My two favorite Bela Lugosi quotes are, "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.", from Dracula. The second one is "Are we not men?",from Island of Lost Souls! Devo got the name of their album from that line in the movie! Just for the record I'm Andy not Annmarie and I'm responsible for the content of this post not her!
@@annmarieblanc6363 have you ever listened to the Abbott and Costello radio show when Bela Lugosi was the guest star? It's on RUclips, entitled (something like) "The New Sheriff with (or featuring) Bela Lugosi." I like listening to it because, since it's a radio show, everyone naturally has to put more emphasis into what they say, plus they have Bela saying some pretty far out things. lol. He also cracks me up in the comedy-horror "One Body Too Many." In the movie, Bela plays a butler who is intent on serving guests coffee that may or may not be poisoned.
MP Jacob Rees-Mogg increased his reputation for eccentricity by calling out Ahoy to the Speaker rather than being recognized by that worthy. Rees-Mogg is such a stuck up stickybeak, one expects him to have a copy of Burke's Peerage always at hand to emphasize how much better he is than us common scum, though to the best of my knowledge, he's still a commoner.
Except for "Bristow", a "county" in the West Country lol! My Somerset & N Devon ancestors will be spinning in their graves. My Welsh ones are just laughing ;p In family history, Henry Morgan is one of my ancestors. We don't talk about him as a rule...
I’m from Michigan in the USA and in our dialect, we tend to overpronounce our “R”s as well. Interesting since we have the Great Lakes so wondering if there’s some benefit to an obvious R sound in sailing, like if the sound carried better than others
@@bobbyjones1985 Oh🤪 In reality, the majority of the pirates became such for survival, plain & simple. Most were seaman, but after which ever war, e.g. Qunen Anne's War, after the war is over, most of the sailors are no longer required, & therefore discharged. Home was in tatters, & few jobs were available.The average sailor's lifespan aboard a naval or merchant vessell was 2 years, meaning many died of scurvy, rickets, dehydration or illness. Mamy also died at from the savage punishments dealt out by officers. Mutiny On The Bounty was not an isolated event, but rather the norm in days of yore. It's interesting to note that during the colonization era, no less than 50% of those sent to these islands, et al. e.g. Africa, etc. died from the illness they have no immunity to. Even in many TV shows in the 20th century you hear that people going abroad had to get a series of shots first, even if only going to Europe. I hope I didn't bore you. 😊 You have a great weekend & stay safe! I think I'll post this on the main comments section.
Not all pirates lost an eye! The eye patch was for when they stormed a ship, they would often have to follow their victims into the dark hold of the ship. When this happened, they just switched the patch to the other eye, and their eye was already adjusted to the dark!
Gun deck was below the main deck. Not a good idea to have lamps or candles around black powder. The patch was for the gun crew to save their "night or dim light" vision when hurriedly manning the cannon below deck.
Molly Babel. What a perfect name for a linguistics type. I wonder if she was the first to find the Babel Fish? If so, Ford Prefect is indebted to her. “Aren’t all good stories about pirates?” The History Guy
Well the word babel comes from the story in the bible about the Tower of Babel where God strikes down the tower and punishes all the people by making them all speak different languages. So for thousands of years the word babel has been associated with multi-linguistics either in understanding or not understanding what someone is saying.
As someone who’s lived between Cornwall and Somerset their whole life, specifically most recently in Taunton (40 minutes from Bristol), I just want to say “Hark at Weird History! Bristo? Where be that to then? Geddon!” .. 😂
That be because it WERE originally "Bristow," but the natives kept tacking Ls onto the ends of words endin' in vowels. So we reckoned "Bugger it. 'Tis Bristol, now."
I recently found out that "YE" was never pronounced "YE" but truely pronounced "THE". The Y was a letter dropped from the modern alphabet and was originally the "TH". The 'Y" with the 'TH" Sound had a little horizontal line added one of the upper top of the letter. Old English town cryer pronounce it "HERE THEE ,HEAR THEE" not 'Here Ye Here Ye'.
Not exaggerated- if you go to some places in Cornwall (not England!) it is far heavier and nearly incomprehensible. Hard R’s etc lead to this lovely way of speaking. My granny taught me to say the alphabet to get me ready for kindergarten, and I proudly spelled “Egypt” Aye Jay Whey Pay Tay” sure I had pegged it proper.
@@AlphaBravoCheeseCake True, maybe I didn't go to the right places, but during my six days in Cornwall in June 1993 (tourist season!), I was disappointed not to have heard _any_ Cornish accents!
Do a story about how long New York City took to become a city and what did it look like before becoming a city, who and what was there… before,building and becoming the city.
Story of how New York has fallen victim to liberal ideology and the decay of culture would be interesting. The origins of New York and hard work to achieve the American dream is no longer how New York is viewed. Went there for work a few months ago and it’s disgusting.
New York City was originally a Dutch colony, it was primarily with Dutch people for the longest time that’s why so many of the areas have Ditch names like Brooklyn and. Bronx and Harlem
I feel like the accent came from the Caribbean islands where they learned voodoo and picked up the language, hid their treasure from Kings. I feel like pirates were rogue soldiers who were kinda like a Robinhood of the seas but only for pirates.
Oo, if I followed the right "fork" in the trunk of my family tree (potentially two different people with the same name and age who fought in the U.S. Civil War but seem to have lived in different parts of New York), Sir Francis Drake was my 12th great-grand-uncle whose younger sister is one of my ancestors and had a link to a family in Redruth, but that's as far back as I could get. If you have more info you'd be willing to share, please contact me!
@@mooncove sorry, it's all very loosey-goosey when you go that far back isn't it ^^ also that would put us in different branches anyhow, my ancestor is (supposedly) another Francis Drake who was the nephew of the one most people think of.
It's rare when one solitary movie performance defines a genre and is cemented in pop culture as the definitive way to portray such a character. I can't think of another instance where that has happened. Bela Lugosi's Dracula? Marlon Brando's Godfather? Those were just one character, not an entire genre of vampire or mob movies where most sound and act like them. Maybe Bruce Lee and martial arts movies, but that's a stretch.
Count Von Count had a bit of a Lugosi accent. he still might, but i haven't watched _Sesame Street_ since Jim Henson died; Jerry Nelson, Count's original performer, is also dead, and i don't know how the numbers-obsessed Muppet sounds now.
haven't gotten to it yet, but when the narrator mentioned the Royal Navy, i immediately thought of the Python R.N. skit, featuring animation by Gilliam (Royal Na-Vee)
Assassins Creed has a team of consulting historians that work during development to keep the games accurate within reason. I say within reason because games have to make certain changes to be enjoyable. But generally they do a very good job, which is why the newer games contain educational tour modes without combat.
I stopped after Odyssey, series burn out was real. But I appreciated those modes, felt like a virtual museum. That said, I still have respect for the series, with Black Flag being my favorite
@@radicalpaddyo my bad, my knowledge of American is very limited . Out of curiosity what would the equivalent be in the USA of a group of towns/cities.
@@mrdavidjk Also called counties. America's state system was unique when it was created but others have adopted it subsequently (for example Mexico is also a United States) So there's no British equivalent. The states are a federal system, the entire nation-state being a federation of states. Legally the states in America are closer to the separate countries of the UK, like Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Although I am not nearly as informed on those political divides. In some ways it seems American states are more independent than Wales or Scotland. The division of power is different between state and federal government than traditional power structures. A county for example in both UK and America represents an administrative region, where all the counties generally report to a single unifying authority. States on the other hand don't report to anyone. Imagine the layers of power in traditional systems like vertical slices where regions are broken up but power goes down vertically through them. In the federal system power is more like slices horizontally. Where each layer stacks on the next. States have to abide by federal laws, but then are free to make any local laws. States can arrange their governments however they want. A state could legally, for example, have a single dictator with absolute state power. As long as a state abides by federal requirements. This has changed dramatically over the years with increasing centralized power by the federal government, but the methods of power centralization have been subversive and extra-Constitutional. Two major examples: 1. The federal government took to enforcing national compliance with rules like driving age at 16 by refusing to provide federal funding to road projects to a state. Basically taking money from a state through taxes, then refusing to use it unless the state complies with laws the feds can't legally mandate. Another major power play the feds make daily now is citing a single line in the Constitution that says the federal government can regulate interstate commerce. Known as the "Commerce Clause" this one line has been used to justify a century of federal power plays including law enforcement, federal bans on goods, federal regulations on trade, etc. Anyway the federal system is how you end up with a state like Nevada bordering a state like Utah. In Nevada gambling and prostitution are legal, in Utah you can't buy alcohol or run businesses on Sundays. They are culturally, historically, and legally as different as two different countries but reside peacefully side by side with wide open borders.
"Bilge" is a nautical term, but it is a physical part of the ship, not just the water that tends to collect in it. These are the lowest areas of the ship. Old wooden sailing vessels used to leak constantly as well as take on water from topside, particularly during storms. Sailors would have to carry tar/pitch onboard in order to constantly patch up leaks. Bilges were areas were all of that water would collect and would need to be emptied frequently to prevent sinking from too much ballast. Originally this was done the old fashioned way with buckets, but there were primitive hand-powered pumps often used by the 18th century. Bilges could also be used to add ballast if needed. Modern ships still have bilges even though they don't really "leak" per se, especially ships that use steam, as water is still collected from mechanical and plumbing systems. A bilge is basically a shipboard version of a basement sump. The term "bilge water" was more common but might have been shortened to "bilge" when referring to speech, meaning the same as "codswallop" or "malarkey" or the like. I've heard "bilge rat" used in some pirate movies, but that doesn't seem to have been a popular term until the age of coal-powered ships so I wonder if pirates ever really used that one. Typical sailors of the time wouldn't really have a reason to hang around the bilges enough to be associated with them like engineering crews in later ships were. I don't think the term is used anymore, but I've certainly spent enough time cleaning bilges to have been called one at some point.
A pirate walks into a bar with a steering wheel sticking out of his pants. When he sits down, the bartender asks "What's with the steering wheel?" To which the pirate replies "Arr, it drives me nuts!"
You have obviously overlooked the prior film rendition of Long John Silver by Wallace Beery in the MGM production of "Treasure Island." His is the original version that America and the world heard. I suspect that Newton's was an over the top facsimile of the Beery portrayal.
Later, his brother Hayreddin recognized the Ottoman sultan as his suzerain. Suleyman, at once detecting a depth of political wisdom and military genius in Hayreddin, gave him the title of Grand Admiral (Kaptan-i-Derya meaning Captain of the Oceans) and had an entirely new fleet constructed for him.
The interesting thing about English accents is that the west country accent is one of the closest to the general Elizabethan accents that still remain in use. Meaning that Shakespeare should actually be performed in what to us sounds a lot like a pirate accent.
@@mershall1971 The quote was referring to late Revolutionary War era British and American, not Elizabethan. Late 18th century, Elizabethan was late 16th century
Good morning Weird History!!! It's Sunday morning in beautiful Middle Tennessee again my fave Sunday video channel this morning its pirates love it 🛶⚓️🛶⚓️
?anybody remember the non-dairy product called Matey? i've forgotten if it was a substitute for butter or sour cream -- the latter, i think -- but the TV ad featured someone on a ship, urging consumers to "Come aboard -- with Matey!"
@@deboralee1623 I think I remember some sort of bubble-bath solution for kids called Matey, in the UK at least - it had bottles that looked like male or female pirates... or maybe I imagined all that?
Anyone interested in pirates should check out The Pirate History Podcast. It is end up and fascinating and the man's voices delightful. Nothing like or narrators voice but still just wonderful.
This was really good ! Just as a side note, I'm Cornish, and living in Ireland, someone recently asked me where I was from, and they were So surprised when I told them, because they thought I was from Eastern Europe, they find it So hard to understand what I'm Saying !! 😂😂🤣😂
@@beyondnatural9155 my Irish friend grew up near Cork she said there was only one black guy with a heavy Cork accent in the whole town and it was really unexpected to hear him.
His book that is long since out of print was filled with may of the illustrations and lots of good stories. I had a copy way back and since lost it I whish I could find it or at least pick up another one some time.
A+ video! WOW, I had no idea that accent was so new. Just shows a person how much of a cultural impact a great acting performance can have! My hometown was established in 1883, the year that Treasure Island was published as a book.
The accent and dialect is far from new. The West Country accent and dialect is the oldest form of English still spoken in the world, hence the grammar, it’s just old English. The region being more rural and disconnected from industrial England, as well as London meant it was relatively unaffected. People in the area still speak like this whereas London has changed entirely for example. It’s quite funny being from the region that people never connect Treasure Island being set in Bristol with the idea that people from Bristol might talk like that. Somehow people from all around Europe all spoke English and in that accent… 😂
Overall, great and interesting video and giving Robert Newton his due, arr! Just a couple of nitpicks: (1) The geography lesson at 2:04 refers to "several villages, including Cornwall, Somerset, Devon, Dorset, and Bristol." Umm, except for Bristol, which is a city, those are all _counties_ of England, although Cornwall is also considered a Duchy, hence the title "Duchess of Cornwall." (Although a lot of Cornish people would prefer that it be its own country and not part of England at all. C.f., Mebyon Kernow.) (2) Thank you for acknowledging Robert Newton's contribution to the pirate vernacular, but I'm sorry to report that one of your examples at 12:43, "Flay😬 your shrivelled tongue," is a mishearing of, "Belay your swivel tongue." "Belay" (as in the posts along a ship's rails to which the rope lines were tied, the "belaying pins"), similar to "avast" (a sort of contraction of "hold fast"), means to stop, halt, or (put a) hold (on). Newton used it in that sense _many_ times, especially in the non-Disney movies & follow-up Australian TV series, "The Adventures of Long John Silver," in which he had increasing creative control. (3) "Old Grog" didn't start watering down Naval beer into grog until the 1750s, by any measure, after the end of the "Golden Age of Piracy." (4) As long as you're going back to the 1600s as the Golden Age of Piracy (technically, under English law, what other countries may have considered piracy, was government sanctioned as part of their war with Spain over the Pope's decision to punish Henry VIII for breaking off from the Roman Catholic church by giving the entire New World mostly to Spain and the part that's now part of Brazil to Portugal, with the war finally ending and the English government finally agreeing to crack down on piracy with the end of "Queen Anne's War" and the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, followed in 1714 by the death of Queen Anne, last of the Stuart monarchs, at which point all the government-sanctioned mercenaries/privateers who had no other trade & carried on doing what they'd already _been_ doing legally became "pirates"), don't forget the arrsome (and unfortunate) accidental pirate/buccaneer, explorer & naturalist William Dampier, who is the only English pirate to have had his portrait painted (check out Diana & Michael Preston's biography "A Pirate of Exquisite Mind"), who was from Somerset! Also, the arch-nemesis of Captain Kidd--for whom Richard Zack makes an excellent case for his not having been a pirate at all but rather a political scapegoat in his book "The Pirate Hunter"--who actually _was_ a pirate and helped bring Kidd's life to a cruelly unjust end, Robert Culliford, was from Cornwall (specifically, the town of Looe). P.S. Sorry for the compulsive edits as I obsessively think of more details! That's how good your video was!👍
Obscure fact: the flag we know isn’t the “jolly Roger.” That’s the skull and bones. The Jolly Roger was a red flag (jolie rouge or pretty red) for the color your decks will be if you don’t surrender in three minutes!
Arr, mateys! Another notable West Country actor was David Prowse, a mountain of a man who be best known as the actor who played Darth Vader. 'Twere a troublesome thing that ol' Vader weren't supposed to sound like a pirate, though, so they brought in some chap named James Earl Jones to do the talkin'.
There are pockets of the West Country accent here in the States, in the Carolinas, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. You Tube has contributors from the last state who post videos from their family's lumber yard, and I love to listen to one daughter introduce their content because of the soft accent she has and the way she says "Lumber Capital Log Yarrrrd." Arr!
@@andylane247 My brother had a friend from there. We used to prod him to say, "There's a mouse in my house eating trout from the South, get it out, get it out, get it out!" He sounded Canadian...
RUclips has introduced me to the BBC series Time Team and the irascible westcountry archeologist Phil Harding. Phil exhibits every one of those unique regional colloquialism and dialectic choices. Listening to his "ooo-arr" for yes is like hearing living archeology itself.
@@theawesomeman9821 I think it’s mainly just about recognising it as a distinctly Celtic, cultural area, like Brittany in France. It used to have a distinct language that has mostly died out - I believe some want to see it taught in schools again, like Welsh is in Wales. From a practical point of view, it’s the poorest county in the country, so would need EU subsidies to be actually independent.
I live in Devon on the South West coast - you can still hear strong "pirate accents" around here (usually old men in country areas) and a sentence like "arrr she be a good ship" would not be surprising. The choice of the West Country accent was correct because so many pirates came from these parts.
If the 'Golden Age of Piracy' lasted from 1650 to 1730, I seriously doubt that Sir Francis Drake was active in it as you state, because he died in 1596.
A little bit of a stupid question but what is the tune playing from 0:43 to 1:53, I have been whistling it in my thoughts for like 20+ years but still doesnt know the name of it ?
I live at the North end of the West Country in Gloucestershire but we say Glawster round 'are. We don't so often say Ar as you suggest but Aye and as you suggest be is likely to be used rather than am, are or is. In fact although the strong accent and dialect is now fading ( thanks largely to the influence of the internet) not too long ago locals in this neck of the woods would greet each other with the epithet " 'ow bist " which of course is how are you. If you went to a coastal town when I was younger you could buy little books with translations of the commonly used phrases of the locality. Despite popular belief the accent and idioms are widely different from county to county. There's still folk in Brizzle (Bristol) who nobody but a local would would understand. A mild example would be " We wanna Brizzle last not ta zee an Operal an the Primal Donal 'and a vois look a script Owel. We wish glad to get back to quit of war Cortinal an got one ". When it's speak like a Pirate day us be jus talkin' loik us do every day. Oi be goin' now then but I'll be back dreckly.
I love your videos! I have them playing throughout the day. Could you do a series on the history of Thailand? Particularly how their surnames were created and how they use nicknames! Please? Can't wait to keep viewing and sharing your content :D
Several villages? Don't you mean counties? Also, the speech in that area was influenced as much by Cornish, a Celtic language related to Welsh, as it was by West Saxon.
Many pirates were from Scotland. After the Jacobite rebellions many men and young lads were subject to imprisonment or execution. As Scotland has always been known for seafarers ( John Paul Jones to the US and Admiral Samuel Greig in Russia, for example), so many men took to the sea , some as sailors on cargo ships, some as Royal Navy seamen, and some took up smuggling or piracy. "Robinson Crusoe" was a sailor from Scotland called Alexander Selkirk, who told his story to Daniel Foe (or Defoe, as he renamed himself) while Defoe was working as a government spy for England. He was marooned on Juan Fernandez island off the coast of Chile.
The Pirate accent is an example of what English sounded like before the Great Vowel Shift changed English. The GVS happened over the years between late-1400 and mid-1700. The isolation of the West Country certainly was a factor in the local speech, but nothing is as isolating as being aboard a ship traveling the seas for a long time. So these West Saxon seafarers preserved their speech habits, and developed a particular vocabulary, removed from the larger and ever-changing English population. There is a good example of this effect here in the United States. Smith Island and Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay is noted for their unique accents/dialect/speech characteristics, attributable to their relative isolation from the mainland for so long.
When I developed my pirate character for performing in public and also for my RUclips videos sampling rum I decided a "deep grovel" voice would be perfect. Some of my fellow pirate's speak in their normal boring voices so tourists aren't as interested in interacting with them as they are with pirates using made up pirate accents. Lol! Robert Newton figured out that no one really knew how pirates spoke so he decided to create their language. I would say what he created was a complete success! You also have to have good pirate jokes too! "What happened to Bluebeard when he fell into the Red Sea? Give up? He was MAROONED! Lol! It is a Pirate's Life for me! Shifarrr!
So, basically, Robert Newton is to pirate talk what Bela Lugosi is to the look of Dracula.
Bela set the look AND the voice.
@@Eis_Bear indeed.
Can't arrrgue with that
My two favorite Bela Lugosi quotes are, "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.", from Dracula. The second one is "Are we not men?",from Island of Lost Souls! Devo got the name of their album from that line in the movie! Just for the record I'm Andy not Annmarie and I'm responsible for the content of this post not her!
@@annmarieblanc6363 have you ever listened to the Abbott and Costello radio show when Bela Lugosi was the guest star? It's on RUclips, entitled (something like) "The New Sheriff with (or featuring) Bela Lugosi." I like listening to it because, since it's a radio show, everyone naturally has to put more emphasis into what they say, plus they have Bela saying some pretty far out things. lol.
He also cracks me up in the comedy-horror "One Body Too Many." In the movie, Bela plays a butler who is intent on serving guests coffee that may or may not be poisoned.
The fact that Mr Burns says Ahoy when he answers the phone is a joke about him being so old that he uses Alexander Graham -Bell's preferred phrase.
"Ahoy-hoy"
He also needed to send a letter to the Prussian consulate in Siam by aeromail.
@@pickeljarsforhillary102 ahha was looking for that😅😅
Is it too late for the 4:30 auto-gyro?
MP Jacob Rees-Mogg increased his reputation for eccentricity by calling out Ahoy to the Speaker rather than being recognized by that worthy. Rees-Mogg is such a stuck up stickybeak, one expects him to have a copy of Burke's Peerage always at hand to emphasize how much better he is than us common scum, though to the best of my knowledge, he's still a commoner.
Why do you have a steering wheel on your belt? Arrrrr. Drives me nuts!
Creating an entire pop culture genre by accident is a testament to the superb acting talent of Robert Newton.
He was brillant!
Not to detract from Newton, but it speaks more to the corrosive effect of Disney on all things cultural.
And Disney movies popularity
As a Bristolian myself, I can confirm this is 100% accurate.
Except for "Bristow", a "county" in the West Country lol! My Somerset & N Devon ancestors will be spinning in their graves. My Welsh ones are just laughing ;p
In family history, Henry Morgan is one of my ancestors. We don't talk about him as a rule...
@Mandy B I was referring more to the accent with things like "Ark at ee!" But yes, can't expect too much for an American series 😂
I live in Taunton and spent the whole video thinking “yep.. sounds accurate..” haha!
I’m from Michigan in the USA and in our dialect, we tend to overpronounce our “R”s as well. Interesting since we have the Great Lakes so wondering if there’s some benefit to an obvious R sound in sailing, like if the sound carried better than others
@@reddersfield as a fellow Bristolian (I hail from Henbury), I thought the exact same!
This is a great channel and I love this narrator
His voice is a big part of loving this channel for me !!! Plus the stories are awesome too ❣️
Word
Where I’m from in England people say “that it be’ instead of ‘that’s true’ or ‘that is so’ in the style of Robert Newton and also say ‘matey’.
What’s a pirate’s favorite letter? You may say, ‘R’.. but a real pirate’s true love is the ‘C’…
How dare you!😅😅
And by that you mean?
@@madamrockford “C” as in “Sea”
@@bobbyjones1985 Oh🤪 In reality, the majority of the pirates became such for survival, plain & simple. Most were seaman, but after which ever war, e.g. Qunen Anne's War, after the war is over, most of the sailors are no longer required, & therefore discharged. Home was in tatters, & few jobs were available.The average sailor's lifespan aboard a naval or merchant vessell was 2 years, meaning many died of scurvy, rickets, dehydration or illness. Mamy also died at from the savage punishments dealt out by officers. Mutiny On The Bounty was not an isolated event, but rather the norm in days of yore. It's interesting to note that during the colonization era, no less than 50% of those sent to these islands, et al. e.g. Africa, etc. died from the illness they have no immunity to. Even in many TV shows in the 20th century you hear that people going abroad had to get a series of shots first, even if only going to Europe.
I hope I didn't bore you. 😊 You have a great weekend & stay safe!
I think I'll post this on the main comments section.
@@madamrockford You didn’t bore me, thank you for being so kind, you have a great day & weekend as well, I truly hope you are blessed 😇
Not all pirates lost an eye! The eye patch was for when they stormed a ship, they would often have to follow their victims into the dark hold of the ship. When this happened, they just switched the patch to the other eye, and their eye was already adjusted to the dark!
Gun deck was below the main deck. Not a good idea to have lamps or candles around black powder. The patch was for the gun crew to save their "night or dim light" vision when hurriedly manning the cannon below deck.
As explained, tested, and proven on Mythbusters
I'm under the impression the narrator didn't unleash his full pirate power
He’s got other voice acting gigs and can’t damage the tools of the trade/larynx
Full Pirate could scare the Children
@@eedobee It sounds like AI to me.
Not speaking in that accent?? No way,
It's a conscious choice
Never go full pirate
Very interesting. I always enjoy your "origins of" presentations.
Molly Babel. What a perfect name for a linguistics type. I wonder if she was the first to find the Babel Fish? If so, Ford Prefect is indebted to her.
“Aren’t all good stories about pirates?” The History Guy
I was thinking the same thing!!
Well the word babel comes from the story in the bible about the Tower of Babel where God strikes down the tower and punishes all the people by making them all speak different languages. So for thousands of years the word babel has been associated with multi-linguistics either in understanding or not understanding what someone is saying.
Arrrr. Me thinks it's not her original moniker.
I wonder if she's cunning though.
Nominative determinism - where a persons's name MAY influence their career choice.
There just may be something to that, with a name Williams, I have never seen more bills, bills ,bills!
😜
Thank you for posting all of these beautiful oil paintings as well.
As someone who’s lived between Cornwall and Somerset their whole life, specifically most recently in Taunton (40 minutes from Bristol), I just want to say “Hark at Weird History! Bristo? Where be that to then? Geddon!” .. 😂
That be because it WERE originally "Bristow," but the natives kept tacking Ls onto the ends of words endin' in vowels. So we reckoned "Bugger it. 'Tis Bristol, now."
@@Beedo_Sookcool actually, it’s pronounced as Bristal or Brizzle, mind you 😂
As a fellow Bristolian, Iz agrees wiv yous!
@@CalmWithTheWorldAtLast Don' 'old it agains' me. Oi'm vrum Torquay. 😉
I recently found out that "YE" was never pronounced "YE" but truely pronounced "THE". The Y was a letter dropped from the modern alphabet and was originally the "TH". The 'Y" with the 'TH" Sound had a little horizontal line added one of the upper top of the letter. Old English town cryer pronounce it "HERE THEE ,HEAR THEE" not 'Here Ye Here Ye'.
I saw this too on RobWords...one of my favorite channels!
Nope... Its hear ye, ye is an ancient form of you so hear ye is correct.
Old news, if you watch QI.
Not according to Google, “HEAR YE HEAR YE THIS COURT IS NOW IN SESSION,”
@@axspike Here All of you. You Is one person .Thee, is You All or many people. Look up the letter Thorn.
2:05 Several 'villages' - Cornwall, Somerset, Devon and Dorset are counties. Bristol is a city.
Whomever wrote this script was definitely American lol
Dorset literally is a village
I knew someone else had to have said it...thank you!
Not exaggerated- if you go to some places in Cornwall (not England!) it is far heavier and nearly incomprehensible. Hard R’s etc lead to this lovely way of speaking. My granny taught me to say the alphabet to get me ready for kindergarten, and I proudly spelled “Egypt” Aye Jay Whey Pay Tay” sure I had pegged it proper.
Mate Cornwall is a principality of London and Liverpool now. You'd be hard pushed to find anyone who is really cornish these days.
@@AlphaBravoCheeseCake True, maybe I didn't go to the right places, but during my six days in Cornwall in June 1993 (tourist season!), I was disappointed not to have heard _any_ Cornish accents!
Do a story about how long New York City took to become a city and what did it look like before becoming a city, who and what was there… before,building and becoming the city.
Story of how New York has fallen victim to liberal ideology and the decay of culture would be interesting.
The origins of New York and hard work to achieve the American dream is no longer how New York is viewed. Went there for work a few months ago and it’s disgusting.
New York City was originally a Dutch colony, it was primarily with Dutch people for the longest time that’s why so many of the areas have Ditch names like Brooklyn and. Bronx and Harlem
@@kevmoful🎯
@@michaelrochester48 “originally”, guess it depends on who you ask
@@kevmoful 🐑🦜🤡
I like how this channel is answering all of the important questions! LOL!
I feel like the accent came from the Caribbean islands where they learned voodoo and picked up the language, hid their treasure from Kings. I feel like pirates were rogue soldiers who were kinda like a Robinhood of the seas but only for pirates.
Imagine Lionel Richie singing 'Ahoy, is it me you're looking for'
You mean “you be” looking for, right? 😁
🤣🤣🤣
A few of my ancestors lived in Penzance in Cornwall and there is a tentative link to Francis Drake, but not that one, it was his nephew.
Oo, if I followed the right "fork" in the trunk of my family tree (potentially two different people with the same name and age who fought in the U.S. Civil War but seem to have lived in different parts of New York), Sir Francis Drake was my 12th great-grand-uncle whose younger sister is one of my ancestors and had a link to a family in Redruth, but that's as far back as I could get. If you have more info you'd be willing to share, please contact me!
@@mooncove sorry, it's all very loosey-goosey when you go that far back isn't it ^^
also that would put us in different branches anyhow, my ancestor is (supposedly) another Francis Drake who was the nephew of the one most people think of.
Really curious to know how you come up with your topics for your videos. You have the most random, yet really intriguing subjects.
It's rare when one solitary movie performance defines a genre and is cemented in pop culture as the definitive way to portray such a character. I can't think of another instance where that has happened. Bela Lugosi's Dracula? Marlon Brando's Godfather? Those were just one character, not an entire genre of vampire or mob movies where most sound and act like them. Maybe Bruce Lee and martial arts movies, but that's a stretch.
Count Von Count had a bit of a Lugosi accent.
he still might, but i haven't watched _Sesame Street_ since Jim Henson died; Jerry Nelson, Count's original performer, is also dead, and i don't know how the numbers-obsessed Muppet sounds now.
I'd consider Darth Vader's sound as such, too.
Totally loved the Holy Grail reference!!!
haven't gotten to it yet, but when the narrator mentioned the Royal Navy, i immediately thought of the Python R.N. skit, featuring animation by Gilliam (Royal Na-Vee)
Ahoy! this here be, by far, one o' me favorite video o' all! thank ye very much fer it Mateys!
Surprised that Assassin's Creed: Black Flag didn't rely on the famous accent, pirates had their own language, rules, etc
Assassins Creed has a team of consulting historians that work during development to keep the games accurate within reason. I say within reason because games have to make certain changes to be enjoyable. But generally they do a very good job, which is why the newer games contain educational tour modes without combat.
I stopped after Odyssey, series burn out was real. But I appreciated those modes, felt like a virtual museum. That said, I still have respect for the series, with Black Flag being my favorite
Re-installing Black Flag now
@@scottnotpilgrim I’d recommend giving Valhalla a chance. Origin was good, Valhalla is acceptable….Odessey was a disaster
Speaking of which, time to play it again!!
The places you called towns are actually counties. Which is the same as a state in the USA
Whilst it would be cool to have a governor of Devon/Cornwall, I don't think we have quite the same status as a state.
@@radicalpaddyo my bad, my knowledge of American is very limited .
Out of curiosity what would the equivalent be in the USA of a group of towns/cities.
Ha ha ha no. The States and Canada have counties too.
@@mrdavidjk Also called counties.
America's state system was unique when it was created but others have adopted it subsequently (for example Mexico is also a United States) So there's no British equivalent. The states are a federal system, the entire nation-state being a federation of states.
Legally the states in America are closer to the separate countries of the UK, like Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
Although I am not nearly as informed on those political divides. In some ways it seems American states are more independent than Wales or Scotland.
The division of power is different between state and federal government than traditional power structures.
A county for example in both UK and America represents an administrative region, where all the counties generally report to a single unifying authority. States on the other hand don't report to anyone. Imagine the layers of power in traditional systems like vertical slices where regions are broken up but power goes down vertically through them.
In the federal system power is more like slices horizontally. Where each layer stacks on the next.
States have to abide by federal laws, but then are free to make any local laws. States can arrange their governments however they want. A state could legally, for example, have a single dictator with absolute state power. As long as a state abides by federal requirements.
This has changed dramatically over the years with increasing centralized power by the federal government, but the methods of power centralization have been subversive and extra-Constitutional. Two major examples: 1. The federal government took to enforcing national compliance with rules like driving age at 16 by refusing to provide federal funding to road projects to a state. Basically taking money from a state through taxes, then refusing to use it unless the state complies with laws the feds can't legally mandate.
Another major power play the feds make daily now is citing a single line in the Constitution that says the federal government can regulate interstate commerce. Known as the "Commerce Clause" this one line has been used to justify a century of federal power plays including law enforcement, federal bans on goods, federal regulations on trade, etc.
Anyway the federal system is how you end up with a state like Nevada bordering a state like Utah. In Nevada gambling and prostitution are legal, in Utah you can't buy alcohol or run businesses on Sundays. They are culturally, historically, and legally as different as two different countries but reside peacefully side by side with wide open borders.
@@margaretreefer1145 thank you.
"Bilge" is a nautical term, but it is a physical part of the ship, not just the water that tends to collect in it. These are the lowest areas of the ship. Old wooden sailing vessels used to leak constantly as well as take on water from topside, particularly during storms. Sailors would have to carry tar/pitch onboard in order to constantly patch up leaks. Bilges were areas were all of that water would collect and would need to be emptied frequently to prevent sinking from too much ballast. Originally this was done the old fashioned way with buckets, but there were primitive hand-powered pumps often used by the 18th century.
Bilges could also be used to add ballast if needed. Modern ships still have bilges even though they don't really "leak" per se, especially ships that use steam, as water is still collected from mechanical and plumbing systems. A bilge is basically a shipboard version of a basement sump. The term "bilge water" was more common but might have been shortened to "bilge" when referring to speech, meaning the same as "codswallop" or "malarkey" or the like. I've heard "bilge rat" used in some pirate movies, but that doesn't seem to have been a popular term until the age of coal-powered ships so I wonder if pirates ever really used that one. Typical sailors of the time wouldn't really have a reason to hang around the bilges enough to be associated with them like engineering crews in later ships were. I don't think the term is used anymore, but I've certainly spent enough time cleaning bilges to have been called one at some point.
A pirate walks into a bar with a steering wheel sticking out of his pants. When he sits down, the bartender asks "What's with the steering wheel?"
To which the pirate replies "Arr, it drives me nuts!"
You have obviously overlooked the prior film rendition of Long John Silver by Wallace Beery in the MGM production of "Treasure Island." His is the original version that America and the world heard. I suspect that Newton's was an over the top facsimile of the Beery portrayal.
Absolutely yes…
Later, his brother Hayreddin recognized the Ottoman sultan as his suzerain. Suleyman, at once detecting a depth of political wisdom and military genius in Hayreddin, gave him the title of Grand Admiral (Kaptan-i-Derya meaning Captain of the Oceans) and had an entirely new fleet constructed for him.
MemriTV type beat
But what did he sound like? This video is not about the tiny achievements of one mediocre Ottoman, but the accents of pirates.
What would have been a good idea is to actually have some Audio of Robert Newtons famous " AAAr, Jim lad "
The interesting thing about English accents is that the west country accent is one of the closest to the general Elizabethan accents that still remain in use. Meaning that Shakespeare should actually be performed in what to us sounds a lot like a pirate accent.
Doesn’t Bill Bryson say that to hear what Elizabethan English sounded like, watch a Yosemite Sam cartoon?!
@@mershall1971 The quote was referring to late Revolutionary War era British and American, not Elizabethan. Late 18th century, Elizabethan was late 16th century
Shakespeare may have had a West Midlands accent.
@6:22: I'm unaware of any historical documentation of pirates ever having someone walk a plank.
Good morning Weird History!!! It's Sunday morning in beautiful Middle Tennessee again my fave Sunday video channel this morning its pirates love it 🛶⚓️🛶⚓️
What does a Pirate say on his 80th birthday??
*"Aye, Matey!!"*
?anybody remember the non-dairy product called Matey? i've forgotten if it was a substitute for butter or sour cream -- the latter, i think -- but the TV ad featured someone on a ship, urging consumers to "Come aboard -- with Matey!"
@@deboralee1623 I think I remember some sort of bubble-bath solution for kids called Matey, in the UK at least - it had bottles that looked like male or female pirates... or maybe I imagined all that?
@@gdclemo Absolutely true.
Anyone interested in pirates should check out The Pirate History Podcast. It is end up and fascinating and the man's voices delightful. Nothing like or narrators voice but still just wonderful.
Nowadays pirates speak with Somali accents...
I'm curious about when the word booty became synonymous with ass.
And all these I thought the the pirate Accent came from
1934 Treasure Island movie with Wallace Beery,
Really like your vids, keep up the great work 👍
Arrr! You SLAY me Weird History!! I am slain!!!
This channel never misses
It has this time
This was really good ! Just as a side note, I'm Cornish, and living in Ireland, someone recently asked me where I was from, and they were So surprised when I told them, because they thought I was from Eastern Europe, they find it So hard to understand what I'm Saying !! 😂😂🤣😂
I met a Cornish lady her name is Kerenza
I’m from Belfast but left at age 9. I have no trouble with Zummerzet and Welsh but Caark accent is sometime hard.
@@beyondnatural9155 my Irish friend grew up near Cork she said there was only one black guy with a heavy Cork accent in the whole town and it was really unexpected to hear him.
I've seen videos with young black boys speaking a cockney accent. Really unexpected to someone from the US.
@@vilstef6988 ikr
Love the Howard Pyle illustrations.
His book that is long since out of print was filled with may of the illustrations and lots of good stories. I had a copy way back and since lost it I whish I could find it or at least pick up another one some time.
@@stevedenis8292 keep looking in thrift shops....you never know. I've found books I wanted...like a wish granted.😀
@@thegreencat9947 I keep looking everywhere even garage sales.
@@stevedenis8292 I feel it. If I ever run across one ...I'll let you know.😊
@@thegreencat9947 Thanks ,I bet soon as I get another copy ill find the other one.
A+ video!
WOW, I had no idea that accent was so new.
Just shows a person how much of a cultural impact a great acting performance can have!
My hometown was established in 1883, the year that Treasure Island was published as a book.
My Football team was founded in 1877 (Wolverhampton Wanderers). It seems crazy how accents and dialects have changed in such a short time in history.
@@Dingo-x That team has a lot of history! Great nickname too.
The accent and dialect is far from new. The West Country accent and dialect is the oldest form of English still spoken in the world, hence the grammar, it’s just old English.
The region being more rural and disconnected from industrial England, as well as London meant it was relatively unaffected. People in the area still speak like this whereas London has changed entirely for example.
It’s quite funny being from the region that people never connect Treasure Island being set in Bristol with the idea that people from Bristol might talk like that. Somehow people from all around Europe all spoke English and in that accent… 😂
Overall, great and interesting video and giving Robert Newton his due, arr! Just a couple of nitpicks:
(1) The geography lesson at 2:04 refers to "several villages, including Cornwall, Somerset, Devon, Dorset, and Bristol." Umm, except for Bristol, which is a city, those are all _counties_ of England, although Cornwall is also considered a Duchy, hence the title "Duchess of Cornwall." (Although a lot of Cornish people would prefer that it be its own country and not part of England at all. C.f., Mebyon Kernow.)
(2) Thank you for acknowledging Robert Newton's contribution to the pirate vernacular, but I'm sorry to report that one of your examples at 12:43, "Flay😬 your shrivelled tongue," is a mishearing of, "Belay your swivel tongue." "Belay" (as in the posts along a ship's rails to which the rope lines were tied, the "belaying pins"), similar to "avast" (a sort of contraction of "hold fast"), means to stop, halt, or (put a) hold (on). Newton used it in that sense _many_ times, especially in the non-Disney movies & follow-up Australian TV series, "The Adventures of Long John Silver," in which he had increasing creative control.
(3) "Old Grog" didn't start watering down Naval beer into grog until the 1750s, by any measure, after the end of the "Golden Age of Piracy."
(4) As long as you're going back to the 1600s as the Golden Age of Piracy (technically, under English law, what other countries may have considered piracy, was government sanctioned as part of their war with Spain over the Pope's decision to punish Henry VIII for breaking off from the Roman Catholic church by giving the entire New World mostly to Spain and the part that's now part of Brazil to Portugal, with the war finally ending and the English government finally agreeing to crack down on piracy with the end of "Queen Anne's War" and the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, followed in 1714 by the death of Queen Anne, last of the Stuart monarchs, at which point all the government-sanctioned mercenaries/privateers who had no other trade & carried on doing what they'd already _been_ doing legally became "pirates"), don't forget the arrsome (and unfortunate) accidental pirate/buccaneer, explorer & naturalist William Dampier, who is the only English pirate to have had his portrait painted (check out Diana & Michael Preston's biography "A Pirate of Exquisite Mind"), who was from Somerset! Also, the arch-nemesis of Captain Kidd--for whom Richard Zack makes an excellent case for his not having been a pirate at all but rather a political scapegoat in his book "The Pirate Hunter"--who actually _was_ a pirate and helped bring Kidd's life to a cruelly unjust end, Robert Culliford, was from Cornwall (specifically, the town of Looe).
P.S. Sorry for the compulsive edits as I obsessively think of more details! That's how good your video was!👍
I just have to comment on the linguist whose last name is Babel
To bring us sugar and tea and rum
Obscure fact: the flag we know isn’t the “jolly Roger.” That’s the skull and bones. The Jolly Roger was a red flag (jolie rouge or pretty red) for the color your decks will be if you don’t surrender in three minutes!
Arr, mateys! Another notable West Country actor was David Prowse, a mountain of a man who be best known as the actor who played Darth Vader. 'Twere a troublesome thing that ol' Vader weren't supposed to sound like a pirate, though, so they brought in some chap named James Earl Jones to do the talkin'.
Ahoy there!
"Shiver me timbers. I'll never be a landlubber"- Long John Silver.
Great video as always.
There are pockets of the West Country accent here in the States, in the Carolinas, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. You Tube has contributors from the last state who post videos from their family's lumber yard, and I love to listen to one daughter introduce their content because of the soft accent she has and the way she says "Lumber Capital Log Yarrrrd." Arr!
Yes I heard some old lads from some barrier islands off the Carolinas, sounded like a West Country yokel !!!
@@andylane247 My brother had a friend from there. We used to prod him to say, "There's a mouse in my house eating trout from the South, get it out, get it out, get it out!" He sounded Canadian...
@@afwalker1921 😀😀😀
@@andylane247 You've heard the accent! You understand...
It's the Knights that say Ne!! They are looking for a shrubbbbberu!!
RUclips has introduced me to the BBC series Time Team and the irascible westcountry archeologist Phil Harding. Phil exhibits every one of those unique regional colloquialism and dialectic choices. Listening to his "ooo-arr" for yes is like hearing living archeology itself.
He's dead now... 💀
He’s not dead you’re thinking of the other guy with white hair i think his name was mick
@@benconway9010 oops 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️... I think I mixed them up... ffs...
The Cornish independence movement are going to love you for describing Cornwall as a “village” 😳
why leave Britain?
@@theawesomeman9821 I think it’s mainly just about recognising it as a distinctly Celtic, cultural area, like Brittany in France. It used to have a distinct language that has mostly died out - I believe some want to see it taught in schools again, like Welsh is in Wales. From a practical point of view, it’s the poorest county in the country, so would need EU subsidies to be actually independent.
9:50: In other words: 'seamen came outta nowhere, and get everywhere'
Suggestion: The Weird History Of The American Southern Accent.
I live in Devon on the South West coast - you can still hear strong "pirate accents" around here (usually old men in country areas) and a sentence like "arrr she be a good ship" would not be surprising. The choice of the West Country accent was correct because so many pirates came from these parts.
Cheers guys. Always a 👍. Hope TIMELINE comes back. That's top notch 👌 Thanks again.
this was a very interesting video, once again learned something new today.
“Arr ..”
If Alexander Graham Bell had his way we'd be answering the phone with "Ahoy-hoy?".
Now I want to see a pirate movie where they use accurate west country accents.
Great video Weird History
Ahoy, I be from Cornwall arghhh
Molly Babel the linguist. That's so perfect. 😂
I love your videos. Please do a video about Bishop Edmund Bonner from the Tudor period.
If the 'Golden Age of Piracy' lasted from 1650 to 1730, I seriously doubt that Sir Francis Drake was active in it as you state, because he died in 1596.
I may be related to Bartholomew Roberts. “A short life but a merry one”
Many Sephardi Jews were also pirates targeting Spanish and Portuguese ships off the Caribbean as revenge for the Spanish Inquisition
A little bit of a stupid question but what is the tune playing from 0:43 to 1:53, I have been whistling it in my thoughts for like 20+ years but still doesnt know the name of it ?
It's the Sailors' Hornpipe, a traditional tune.
I live at the North end of the West Country in Gloucestershire but we say Glawster round 'are. We don't so often say Ar as you suggest but Aye and as you suggest be is likely to be used rather than am, are or is. In fact although the strong accent and dialect is now fading ( thanks largely to the influence of the internet) not too long ago locals in this neck of the woods would greet each other with the epithet " 'ow bist " which of course is how are you. If you went to a coastal town when I was younger you could buy little books with translations of the commonly used phrases of the locality. Despite popular belief the accent and idioms are widely different from county to county. There's still folk in Brizzle (Bristol) who nobody but a local would would understand. A mild example would be " We wanna Brizzle last not ta zee an Operal an the Primal Donal 'and a vois look a script Owel. We wish glad to get back to quit of war Cortinal an got one ". When it's speak like a Pirate day us be jus talkin' loik us do every day. Oi be goin' now then but I'll be back dreckly.
You have done a REALLY good job of making the voice sound like stephen colbert. Good job!
Can’t forget the pirate cat from ‘The Last Unicorn’ film 😼arrr
You shivered me Timbers, love ya WH!
Ive always loved Robert Shaws accent in Jaws and wondered where he was from.
He also did a TV series about pirates called, The Buccaneers. He was born in England.
@@madamrockford
Bolton Lancashire specifically
I love your videos! I have them playing throughout the day. Could you do a series on the history of Thailand? Particularly how their surnames were created and how they use nicknames! Please? Can't wait to keep viewing and sharing your content :D
This story shivered me timbers, lad !
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Love from Brizzle/Bristol 😘
Please do a history video about Nigeria..we are the most populated black country and still no video 😿
I could be wrong, but i think it was Ramses III who described the Sea Peoples assault
FYI, that song is "Sailors Hornpipe" and not Popeye the Sailor Man.
"The Sea Peoples" would be a great name for a pop rock group.
You might hear some of these accents in Somerset County, Maryland in the Chesapeake.
Several villages? Don't you mean counties?
Also, the speech in that area was influenced as much by Cornish, a Celtic language related to Welsh, as it was by West Saxon.
Robert Newton....patron saint of 'International Talk Like a Pirate Day.'
Held on his birthday I believe.
Thank you Weird History guy for another fine narration. We don’t care for the substitute narrator! 👍😁
Templar Knights were burned at the stake Friday 13th, others slipped into the sea off the coast of Acres and became commissioned pirates
So black flag wasn’t far off
Great topic idea!
Great video. This is why I subscribe
sooo it's kind of like Hillbillies in the U.S except there on water ? Hillbillies on water = Pirates ?
+1 for the Oregon Trail reference 😂
Crazy how a woman named Molly babel became a linguist lol
A few other famous pirates from the west country were Henry Every and Samuel Bellamy.
Many pirates were from Scotland. After the Jacobite rebellions many men and young lads were subject to imprisonment or execution. As Scotland has always been known for seafarers ( John Paul Jones to the US and Admiral Samuel Greig in Russia, for example), so many men took to the sea , some as sailors on cargo ships, some as Royal Navy seamen, and some took up smuggling or piracy. "Robinson Crusoe" was a sailor from Scotland called Alexander Selkirk, who told his story to Daniel Foe (or Defoe, as he renamed himself) while Defoe was working as a government spy for England. He was marooned on Juan Fernandez island off the coast of Chile.
I think you meant ascended not accended.
The Pirate accent is an example of what English sounded like before the Great Vowel Shift changed English. The GVS happened over the years between late-1400 and mid-1700.
The isolation of the West Country certainly was a factor in the local speech, but nothing is as isolating as being aboard a ship traveling the seas for a long time. So these West Saxon seafarers preserved their speech habits, and developed a particular vocabulary, removed from the larger and ever-changing English population.
There is a good example of this effect here in the United States. Smith Island and Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay is noted for their unique accents/dialect/speech characteristics, attributable to their relative isolation from the mainland for so long.
When I developed my pirate character for performing in public and also for my RUclips videos sampling rum I decided a "deep grovel" voice would be perfect. Some of my fellow pirate's speak in their normal boring voices so tourists aren't as interested in interacting with them as they are with pirates using made up pirate accents. Lol! Robert Newton figured out that no one really knew how pirates spoke so he decided to create their language. I would say what he created was a complete success! You also have to have good pirate jokes too! "What happened to Bluebeard when he fell into the Red Sea? Give up? He was MAROONED! Lol! It is a Pirate's Life for me! Shifarrr!