What ho, me hearties!

[Lang Spoon]

Does a lot of work for charity. When he’s not paying his taxes.

[Guy Profumo]

A delayed thought: pirates don't actually say 'what ho!', do they?

'What ho!' is your upper-class huntsman in his jodhpurs, is it not?

Captain Pugwash

[Jah Womble]

Does he? Don't remember that.

Father Christmas says 'ho ho ho!', not 'yo ho ho!' (Ditto the Jolly Green Giant.)

I cannot believe that I'm having this conversation.

[Guy Profumo]

And the Lone Ranger says "hiyo Silver", not "hi-ho silver"

But.

That's another story…

[treibeis]

Captain Pugwash

Captain Pugwash worked for the BBC. He wasn't allowed to speak proper pirate.

If his looks and mannerisms were anything to go by, Captain Pugwash was modelled on Peter Bowles.

[treibeis]

Does he? Don't remember that.

Father Christmas says 'ho ho ho!', not 'yo ho ho!' (Ditto the Jolly Green Giant.)

I cannot believe that I'm having this conversation.

You started it.

You're right about the Jolly Green Giant, but I reckon the Father Christmas thing might be regional.

[Sits]

If anything it's "oh ho ho" for Father Christmas I'd say.

And "yo ho ho" is surely pirate; the full expression is "yo ho ho and a bottle of rum". It's up there with "fifteen men on a dead man's chest" and "shiver me timbers".

We've not even broached parrots who say "pieces of eight!" Yet.

[Snake Plissken]

[Gangster Octopus]

It's 'Yo ho ho' in The Tomahawk Kid by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band.

[Jah Womble]

You started it.

You're right about the Jolly Green Giant, but I reckon the Father Christmas thing might be regional.

Well, I just mentioned that pirates don't say 'what ho!' - I certainly wasn't expecting it to expand so.

Father Christmas 'regional'? Maybe, but that's a whole bunch of illusions shattered right there. (It's true that I once heard one with a surreally-thick West Country accent - he kept responding to young boys' requests for fighter aircraft, replica guns and various death-related Xmas gifts with "Oooh, 'ow loovely!" which raised a smile or two...)

[MsD]

As I just wrote on the mundane thread, I'm back from a piratey weekend in Cornwall.

My friend dresses like a pirate and is in the process of making a coat from an 18thC design. She showed me the Arwenark Cottage where Mary Killigrew and the rest of her pirate family live.

[Various Artist]

OK, taking all the above into account I think I've got this straight now:

Yo ho ho! – Pirates
Ho ho ho! – Jolly Green Giant
Ho ho ho! – Father Christmas
Oh ho ho! – Antipodean Father Christmases
Oooh, 'o 'o! – West Country Father Christmases
Westward Ho! – West Country seaside resort
What ho! – Toffs
Hiyo Silver! – Lone Ranger
Hi Ho Silver Lining – Jeff Beck
Lump it eighty yards to the big unit up front – John Beck

[WOM]

Yo Ho Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life For Me) is, of course, the oddly infectious song one hears on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Walt Disney World. And, perhaps, all of the Disney parks, but I can't speak knowledgeably about that.

[Various Artist]

Yo ho yo ho? Oh shit, there's another one then.

[treibeis]

I reckon pirates only SING "Yo ho ho". They never actually SAY it.

[Jah Womble]

(Definitions, cont'd)

Ho - gangsta slang for woman of questionable morality (ie, in user's opinion)
Hobo - man of the road/inexpensive chewy sweet
Yo-yo - axle-based toy popular since the 1960s
Holmes and Yoyo - p*ss-poor US sitcom involving android cop
Yoo-hoo - chocolate milk beverage similar to Nesquik
Uhu - adhesive (not to be confused with previous)
Ne-Ne Na-Na Na-Na Nu-Nu - 1980 hit record by Bad Manners

[Snake Plissken]

Hoe - Gardening implement
Banananeeneenoonoo - Spoof band
Kajagoogoo - Spoof band

[ad hoc]

Hó - Hungarian word for snow
Hó ember - snowman
Hó peher - snowflake
Hull a Hó - the snow is falling, name of popular christmas song
Jaj de jó! ("Yoy de yo") - Oh how great!
Jaj de jó, hull a hó - childlike expression on the first morning of snow in the winter.

Fakanal (pronounced "Fuckin' 'ell") - wooden spoon

[tee rex]

Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh!

(protest chant, 1960's)

[Jah Womble]

Hoe - Gardening implement
Banananeeneenoonoo - Spoof band
Kajagoogoo - Spoof band

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lananeeneenoonoo

Close, though.

[Various Artist]

Noo-Noo – The Teletubbies' sentient vacuum cleaner

[Sam]

Hoy - Spanish for 'today'.

As mentioned before, the only reason we associate pirates with that kind of exaggerated accent - which, IIRC, is from the West Country or Cornwall - is because Robert Newton decided to use it when he played Long John Silver in the 1950 version of Treasure Island (and a few other films, I think). It's amazing how that's stuck in the pop culture like that.

Geoffrey Rush also uses that in the POTC films. I really liked the first four of those films a lot - I like stuff about the age of sail and I like how they created a whole fantastical-but-quasi-historical world that hadn't ever been seen before in film. But I didn't see the fifth yet because I heard it sucked and because i've gone off Johnny Depp after I saw reliable reports that he was violent toward Amber Heard, which is just not ok at all, needless to say.

Well, it's not the only reason. I mean, there's a reason Newton decided on that depiction, and that reason is presumably the fact that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote LJS as a pirate from Bristol. That's because lots and lots of pirates were from Bristol, and elsewhere in the Westcountry; Edward Teach (Blackbeard, on whom Johnny Depp's character in the POTC is based) was born there (not far from a couple of old pubs that were once smuggler hangouts, the Golden Guinea and The Ostrich), Henry Morgan and Woodes Rogers both spent part or all of their formative years there, and as one of the main seaports around it was inevitably a starting point for many others. Even a lot of non-Bristolian sailors/privateers/pirates passed through Bristol frequently, given it was the second biggest city in the country during the Golden Age of piracy and a major port for the slave trade and, on the side, smuggling. William Dampier was from Somerset, and it's probably not a coincidence that Daniel Defoe, the probable author of the General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates, spent quite a lot of time in Bristol (among many others, he met Alexander Selkirk there, whose story of a shipwreck he used as the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe).

So, maybe Newton's choice of accent is a reason it's become quite so embedded in popular culture, but that isn't to say that it also doesn't happen to have been an accurate choice of accent, and based on what that character should have sounded like anyway.

(In Argentina, the offensive-but-not-really-offensive-because-no-one-says-it-seriously-these-days term for Brits is pirata, and on the rare occasions a new acquaintance tells me with a laugh and a nudge in the ribs that I am one, I laugh back and then give them a version of the above, explaining that I did indeed grow up right outside Bristol. I'd say it's split about 50/50 between those who wish they'd kept their mouth shut and those who are completely fascinated.)

[Benjm]

Yo Ho Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life For Me) is, of course, the oddly infectious song one hears on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Walt Disney World.

Not to be confused with Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee (An Actor's Life For Me) from Disney's version of Pinocchio. While the wooden child wannabe has some issues with honesty, his crimes can hardly be equated with those of a bloodthirsty pirate.

[MsD]

Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh!

(protest chant, 1960's)

Ho, Jeremy Corbyn.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Yo Ho Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life For Me) is, of course, the oddly infectious song one hears on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Walt Disney World. And, perhaps, all of the Disney parks, but I can't speak knowledgeably about that.

It's a re-imagining of:

Hi Diddle Dee Dee (An Actors Life For Me) From Disney's own Pinnochio