{"id":9150,"date":"2013-09-19T17:07:49","date_gmt":"2013-09-19T17:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=9150"},"modified":"2013-09-19T17:07:49","modified_gmt":"2013-09-19T17:07:49","slug":"avast-me-hearties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=9150","title":{"rendered":"Avast, me hearties!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin:0 0 10px 10px; text-align:center; float:right;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ghergich.com\/illustrations\/talk-like-pirate-day\/\" title=\"Talk Like A Pirate Day\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ghergich.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/talk-like-a-pirate-day.jpg\" width=\"300\" alt=\"Talk Like A Pirate Day\" \/><\/a><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/ghergich.com\/illustrations\/talk-like-pirate-day\/\" title=\"Talk Like A Pirate Day\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Illustration by Ghergich &amp; Co.<\/a><\/div>\n<p>As I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;re aware, today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, a celebration of the pirate dialect found in films and books and based on <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/West_Country_dialects\">West Country English<\/a>. This idea came from Dave Barry, a journalist and writing in Miami, who mentioned the idea is his newspaper column in 2002 as a joke. Now, according to the official <a href=\"http:\/\/www.talklikeapirate.com\/piratehome.html\">Talk Like A Pirate Day website<\/a>, millions of people around the world celebrate this day by having pirate-themed parties and talking like pirates.<\/p>\n<p>Why are pirates often depicted as speaking with approximations of West Country accents?<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pirates_in_popular_culture\">Wikipedia<\/a>, many pirate accents are based on the one used on that of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Robert_Newton\">Robert Newton<\/a>, a native of Dorset (part of the West Country) with a strong Dorset accent, who played Long John Silver in the 1950 film <em>Treasure Island<\/em>, and also appeared in the 1952 film <em>Blackbeard the Pirate<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/dialectblog.com\/2011\/05\/24\/pirate-accent\/\">Dialect Blog<\/a>, during the &#8216;Golden Age of Piracy&#8217; &#8211; the late 17th and early 18th centuries &#8211;  many English pirates came from Bristol, Devon and Cornwall, which are part of the West Country. Pirates are also given West Country accents in Robert Louis Stevenson&#8217;s stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Illustration by Ghergich &amp; Co. As I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;re aware, today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, a celebration of the pirate dialect found in films and books and based on West Country English. This idea came from Dave Barry, a journalist and writing in Miami, who mentioned the idea is his newspaper column [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}