Joe Lamantia.com

The Aargh Page: Visualizing Pirate Argot

What happens when this classic vernacular interjection meets linguistics, data visualization, and the Web?

The Aargh page, of course. (It should really be The Aargh! Page, but this is so fantastic that I can't complain...)

Here's a screenshot of the graph that shows frequency of variant spellings for aargh in Google, along two axes:

Note the snazzy mouseover effect, which I'll zoom here:

Looking into the origins aargh inevitably brings up Robert Newton, the actor who played Long John Silver in several Disney productions based on the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson. I remember seeing the movies as a child, without knowing that they were the first live action Disney movies broadcast on television. So do plenty of other people who've created tribute pages.

Aargh may have many spelling variations, but at least three of them bear a stamp of legitimacy, as the editorial review of The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (Paperback) at Amazon.com explains, "If you're using the 1991 edition or the 1978 original, you're woefully behind the Scrabble-playing times. With more than 100,000 2- to 8-letter words, there are some interesting additions ("aargh," "aarrgh," and "aarrghh" are all legitimate now), while words they consider offensive are no longer kosher. "

There's even International Talk Like A Pirate Day, celebrated on September 19th every year. The organizers' site offers a nifty English-to-Pirate-Translator.

Most random perhaps is the Wikipedia link for Aargh the videogame, from the 80's, without pirates.

local tags: culture, disney, events, film, linguistics, media, pirates, visualization