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International Talk Like a Pirate Day (ITLAPD, September 19) is a parodic holiday created in 1995 by John Baur (Ol' Chumbucket) and Mark Summers (Cap'n Slappy), of Albany, Oregon, U.S., who proclaimed September 19 each year as the day when everyone in the world should talk like a pirate. For example, an observer of this holiday would greet friends not with "Hello," but with "Ahoy, matey!" The holiday, and its observance, springs from a romanticized view of the Golden Age of Piracy. It has become a holiday for members of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

History


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. International Talk Like a Pirate Day is celebrated on six continents.

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. Part of the success for the international spread of the holiday has been attributed to non-restriction of the idea or trademarking, in effect opening the holiday for creativity and "viral" growth.

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 Baur's wife, Tori. Baur also appeared on the June 26, 2008 episode of Jeopardy!, where he was introduced as a "writer and pirate from Albany, Oregon."

The association of pirates with peg legs, parrots, and treasure maps, popularized in Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island (1883), has had a significant influence on parody pirate culture. Talk Like a Pirate Day is celebrated with hidden easter egg features in many games and websites, with Facebook introducing a pirate-translated version of its website on Talk Like a Pirate Day 2008 and publisher O'Reilly discounting books on the R programming language to celebrate. Minecraft also features this language since January 5, 2012. In September 2014, Reddit added a pirate theme to their website.

Linguistic background
Actor Robert Newton, who specialized in portraying pirates, especially Long John Silver in the 1950 Disney film Treasure Island, the 1954 Australian film Long John Silver, and as the title character in the 1952 film Blackbeard the Pirate, is described as the "patron saint" of Talk Like A Pirate Day. Newton was born in Dorset and educated in Cornwall, and it was his native West Country dialect, which he used in his portrayal of Long John Silver and Blackbeard, that some contend is the origin of the standard "pirate accent". This was later parodied in the 1950s and 1960s by British comedian Tony Hancock.

The archetypal pirate grunt "Arrr!" (alternatively "Rrrr!" or "Yarrr!") first appeared in fiction as early as 1934 in the film Treasure Island starring Lionel Barrymore, and was used by a character in the 1940 novel Adam Penfeather, Buccaneer by Jeffrey Farnol. However it was popularized and widely remembered with Robert Newton's usage in the classic 1950 Disney film Treasure Island. It has been speculated that the rolling "rrr", a distinctive element of the speech of the West Country of England, has been associated with pirates because of the West Country's strong maritime heritage, with for many centuries fishing the main industry (and smuggling a major unofficial one), and where there were several major ports. As a result, West Country speech in general, and Cornish speech in particular, may have been a major influence on a generalized British nautical speech. This can be seen in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance, which is set in Cornwall; although the play did not (originally) use the phrase "arrr", the pirates used words with a lot of rrr's such as "Hurrah" and "pour the pirate sherry".

Official acknowledgment

 * The US states of Michigan and California have officially recognized the occasion.
 * Krispy Kreme gives out free doughnuts to people who talk and/or dress like pirates on September 19. Long John Silver's has a similar promotion.