The origins of Talk Like a Pirate Day illustrate how great things happen accidentally in our everyday lives. Back in 1995, two guys (John Baur and Mark Summers) were playing racquetball at a gym (racquetball court No. 3 at the Albany, N.Y., YMCA). While hitting the ball back and forth, they spontaneously started encouraging each other using pirate jargon and dialect. That led to their idea to set aside a day each year to talk like a pirate all day. For seven years they honored Talk Like a Pirate Day among their friends.
Then in 2002, they contacted a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, Dave Barry, and explained how they celebrated Talk Like a Pirate Day every year on Sept. 19. They asked Mr. Barry if he could help them spread the word about their unique celebration of old seafaring lingo. They didn’t expect a response at all, let alone a prompt and positive response. Mr. Barry thought it was a “very excellent” idea and published a column about it, which appeared in newspapers across the U.S. on Sept. 8, 2002 , just in time to spread the word before the celebration. And that is how the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist earned yet another worthy title: “Official National Talk Like a Pirate Day Spokesman.”
The idea caught on after the column appeared. John Baur and Mark Summers were interviewed on various radio shows, including one in Sydney, Australia — thus the holiday became an international celebration. The new holiday was also featured on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.” Today thousands of people, perhaps millions, talk like a pirate all day, once a year, on Sept. 19.
Original pirate dialect and lingo in English may have begun near Somerset County in England. It was near Somerset that Vikings from all over the northern European continent ( Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Northern Germany) landed between 600 and 1100 AD. The Viking pirates also visited, raided, and settled places like Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland in North America in about 1000 AD (way before Columbus in 1492!).
In 2007, the pirate legacy lives on in the popular jargon and in movies like Pirates of the Caribbean. Nowadays, you can do more than just talk like a pirate; you can learn more about pirate linguistics, translate English into pirate lingo, generate your own pirate nickname, take a pirate personality test, and much more. Here are a few links to get you started on your own Talk Like a Pirate Day celebration.
Special stuff for junior pirates on John Baur and Mark Summers’ Talk Like a Pirate Day Web site: http://www.talklikeapirate.com/juniorpirates.html
Pirate and seafarer’s glossary: http://homepage.mac.com/crabola/PirateGlossary/Menu22.html
English to pirate translator: http://www.talklikeapirate.com/translator.html
Pirate nickname generator: http://www.stupidstuff.org/main/piratename.htm
Pirate linguistic history: http://en.allexperts.com/q/Linguistics-Phonetics-Phonology-3485/Language-meanings-3.htm#b
Pirate books: http://www.talklikeapirate.com/booksandstuff.html
Talk Like a Pirate Day” in Great Britain: http://www.yarr.org.uk/
Dave Barry’s published column that first popularized the holiday (posted on Sunday, Sept. 08, 2002):
http://www.miamiherald.com/283/story/100129.html
About the author:
Robert Rose-Coutré has been an editor and writer for scholarly, arts, legal, and software publications since the mid-1980s. Robert published a novel in 2001 and a philosophy-of-language and aesthetics book in 2006. He has a master of arts degree in literature/aesthetics, with additional graduate studies in the philosophy of language. Rose-Coutré has been a member of American Mensa, the British Museum Library, OATHS, Camp Archimedes, the Association for Software Quality, and the board of directors for the Anhinga Literary Press. Robert enjoys life every day with his wonderful wife Mitra.