I'll just quote a friend of mine on this topic...
Quote:
ou see this was a HUGE problem for the pirates back in the day. Much like today, homosexuals had little signals they would use to indicate to other homosexuals of their sexual standing. The thing was, many of the gay pirate signals were used by straight pirates in a completely different way.
The straight pirate would say "Plunder me booty" meaning he is going to gather up his treasure. The gay pirate would say "Plunder me booty" meaning he literally wants you to plunder his booty. As you can imagine, this caused an insane amount of fights between the pirate population, because they would either be taking down their pants or getting out their saber. Nearly half of the pirate population was gay at the time, and the closet pirates tried to hide behind that macho 'rape and pillage' façade. I mean, come on. A ship full of guys...Dirty, horny guys. You know what I'm talking about.
Another language stumbling block for the pirates was the now stereotypical "arghh" and "arghh matey" that every pirate seemed to say. The straight pirate would say "arghhh" as a challenge to another pirate (mostly over booty, take your pick as to what kind of booty). The gay pirate however would say "arghh?" as a come on line and as a test to see if the other pirate was gay. Well the straight pirate would take this as a challenge to his own "arghh" and would respond with an even bigger "ARGHHHH". Well that was it for the gay pirate, the pants were coming down. Then the gay pirate would of course be run threw, and the straight pirate would be traumatized until he himself realized like all the other pirates, he was gay too.
And so goes the legacy of the pirates: Plunderers of booty, and dirty guys with big swords who knew how to use them.