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There is a
linguistic reason that pirates say "Arrgh" all of the time. Never mind
that pirate posers probably say it far more often than pirates to today, but
there is a real reason.
The salty
sea pirates of yon days of yore were an ignorant lot, but being of French
descent they were multilingual. While their native tongue was French, all
Hollywood films of pirates had sound and dialog recorded in English. In the
earliest surviving films on Nitrate film stock, there was no sound recorded,
i.e. they were Silent Films. Savvy editors could easily insert inter-panels of plot
development e.g. "Mildred could not pay the rent and that gave the Evil Snidely
Whiplash the excuse to put the moves on the fare maiden." Then the film
would continue with a closeup of Snidely mouthing "Nya, tin nya nya"
which no editor could ever have actually spelled on an inter-title board. We
the audience knew what was being said even with our rudimentary lip-reading
skills. In other spots there was essential dialog such as "Arrrgh, me
maties, I'll slit ye from stem to stern if you don't take back that comment
about moi Mare."
But back to
the pirates. Most authentic pirates were formerly French seamen of the
royal-class. They wore waist coats and tights and long perfumed wigs. After
being away at sea and from the dainty damsels of D'ampierre-Au-Temple they kind
of lost their air of pomposity. Rum will do that to ye.
Pirates were
a drunken lot by all the official accounts. Captain Bly of the good ship Bounty
discovered that fact at his peril.
Being of a chauvinistic
and polite upbringing, and being expert with a foil, they were prone to keep
the tradition of warning their fencing opponent to be "en guard." No self-respecting
Defender of the Crown would ever think of a sneak attack on even the most formidable
foe. Perry and Counter-perry would commence with an occasional Lunge that was
deflected by the apt enemy.
Drunken
pirate ex-French military persons started out announcing "En Guard," this
was followed by the derivative "Guard, and Guarrrrd" as the heat of
battle and the level of intoxication increased. Soon there was no time for the
traditional fobish warning and "ARRRGH" was vocalized followed by a
first strike to end the confrontation.
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Arrrgh!
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