The Pirate Accent Is a Myth
We all celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19th, but pirates didn’t really have a certain accent. We think of the ‘arrs’ and ‘shiver me timbers,’ or ‘landlubbers,’ but that’s just how Robert Newton acted in the 1950 Disney film Treasure Island. Playing as Long John Silver, Newton actually did a great job of shaping how we would see pirates from then on – starting with how they spoke, acted and even looked.