21. I can't: I durst.

22. Aha!: Oho!

23. I happen to disagree with you: I shall cut yee into quarters.

24. Darn!: By thunder!

25. Do you know the way to San Jose?: Take me to perdition or paradise, but by blazes get me out of Detroit. (You can, of course, substitute the city, town, village or shanty of your choice for Detroit.)

Now it ain't sufficient to only speak the piratical tongue, for words don't mean snuff if yee don't sneer whilst speaking them. Therefore and thereby, yee shouldst practice your sneer at least seven times per day in front of your glass until it cracks from the sight of yee.

Neither can yee dress like a tea merchant or a ciphering governess when yee speak. Yee must, if yee be a man, wear a gabardine jacket with brass buttons, what always looks smart over a bare chest. I recommends a handkerchief o'er the skull as an accompaniment. Women, yee must tart yee up but good and don a blouse what shows yee to your best advantage. A small pistol secured in a purse always be practical. If yee look the part, it will aid yee to speak the part.

It ain't for me to throw a bucket of blood over your good intentions, but it be some warty to master the mother tongue of Blackbeard, Calico Jack, Henry Morgan, Anne Bonny and their like, not to mention Long John Silver, him being the most notorious buccaneer of them all. However, if your head ain't permanently clouded by ale or other ablutions, yee may well speak like a pirate if yee recollect some simple rules, them being:

* If it be proper English what yee be treating, it ain't true pirate talk.

* Practice, practice, practice. Yee wouldst not match steel against another without first having parried nor thrusted nor jabbed nor feinted, as you wouldst end up on the wrong side of the scuppers, and so do naught but work your tongue until yee can parley with the best of rogues.

* Get yee to a gathering of your brothers and sisters in blood, as they are always in search of sound salts. Yee can find them sorts most everywhere, and I wouldst encourage yee to hunt for them on what landlubbers call the internet, which be where many what fly the cross and bones hide out these days.

* If yee have yee the liver for it, read a tale or two of the marly life of a sailor, for there be much to be taught from the scrawls of them that lived the life of a true buccaneer.

* Don't take any blather from any landlubber what don't have no appreciation for the ways of the pirate. Sometimes it simply ain't enough to talk the talk. Yee have yee a dagger for a reason, me hearty. Use it on a landlubber what don't understand our ways. A blade in such circumstances can be most eloquent.

©2008 Edward Chupack

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