[lg policy] Monday is OK day

[Harold Schiffman]

 <http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca> Lingua Franca
<http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca>

Language and writing in academe.
  March 20, 2015 by Allan Metcalf
<http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/author/ametcalf/>


   -

Monday Is OK Day

[image: Inline image 1]Monday is the anniversary of the birth of the
expression OK, 176 years ago, on the second page of the *Boston Morning
Post* for Saturday, March 23, 1839. OK began as a joke, a deliberately
misspelled abbreviation of “all correct.” And it remained a joke for the
better part of a century, even as it was being put to serious use in OK-ing
documents, train departures and arrivals, and wholesome products like Pyle’s
O.K. Soap
<http://www.nytimes.com/1862/10/23/news/the-best-soap-in-use-james-pyle-s-ok-soap.html>
.

But that’s not the most important reason for celebrating OK. In all
seriousness, OK contributes to making the world a better place, or at least
more tolerable.

There was no “gap in the language” that OK was called on to fill. Before
1839, speakers of English (and the many other languages that have adopted
OK) got along quite well without it. For an equivalent expression, they
could, and we still can, say “all right.” (In the 1830s Boston newspapers
had a humorous abbreviation a.w. for “all right,” but that quickly died
out. Why OK persisted instead is a whole ‘nother story, having to do in
part with the letter K
<http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2015/03/02/ok-konspicuous-kurious-komical/>
.)

I have claimed that this OK is the two-letter essence of an American
philosophy of pragmatism, of being concerned above all with getting things
done. Something did not need to be perfect to be OK.

But to put it another way, OK introduced a new dividing line between
success and failure. If an arrangement or a product is OK, it may be only a
partial success, but it’s good enough to get by. Maybe very good, maybe
just tolerable. The important thing is that the speaker or writer considers
it satisfactory.

We use this OK all the time. If someone slips and falls, we immediately
ask, “Are you OK?” And the downed person performs triage with a quick Yes
or No—Yes, give me a minute and I’ll recover, or No, call an ambulance.

OK performs this function countless times every day as we coordinate
meeting times and places. Like in Shakespeare: “OK, Caesar, see you in the
Capitol on the ides”; “OK, Hamlet, I’ll join you on the watchtower at
midnight.”

What is OK for one person, of course, may be quite different from what is
OK for another. Negotiations are often necessary until everyone is OK with
an arrangement. Some may be happy, others reluctant, but the arrangement
isn’t definite until everyone has given the OK.

There are different ways of saying and writing OK to indicate different
degrees of enthusiasm. I’ve heard from some members of the current
millennial generation that texting “K” means grudging approval, “OK” means
positive approval, and “okay” implies a degree of enthusiasm. At least
those are the signals for some; others surely have different forms of OK
for their friends, just as everyone can say OK aloud with varying degrees
of enthusiasm.

Since OK is known for this use around the world, it’s possible to arrange a
picnic or safari with someone whose language you don’t know, all by using
OK  with appropriate inflections. How’s that for a universal language? A
little easier to learn than Esperanto.

OK performs this important function, and many others, so efficiently and
modestly that we  hardly realize how much we depend on it. So let’s take
one day to celebrate America’s and the world’s greatest word. OK?

Forwarded from the Chronicle of Higher Education


-- 
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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