STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
How do you think a pirate would ask you to grab a drink?
MARK SUMMERS: Yo-ho. I be Captain Slappy, and I'm here to slice the main brace with ye.
INSKEEP: Splice the main brace is a nautical phrase, and it can also be a euphemism for downing a bottle of rum.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
That very important fact was brought to you by one of the founders of - wait for it - International Talk Like A Pirate Day, Mark Summers, also known as Captain Slappy. People around the world mark Talk Like A Pirate Day every year on September 19.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YO, HO, HO! (AND A BOTTLE OF RUM)")
CRAIG TOUNGATE: (Singing) Fifteen men on a dead man's chest.
UNIDENTIFIED CHORUS: (Singing) Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.
GREENE: This all started when Summers and his co-founder John Bauer wanted to celebrate life as pirates would. Now there are pirate-themed festivals and meetings and trips to local watering holes to hoist a couple with your mateys.
INSKEEP: As you can imagine, NPR News has given regular coverage to this global event for years.
GREENE: Thank goodness.
INSKEEP: In 2002, Bauer told our colleagues on All Things Considered - they consider all things, you see. He told our colleagues on All Things Considered that he does not endorse piracy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
JOHN BAUER: The reality is pirates were not nice people, and they still aren't. But movie pirates and cartoon pirates are fun to talk like.
INSKEEP: Mark Summers says that no matter what you say or how you celebrate today, it only matters that you do it with a pirate attitude, or pirattitude (ph), as he calls it.
SUMMERS: It's a swagger. It's an internal confidence.
BAUER: We've got to all have pirattitude, so heave-ho, landlubbers, and get to sounding like a pirate before we make you walk the plank.
INSKEEP: Arr.
(SOUNDBITE OF KLAUS BADELT'S "HE'S A PIRATE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
