing is that you're also uploading to others, which is considered distribution. That's what they focus on, when they focus on anything. The safest way, without having a VPN, is direct downloading, but that comes with an increased risk of getting viruses so make sure the site you're downloading from is trusted.
@@Thames.Chiratt You're welcome. Also, I should have worded the risk of viruses differently. With file sharing, viruses are still rampant, but downloading from verified/trusted users and checking the comments on the file lessens this a bit. Happy hunting!
My son was stationed on an aircraft carrier and he actually encountered some Somali pirates who were trying to attack his ship. He almost had to shoot them if he was ordered to. Fortunately some planes drove the pirates off.
When I think of pirates I am reminded of my son who almost had to fire on Somali pirates when they came with in an unsafe distance from the aircraft carrier he was stationed on. He was scared he’d have to kill them. This was about 15 years ago when the ship was on duty in the Middle East.
Same as for Illinois. Northern Illinois people speak different from people in southern Illinois. Southern Illinois people speak more like they do in Kentucky or in Missouri.
