Arrrr! All Aboard for Talk Like a Pirate Day, Mon. Sept. 19

Blow me down.

Today is “Talk like a Pirate” Day.

While it may not be a good idea to greet the school principal or your boss with an "Arrr!" the Upper Tampa Bay Library is welcoming all swashbucklers today.

Need to brush up on your pirate ling? Library card holders can access the Mango language program to learn "Pirate."

Mango, an online language program, offers over 30 languages, including Spanish, Farsi and Russian. The program also offers English lessons. Language lessons can be downloaded onto mobile devices for free for library card holders.

If you don't have a Mango account yet, go to this link http://www.hcplc.org/hcplc/research/ and scroll down to "Mango Mobile Library Edition" and follow the steps to create an account.

To get you started here are some basics in Pirate 101, according to http://www.talklikeapirate.com:

Ahoy! - "Hello!"

Avast! - Stop and give attention. It can be used in a sense of surprise, "Whoa! Get a load of that!" which today makes it more of a "Check it out" or "No way!" or "Get off!"

Aye! - "Why yes, I agree most heartily with everything you just said or did."

Aye aye! - "I'll get right on that sir, as soon as my break is over."

Arrr! - This one is often confused with arrrgh, which is of course the sound you make when you sit on a belaying pin. "Arrr!" can mean, variously, "yes," "I agree," "I'm happy," "I'm enjoying this beer," "My team is going to win it all," "I saw that television show, it sucked!" and "That was a clever remark you or I just made." And those are just a few of the myriad possibilities of Arrr!