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Re: THEORY: An English Koine? (was: Vowel shift (was: THEORY: Storage Vs. Computation))

From:John Fisher <john@...>
Date:Tuesday, June 22, 1999, 20:18
In message <376FCD34.DFC17BE@...>, Sally Caves
<scaves@...> writes
>Brian Betty wrote:
>> Arr, do you be sayin' that thar be a reason for us to be speakin' like >> this, arr? > >Where do you think we get this ARRRGH from when we're talking "Pirate" >talk? >My husband, who dressed up as a pirate for Halloween, was "arrring" all >over >the place. It must be from some movie.
It's because they're escapees from the Long John Silver Ward of the Hospital for the Over-Acting (Monty Python reference...). You should see the people from the Richard III Ward. I think in the UK, Pirate-ese is a dialect of Mummerset. Mummerset is the accent that English people put on when they want to sound like, well, deeply rural folk. It's vaguely from the South-West of England, so it's rhotic, and it's full of aaaarrrr's too... -- John Fisher john@drummond.demon.co.uk johnf@epcc.ed.ac.uk