English → Pirate
| Modern English | Pirate |
|---|---|
| Hello, my friend! | Ahoy, me hearty! |
| Where is the bathroom? | Where be the head, matey? |
| Stop that! | Belay that! |
| You’re new here, right? | Ye be a landlubber, aye? |
| I love money. | I be lovin’ me treasure, arr! |
Where pirate talk comes from
Today’s pirate voice comes mostly from fiction. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883) gave us Long John Silver, and the actor Robert Newton played him in Disney’s 1950 film with an exaggerated West Country accent from south-west England: the rolling “arr” everyone imitates. Real pirates of the Golden Age came from many countries and spoke many languages.
Talk Like a Pirate Day
International Talk Like a Pirate Day falls on September 19 every year. John Baur and Mark Summers started it as a joke in 1995, and it went global after the humor columnist Dave Barry wrote about it in 2002.
Pirate words
- ahoy
- hello
- matey · me hearty
- friend
- aye
- yes
- belay
- stop
- landlubber
- someone who isn’t a sailor
- booty
- treasure
- grog
- watered-down rum
- the head
- a ship’s toilet
- Davy Jones’ locker
- the bottom of the sea
- shiver me timbers
- an exclamation of surprise