Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Pirate speak in other languages

Since the good folks at Language Log reminded me that today is Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day, I asked my students if pirates have any particular linguistic tics in their languages.
  • A German student came up with a sentence terminal ay! (read /Ei/). There's also this glossary of German pirate words.
  • The Spanish speakers said Spanish pirates all have Castilian accents.
  • Korean, Japanese, Iranian, Iraqi, Arabic, and Turkish students couldn't identify any particular pirate dialect.

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