Quote Originally Posted by Niwashi View Post
The problem with the pirate speech is that it's neither. It's an attempt to describe an accent by using non-standard spelling. You have to just guess at what actual word that jumble of letters is intended to represent, because it's not a standard way to write anything. Familiarity with a wide range of accents makes that guessing easier, but nobody actually "knows" those words because they aren't actually words at all the way they're written. (Even people who speak with a strong accent still read/write words with the same standard spelling as everyone else. It's only authors who need to convey the sound of a character's accent through a purely written medium that resort to this type of jumbled spelling to convey it. Though a common way to literarily convey accents, it's a practice that can easily be overdone, becoming very hard to read.))
Basically this. Going from reading words normally to having an apostrophe replace nearly every single "h" or randomly thrown in to convey how the characters forgo a sound throws me for a loop. Whenever I do get around to reading the passages, the accent is clear as day in my head but it doesn't mean it's any less a pain in the ass to parse all of that. I liken Limsa pirate speak to Jamaican patois (for ex. "Wah mek yuh ask suh much questi-on fah? Mi ago link up mi friend dem). While I'll be able to read and understand it, it wouldn't be second nature to me as I'm just not used to it. The Rogues Cant just introduced unfamiliar slang into the mix which naturally will confuse anyone that doesn't know what the words mean.