Arrr!!!
Performing Piracy and the Origin of
International Talk Like a Pirate Day
September 19th is a special holiday set aside every year where people
young and old, regardless of race, political orientation, sex, or religious
persuasion forget all their differences and come together . . . to talk like pirates.
International Talk Like a Pirate Day was created in 1995 by Mark Summers and
John Baur, now known as The Pirate Guys, or Cap’n Slappy and OT
Chumbucket respectively. To get a feel for Talk Like a Pirate Day, it is useful to
examine one of their self-produced videos available on YouTube called “Talk
Like a Pirate Day: The Five A’s.” This video ostensibly instructs those new to
the pirate lexicon how to talk like a pirate. They introduce five pirate words that
begin with the letter “A” and explain what they mean in regular English. The
five words selected were glibly chosen for both their pirate sound and their
humorous potential. They are: “Ahoy,” “Avast,” “Aye,” “Aye, Aye,” and
“Arrr!” While “Ahoy,” “Avast,” and “Aye” are explained in a relatively
straightforward, if comic, manner. The Pirate Guys begin to move more toward
absurdity with the last two. “Aye, Aye” is a comic doubling of “Aye” that really
does not feel any more emphatic than their definition of the regular “Aye,” as
one might expect. Essentially, they added it to fill up space and for the comically
unnecessary repetition. The last word, “Arrr!” is more difficult to define. O f
Chumbucket describes it as “a flexible word. It can mean anything you wants it
to mean” (Baur and Summers). They go on to describe how it can mean, “‘My
team is winning.’ It can mean, ‘My team is losing.’ It can mean that ‘I’m
enjoying this beverage’” (Baur and Summers). Cap’n Slappy chimes in at this
point with a completely absurd definition. “I would like a muffin” (Baur and
Summers). O f Chumbucket ends with, “It can even mean, ‘I’m here and alive’”
(Baur and Summers). This video sets the humorous tone and the fun to be had in
playing with words that Talk Like a Pirate Day is all about.
In the spirit of the