Background
According to Summers, the day is the only holiday to come into being as a result of a sports injury. He has stated that during a racquetball game between Summers and Baur, one of them reacted to the pain with an outburst of "Aaarrr!", and the idea was born. That game took place on June 6, 1995, but out of respect for the observance of D-Day, they chose Summers' ex-wife's birthday, as it would be easy for him to remember.
At first an inside joke between two friends, the holiday gained exposure when John Baur and Mark Summers sent a letter about their invented holiday to the American syndicated humor columnist Dave Barry in 2002. Barry liked the idea and promoted the day. Growing media coverage of the holiday after Barry's column has ensured that this event is now celebrated internationally, and Baur and Summers now sell books and T-shirts on their website related to the theme.
Baur and Summers found new fame in the 2006 season premiere episode of ABC's Wife Swap, first aired September 18, 2006. They starred in the role of "a family of pirates" along with John's wife, Tori. Baur also appeared on the June 26, 2008 episode of Jeopardy!, where he was introduced as a "writer and pirate."
Actor Robert Newton, who portrayed Long John Silver in the 1950 Disney film Treasure Island and then in the 1954 film Long John Silver, is the patron saint of Talk Like A Pirate Day. Newton was a native of Dorset, and it was his native West Country dialect, which he used in his portrayal of Long John Silver and Blackbeard, that has become the standard "pirate accent". As the association of pirates with peg legs, parrots, and treasure maps was popularized in Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island (1883), the book has had a significant influence on parody pirate culture.
Examples of pirate sayings
Seamen in the days of sail spoke a language so full of technical jargon as to be nearly incomprehensible to a landsman. For example, few could follow these instructions:
These phrases date back to the 17th century:
From Lt. Robert Maynard's report of Blackbeard at the Battle of Ocracoke:
"Damn ye, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, I'm a better man than all of ye milksops put together" - Blackbeard
The only written records recovered from the Adventure after Blackbeard's death ran as follows.
Treasure Island
One of the most influential books on popular notions of pirate speech was Treasure Island, a novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, from which sample quotes include:- "Bring me one noggin of rum, now, won't you, matey.
- "Avast, there!"
- "Dead men don't bite."
- "Shiver my timbers!" (often pronounced as "Shiver me timbers!")
- "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest -- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
- "There! That's what I think of ye. Before an hour's out, I'll stove in your old block house like a rum puncheon. Laugh, by thunder, laugh! Before an hour's out, ye'll laugh upon the other side. Them that die'll be the lucky ones."
The archetypal pirate grunt "Arrr!" (alternatively "Rrrr!" or "Yarrr!") first appeared in the classic 1950 Disney film Treasure Island, according to research by Mark Liberman. His article cites linguistic research that may locate the roots of this phrase much earlier.
Peter Pan
Peter and Wendy (1911), with Captain Hook and his pirate ship Jolly Roger, contains numerous fictional pirate sayings:- "Avast belay, yo ho, heave to,
- A-pirating we go
- And if we're parted by a shot
- We're sure to meet below!"
- "Yo ho, yo ho, the pirate life,
- The flag o'skull and bones
- A merry hour, a hempen rope
- And 'hey' for Davy Jones!"
Derivatives
- The holiday is of particular importance to Pastafarians (those who follow the teachings of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) who consider pirates to be absolute divine beings and the original Pastafarians.
- Tom Smith has written and recorded the song "Talk Like a Pirate Day," the quasi-official anthem of the holiday.
- In the Nintendo DS version of The Sims 2, in-game characters celebrate "Talk Like A Pirate Day" on September 19th, in which a special quest is released, involving a pirate quiz.
- On Neopets's Neoboards, during the holiday, filters automatically changed words like "see" to "spy" and "n00b" to "landlubber.
- This holiday inspired the creation of the Day of the Ninja in 2003.
- In Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004), narration and character dialogue is altered to honor "Talk Like A Pirate Day" if the system's date is set to September 19.
- The multiplayer role-playing game Kingdom of Loathing celebrates Talk Like a Pirate Day, and a new item may drop in the game's pirate-themed zone, for that day only.
- The role-playing game AdventureQuest celebrates Talk Like A Pirate Day by your character going to meet Captain Rhubarb to take a 20-question quiz on Pirate Talk. If you get all 20 questions right, you get access to a special Pirate Shop with new things added each year. You may also access this event via Warlic's Magic Shop.
- Another role-playing game made by the creators of Adventure Quest called Dragonfable, also celebrates this holiday by changing many of the major character's greetings to pirate sayings and in 2007, during the pirates vs. ninjas war, the pirates team gained an additional boost to the amount of gold to be won for fighting against the ninjas starting on that day.
References
Further reading
- Harland, John (1984). Seamanship in the Age of Sail. Provides a detailed account of the language used by seamen during the age of sail. ISBN 0-87021-955-3
External links
- The Original Talk Like A Pirate Day Web site, by John Baur and Mark Summers.
Fan sites
- Talk Like A Pirate Day Coverage on Urbanagora, USA.
- Talk Like a Pirate Day Web site, US.
- Talk Like A Pirate Day Web site, UK.
- Talk Like A Pirate Day Web site, Australia.
- Talk Like A Pirate Day Web site, NL.
How to sites
- How to talk like a Pirate Web site, WikiHow
Multimedia
- Getting to Know ... TLaPD, a lengthy feature story on John Baur and Mark Summers
- The creator of The Day of the Ninja responds to Cap'n Slappy and Ol' Chumbuckets' comments regarding the Pirates vs. Ninjas debate
- TLaPD Flashmob Gallery, Vancouver 2006.
- Talk like a pirate video clip collection, Video clip collection.
- Audio Interview on The Sound of Young America: MP3 Link
- Animated Pirate Translator
- Webpages Pirate Translator
- Flickr TLaPD photos
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Tuesday July 01, 2008 at 17:57:16 PDT (GMT -0700)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation
Background
According to Summers, the day is the only holiday to come into being as a result of a sports injury. He has stated that during a racquetball game between Summers and Baur, one of them reacted to the pain with an outburst of "Aaarrr!", and the idea was born. That game took place on June 6, 1995, but out of respect for the observance of D-Day, they chose Summers' ex-wife's birthday, as it would be easy for him to remember.
At first an inside joke between two friends, the holiday gained exposure when John Baur and Mark Summers sent a letter about their invented holiday to the American syndicated humor columnist Dave Barry in 2002. Barry liked the idea and promoted the day. Growing media coverage of the holiday after Barry's column has ensured that this event is now celebrated internationally, and Baur and Summers now sell books and T-shirts on their website related to the theme.
Baur and Summers found new fame in the 2006 season premiere episode of ABC's Wife Swap, first aired September 18, 2006. They starred in the role of "a family of pirates" along with John's wife, Tori. Baur also appeared on the June 26, 2008 episode of Jeopardy!, where he was introduced as a "writer and pirate."
Actor Robert Newton, who portrayed Long John Silver in the 1950 Disney film Treasure Island and then in the 1954 film Long John Silver, is the patron saint of Talk Like A Pirate Day. Newton was a native of Dorset, and it was his native West Country dialect, which he used in his portrayal of Long John Silver and Blackbeard, that has become the standard "pirate accent". As the association of pirates with peg legs, parrots, and treasure maps was popularized in Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island (1883), the book has had a significant influence on parody pirate culture.
Examples of pirate sayings
Seamen in the days of sail spoke a language so full of technical jargon as to be nearly incomprehensible to a landsman. For example, few could follow these instructions:
These phrases date back to the 17th century:
From Lt. Robert Maynard's report of Blackbeard at the Battle of Ocracoke:
"Damn ye, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, I'm a better man than all of ye milksops put together" - Blackbeard
The only written records recovered from the Adventure after Blackbeard's death ran as follows.
Treasure Island
One of the most influential books on popular notions of pirate speech was Treasure Island, a novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, from which sample quotes include:- "Bring me one noggin of rum, now, won't you, matey.
- "Avast, there!"
- "Dead men don't bite."
- "Shiver my timbers!" (often pronounced as "Shiver me timbers!")
- "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest -- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
- "There! That's what I think of ye. Before an hour's out, I'll stove in your old block house like a rum puncheon. Laugh, by thunder, laugh! Before an hour's out, ye'll laugh upon the other side. Them that die'll be the lucky ones."
The archetypal pirate grunt "Arrr!" (alternatively "Rrrr!" or "Yarrr!") first appeared in the classic 1950 Disney film Treasure Island, according to research by Mark Liberman. His article cites linguistic research that may locate the roots of this phrase much earlier.
Peter Pan
Peter and Wendy (1911), with Captain Hook and his pirate ship Jolly Roger, contains numerous fictional pirate sayings:- "Avast belay, yo ho, heave to,
- A-pirating we go
- And if we're parted by a shot
- We're sure to meet below!"
- "Yo ho, yo ho, the pirate life,
- The flag o'skull and bones
- A merry hour, a hempen rope
- And 'hey' for Davy Jones!"
Derivatives
- The holiday is of particular importance to Pastafarians (those who follow the teachings of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) who consider pirates to be absolute divine beings and the original Pastafarians.
- Tom Smith has written and recorded the song "Talk Like a Pirate Day," the quasi-official anthem of the holiday.
- In the Nintendo DS version of The Sims 2, in-game characters celebrate "Talk Like A Pirate Day" on September 19th, in which a special quest is released, involving a pirate quiz.
- On Neopets's Neoboards, during the holiday, filters automatically changed words like "see" to "spy" and "n00b" to "landlubber.
- This holiday inspired the creation of the Day of the Ninja in 2003.
- In Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004), narration and character dialogue is altered to honor "Talk Like A Pirate Day" if the system's date is set to September 19.
- The multiplayer role-playing game Kingdom of Loathing celebrates Talk Like a Pirate Day, and a new item may drop in the game's pirate-themed zone, for that day only.
- The role-playing game AdventureQuest celebrates Talk Like A Pirate Day by your character going to meet Captain Rhubarb to take a 20-question quiz on Pirate Talk. If you get all 20 questions right, you get access to a special Pirate Shop with new things added each year. You may also access this event via Warlic's Magic Shop.
- Another role-playing game made by the creators of Adventure Quest called Dragonfable, also celebrates this holiday by changing many of the major character's greetings to pirate sayings and in 2007, during the pirates vs. ninjas war, the pirates team gained an additional boost to the amount of gold to be won for fighting against the ninjas starting on that day.
References
Further reading
- Harland, John (1984). Seamanship in the Age of Sail. Provides a detailed account of the language used by seamen during the age of sail. ISBN 0-87021-955-3
External links
- The Original Talk Like A Pirate Day Web site, by John Baur and Mark Summers.
Fan sites
- Talk Like A Pirate Day Coverage on Urbanagora, USA.
- Talk Like a Pirate Day Web site, US.
- Talk Like A Pirate Day Web site, UK.
- Talk Like A Pirate Day Web site, Australia.
- Talk Like A Pirate Day Web site, NL.
How to sites
- How to talk like a Pirate Web site, WikiHow
Multimedia
- Getting to Know ... TLaPD, a lengthy feature story on John Baur and Mark Summers
- The creator of The Day of the Ninja responds to Cap'n Slappy and Ol' Chumbuckets' comments regarding the Pirates vs. Ninjas debate
- TLaPD Flashmob Gallery, Vancouver 2006.
- Talk like a pirate video clip collection, Video clip collection.
- Audio Interview on The Sound of Young America: MP3 Link
- Animated Pirate Translator
- Webpages Pirate Translator
- Flickr TLaPD photos
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Tuesday July 01, 2008 at 17:57:16 PDT (GMT -0700)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation
Copyright © 2008, Dictionary.com, LLC. All rights reserved.