Language and Humor Blog

For all your high-seas skulduggery needs:

The Pirate Primer: Mastering the Language of Swashbucklers and Rogues
by George Choundas
ISBN: 978-1-58297-489-7
$19.99, hardcover, 484p

This book is not only a dictionary but a grammar as well with examples from historical and fictional writings about pirates. From publisher Writer’s Digest Books (wdeditors.com/wordpress/spring-2007-titles/the-pirate-primer) [EDIT (6/4/10): dead link]:

This is the authoritative work on the subject, containing and explicating every distinctive term, phrase, usage, and speech structure uttered by or attributed to pirates in film, television, literature, and historical accounts over the last threee [sic] centuries. Every entry in the Primer is accompanied by an illustrative historical example of pirate speech or dialogue. Thus, the user sees the contents of the Primer deployed in actual context by actual pirates. This use of excerpts mobilizes the same instructional benefits of the immersion method considered so effective in foreign-language training. However, it also serves to remind the user that the pirate language is, and always and most importantly, a way to tell stories about pirates and ourselves.

This book sounds like fun for people who like depth (all the way down to Davy Jones’s locker!) and illustrative examples. However, I have to take issue with this claim:

This use of excerpts mobilizes the same instructional benefits of the immersion method considered so effective in foreign-language training.

No, it doesn’t.

1. Some examples are from the book Treasure Island and other fictional pirate speech. You aren’t necessarily learning a language variety that anyone ever spoke.
2. To get a beneficial language immersion, you would have to go live somewhere that has actual old-fashioned British pirates conversing a lot and to desire to interact with them. Reading examples (some of them fictional) in a book that doesn’t even have sound files can help you learn some phrases and grammatical structures, but you won’t be immersed in a linguistic-cultural community.
3. Language learners aren’t all the same. Some people are very analytical and learn languages better through study than through immersion. (However, through immersion very young children can naturally acquire a new language like a native speaker, including accent.)

Also, if this is a primer, by definition it contains first principles; it wouldn’t be a “comprehensive book on pirate language,” as is claimed above the long quote I included.

With all that said, however, The Pirate Primer looks to be the most thorough guide you could have.

Abbreviated Table of Contents:

FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION

PART I: WHAT TO SAY

CHAPTER 1 GREETINGS & PARTINGS
CHAPTER 2 CALLS
CHAPTER 3 FLOURISHES
CHAPTER 4 COMMANDS
CHAPTER 5 THREATS
CHAPTER 6 OATHS
CHAPTER 7 CURSES
CHAPTER 8 INSULTS
CHAPTER 9 EPITHETS
CHAPTER 10 RESPECTFUL ADDRESS
CHAPTER 11 RETORTS
CHAPTER 12 QUESTIONS & REPLIES
CHAPTER 13 TOASTS AND DECLAMATIONS
CHAPTER 14 CONTRACTIONS
CHAPTER 15 ARRGH
CHAPTER 16 CULTURAL TERMS

PART II: HOW TO SAY IT

CHAPTER 17 PRONUNCIATION
CHAPTER 18 WRONG TALK
CHAPTER 19 CONVERSIONS
CHAPTER 20 STRUCTURAL FORMS
CHAPTER 21 FUNCTIONAL FORMS
CHAPTER 22 PARTS OF SPEECH

APPENDIXES

APPENDIX A OPENERS, MIDDLERS & CLOSERS
APPENDIX B SOUND LIST
APPENDIX C PIRATE COMPANY ARTICLES

See also my post:
Arrr! Talk Like a Pirate Day 2006 [September 19th]
and:
Talk Like a Pirate Day Official Site