Where Does the Pirate Accent Come From?

From the history books to Hollywood, the pirate accent has captivated audiences for generations

But where on earth did this swashbuckling accent come from? And while the thought of pirates might conjure up the image of Long John Silver's exaggerated

English brogue, it's highly unlikely all of them sounded that way. Today, we're exploring the evolution of the pirate accent and the real-life influences

that shaped the beloved dialect. Okay, let's hoist the Jolly Roger and set sail for today's jaunty linguistic lesson

What kind of movies do pirates love? The ones that are rated R

Movies are a big part of our culture, and one film in particular popularized the pirate language we know today

That film, an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, starred British actor Robert Newton

Newton was a talented actor who was exceptionally popular in the 1940s and 50s

The film was released in 1950 and saw Newton bring the swashbuckling Long John Silver

and later Blackbeard the Pirate to life on the big screen A fine actor and Navy veteran, Newton played several pirates throughout his career

And in each performance, Newton spoke with an exaggerated version of his native West Country accent

In the novel, Long John Silver resided in Bristol, which is part of the West Country

So it wasn't much of a stretch to base his performance on the accent from the area. Although Newton died only six years later, the accent he created lived on in other media

He would never know the extent of his legacy or that he'd become the patron saint for

international Talk Like a Pirate Day many decades later. It's hard to believe the accent was derived from a real place in England

To understand where the pop culture version of the pirate accent originated

a quick geography lesson is in order. In Great Britain, several villages, including Cornwall, Somerset, Devon, Dorset, and Bristow

make up an area known as the West Country. Most of it is located on the coast

This proximity to water makes it a prime spot for seafaring activities

like smuggling tobacco and other goods into the area. It also has its own regional accent, derived from various West Saxon dialects

And their manner of speech was unique among Europeans. The West Country is rural and known more for its farming and fishing activities than anything else

People weren't exactly moving there to find work. Outsiders didn't influence their speech much, so it developed specific nuances

Their distinct dialect included saying, I be instead of I am. You can put your grammar checker away, though, because that's how it was said in Old English

Linguist Molly Babble confirmed some of the similarities between the West Country and pirate

accent in an interview with the Vancouver Sun. She told them, speakers of the West Country regional dialect

tend to emphasize their R's, unlike other British regions. They tend to replace the verb is and are with be

and indeed use the word are in place of yes. The accent clearly has roots in the West Country

which makes sense considering the number of famous pirates who came from there. Robert Louis Stevenson might have popularized the pirate as a concept but West Country residents made it famous There were quite a few real pirates and privateers who lived in the area As such their accents were probably pretty similar

to Newton's famous one. Blackbeard the Pirate and Sir Francis Drake both hailed from the area

Drake was born in Devonshire, becoming a privateer by the age of 18

He became involved in the slave trade in the 1560s until Queen Elizabeth I commissioned him

to head to South America. Drake set out with five ships ready to explore

But the expedition turned out to be fraught with peril. One commander literally lost his head for treason, and only Drake's ship made it to

the Pacific. The return fared better. Sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, the Queen honored and knighted him for being the

first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe. This was in spite of Spanish complaints of Drake's pirate activities as he fulfilled his mission

These activities would eventually lead to his death. In January 1596, Drake attempted to take control of Spanish possessions in the West Indies

At that point, he took a page right out of the Oregon Trail and died of dysentery off the coast

of Panama. Blackbeard was a notorious pirate who operated predominantly along the coast of Virginia

Carolina, and the Caribbean. His origin is cloaked in mystery, but most people believe he was a man

named Edward Teach, who was born in Bristol around 1680. Though they likely spoke with an accent

similar to Newton's accent, they only represented a small sample of what a pirate's real-life

accent would have probably sounded like. Many of history's most famous pirates are of English descent, but not all of them were

from the West Country. Henry Morgan and Bartholomew Roberts were Welsh, Anne Bonny was Irish, and the infamous

Captain Kidd was a Scotland native. All of them spoke English, but many pirates from the time came from non-English speaking places

Hailing from the Netherlands, Sweden, France, and the West Indies, pirates would have spoken

various languages as they sailed the seven seas. So instead of the typical Long John Silver style accent we all know and love, these pirates

would have been much more diverse as far as their accents go. And their manner of speech was actually a lot more sophisticated than you think

The real life pirate talk would also be a bit more complex than standard English

English pirates were more likely to say ye instead of you. At the time, ye was a second person plural pronoun

and was often used to address more than one person. Think of it like the Old English version of y'all

just without the southern drawl. Because of their use of the second person pronoun

their language appeared more complex than standard English. It had to follow more complex grammar rules

making it seem more sophisticated. One might even say they were the original knights who say ye

Other words, like using be in place of is, am, or are

follow this more complex set of rules. So when a pirate says, he be walking the plank

it's just a fancy way of saying, he is walking the plank. But grammar isn't the only unique part of pirate speech

worth talking about. Language is a funny thing. It evolves and changes over time

The way someone speaks can also influence how other people around him speak

Social class and education level also have an effect on communication. The pirate language was no different Privateers could range from low to high class as far back as the 16th century Most didn suffer a loss of social status due to being pirates

Some of them even married into wealthy families. And in the 17th century, the famous pirate Captain Kidd

grew up poor. But then he married a wealthy woman and started befriending politicians

Some pirates during the 17th century were also sponsored by merchants. These buccaneers predominantly came

from lower social classes. while higher-ranking members came from middle-class or above backgrounds

mostly because navigating and tracking inventory required literacy. The difference in class also influenced how they spoke

You could see this illustrated in films. For instance, the 1986 film Pirates features a lower-class captain speaking cockney

while earlier films offer a more aristocratic portrayal at times. Slang is a funny thing

It changes every few years and can leave most of us scratching our heads. Pirate slang is an exclusive category

We've all heard yo-ho-ho and shiver me timbers. They're part of the Robert Louis Stevenson lexicon

and appear to have originated in his work. But other phrases actually come from old sailing terms

For example, ahoy is an 18th century term for directing a sailor's attention to an approaching ship

Later, it came to mean hello. Alexander Graham Bell even pitched the phrase

as a way to answer the phone, until Thomas Edison popularized the more familiar hello instead

Other terms like grog, landlubber, and avast came from the naval tradition as well

Avast was a 17th century term to stop an action. Landlubber referred to people unfamiliar with nautical tasks

And Grog was named after the infamous Admiral Edward Vernon, a.k.a. old grog nerd, who liked to give his crew watered down rum

Bilge referred to dirty water on the lower part of the ship, but later took on the meaning of talking nonsense

Pirates as we know them, the swashbuckling treasure hunting characters from our favorite fiction

are a bit different than traditional pirates. In fact, pirates were around long before England

Between 1276 and 1178 BCE, pirates caused a ton of trouble all over the Mediterranean

and around ancient Egypt. Their reputation for wreaking havoc earned them the name the Sea Peoples

Evidence of their deadly deeds exists in 14th century correspondence between the rulers

of various Near East kingdoms and ancient Egypt. One of the letters between Pharaoh Akhenaten and the king of Alacia, now Cyprus, has the

former accusing the latter of helping pirates from the region of Lucca target coastal cities

They were pretty prolific when it came to hitting ancient Egypt. The Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II

recorded how the sea peoples came all at once and that no land could stand before their arms

as they laid their hands upon the land as far as the circuit of the earth. Another king

Amarapi, the last king of Ugarit, also wrote to the king of Alessia about the destruction of his

land at the sea people's hands. Not much is known about the pirates except that they were from the region of Asia Minor

That and they practiced piracy regularly as part of the sea peoples And that wasn even the moniker they used The group of pirates from this era of history were christened the Sea Peoples in the 18th century And because they weren English

you can bet they spoke with their own unique accents, completely different from anything

we associate with pirates today. Piracy still exists today

but the so-called Golden Age of piracy ended around the 1730s. But from around 1650 to 1730, thousands of pirates were actively plundering on the high seas

This is the period where many of the most famous pirates, Francis Drake, Blackbeard

William Captain Kidd, Calico Jack Rackham, and many others were active. But it wasn't just pirates

Men and women also worked as buccaneers, corsairs, and privateers. Operating in such diverse locations as the Caribbean Islands and Tortuga

buccaneers were often paid to target Spanish ships. Of course, they targeted any ship they believed had valuable cargo aboard

Corsairs spent their time sailing around the Mediterranean. Both Christian and Muslim corsairs used galleys to capture other ships

Then they'd sell their prisoners as slaves, unless they could buy their way out

Privateers, on the other hand, were often backed by governments. They operated their own private ships and could get away with piracy during times of war

As times changed, piracy started to decline. The power of the British Royal Navy played a role

Their ships hunted and captured pirates, often trying them in court before executing them by hanging

The pirates themselves also began freeing slaves, who then became pirates. To compensate, the Navy increased their patrols

All the fighting eventually took a toll, and the golden age of piracy ended with a whimper

But the tales and records from this time made an indelible mark on history

inspiring Robert Louis Stevenson's novel and eventually, the pirate accent we know today

Long before Newton's portrayal of Long John Silver, pirates were portrayed on the stage

In those performances, pirate speech didn't really sound like the language we know today

A performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance wouldn't have contained words like ahoy, madey, or avast

After Treasure Island became a hit, the accent took off a bit. But it wasn't until the movie that it really entered the common vernacular

In both films, Newton developed the pirate language further with phrases like

flay your shriveled tongue and scurvy dog. His influence on the style of speaking like a pirate is now pretty much accepted as standard

The different aspects and dialects have been used by other actors. His performance is still what we think of when we hear the pirate accent

Historian Colin Woodard brought this fact home in a 2011 interview with National Geographic

stating Newton's performance, full of R's, shiver me timbers, and references to land lovers

not only stole the show, it permanently shaped pop culture's vision of how pirates looked

acted, and spoke. Movies and cinema have consistently asserted their influence on

our collective culture, and in the case of the pirate accent, it created something that resonates

with people today. From Treasure Island to Pirates of the Caribbean and beyond, it seems like there

will always be a place for the pirate-accented pop culture. So hoist the mainsail, me hearties, because the pirate accent is definitely here to stay