[wordup] More: International Talk Like a Pirate Day

[Adam Shand]

Wow, this is really cool.

From: Royce Williams <royce at alaska.net>
More: http://alpha.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/

FYI -- something occurred in English called "The Great Vowel Shift" from 
the 1500's to the 1800's. The way that pirates traditionally sound is a 
snaphot of what vowels sounded like while they were in transition.

"How can we know what people sounded like then?" you might ask.  It's 
actually pretty interesting research.  The most valuable resource has 
been letters written by people who were just educated enough to be 
literate but not educated enough to be good spellers -- they wrote 
phonetically, giving good clues to pronunciation in the time before tape 
recorders.

Royce