Talk Like a Pirate Day

Ahoy Matey!
Today is international Talk Like a Pirate Day, which, according to Wikipedia, is "a parodic holiday created in 1995 by John Baur and Mark Summers, of Albany, Oregon, USA, who proclaimed September 19 each year as the day when everyone in the world should talk like a pirate."*

Pirate behavior isn't an exclusively-male province. For example, in the drawing above, despite the beard, do we not detect a couple of distinctly breast-like lumps under that pirate shirt? 

I certainly try to do my part for contemporary pirate culture. Among my customized birthday songs (with which I'm known to ambush unsuspecting friends via the telephone on their birthdays) is a pirate version, complete with accompaniment by Polly the Parrot.

My inner pirate is heavily influenced by repeated playings of a record, during childhood, that featured an exchange between Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam. Some 60 years later, I can reprise Yosemite Sam's song on the slightest of provocations. 

So, channel your own inner pirates, friends. Today is your day to talk like a pirate with impunity. Yarr!

*According to Wikipedia's sources, "The archetypal pirate grunt 'Arrr!' or 'Yarrr!' first appeared in fiction as early as 1934 in the film Treasure Island starring Lionel Barrymore. 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' has been associated with pirates because of the location of major ports in the West Country of England, drawing labor from the surrounding countryside. 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.'"