How 'OK' took over the world (2011) | Hacker News Reader

How 'OK' took over the world (2011)

bbc.com

125 pointsmercer99 comments

> OK allows us to view a situation in simplest terms, just OK or not.

I disagree. I find that OK implies some consent or agreement.

In Chinese there's a word I don't know how to write but sounds something like "uh" that means more "I acknowledge" without implying agreement. Actually, I don't know if it's a word, but I hear it a lot.

Whether it exists in Chinese or not, I wish English had a word more neutral than OK or uh-huh. "I acknowledge what you said" is too clunky.

嗯 ?

Speaking of which, "OK嗎?" is used in mandarin a lot, at least in Taiwan.

Amusingly, Google translates it as simply "OK". Maybe because there isn't a more neutral English word for OK than OK.

https://translate.google.com/?hl=en&tab=wT#zh-CN/en/%E5%97%A...

As far as I know, Google translate is broken when it comes to the word "OK", because the word is used in every website to mean "Press here if you want to continue." For example, translating OK to Korean gives me 승인, which means "approval".

Google Translate is not good for this sort of thing, since it has no clue what words mean or why they're used. Vide: https://latin.stackexchange.com/a/4352/118

You're better off using a real dictionary for single words IME

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%97%AF

https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=worddict&wdrst=...

> Speaking of which, "OK嗎?" is used in mandarin a lot, at least in Taiwan.

This reminds me: I've worked closely with several people born in Korea. They're the only people I've notice who say "OK..?" all the time. Asking about it, they translated it as meaning "OK, continue" or "OK, keep going."

Also have noticed that essentially all they say in quick conversations on the phone talking in Korean to close relatives, is "uh"... I guess people talking on the phone in English say "OK"/"Yeah"/"Sure" a lot.

I've encountered that from multiple cultures: ending almost every sentence with "OK". I'm curious about the origin of it.

Same as answering complex questions with yes. (whether or not you understood or agree) Aggreableness is valued in the east, as is deference to authority.

You mean like how Swiss Germans are parodied as ending every statement in "..., oder?" ("..., or?")?

Interesting, and good to know. "Ok...?" from one of my peers would definitely be read as sarcasm, something like "I guess you want me to agree with that but I really don't" and there's an implied eyeroll. So when I've seen it from people outside my culture, I usually do a double take, think "there's no reason for them to want to be offensive here, maybe it means something else to them..." I guess just learned what it means.

There was a Japanese client where I use to work that was in a meeting with my coworker. When my coworker would go into detail about how our products work, the Japanese client would nod their head up and down while saying Okay in English. My coworker would take pauses during his mini-lecture, asking "Do you understand what it's doing so far?" He would almost always respond with "No."

It was pretty funny watching from the sidelines as my coworker slowly slipped into insanity because of the miscommunication.

Random Edit Note:

Had a class that dealt with Supply Chains in college. We had a section devoted to negotiations, including international. As a result we had to learn about various business cultures.

One of the main points of that section was Western Cultures tend to have their words require little context (Their words are literal) and have focused more on Individualism. Eastern and Latin Cultures tend to have more of a Collectivism and their words rely heavily on the context of the situation (Their words are implicit).

This is a really common habit with Japanese speakers of English.

In Japanese acknowledging sounds know as aizuchi (相槌) are used far more frequently than in English. One common aizuchi is hai (はい) which is can be translated very literally as 'yes'. Very often I have to tell a Japanese colleague that they need to stop saying "Yes" when someone starts asking a question because they sound like they are answering it.

A way to get some insight on how Japanese speakers feel is to imagine this situation: Go into a shop, buy something, hand over your change and walk out without saying a single word. Where I'm from in the UK, not saying 'thank you' would feel very impolite and wrong. Japanese people feel the same when they listen without saying "Yes" or something similar very frequently.

Western cultures do the same thing though, they give nods and other visual cues, go "uh huh", and if they've had a course in active listening, they'll go "I HEAR WHAT YOU ARE SAYING!". (I have a friend who had a colleague who'd do that. Very annoying but it gets the point across).

I also use "right" and "ok" sometimes, with the right inflection it can signal continued interest, though you have to be careful not to sound impatient.

Another technique I find effective in active listening is to periodically rephrase/summarize/"ask for clarification" on the last minute or two. (The last one even when I fully understand the subject.)

Yeah, my Japanese teacher in college would constantly mutter "hai". She used it almost as a transitional word between thoughts.

Netherlands "Ja", similarly.

I see. (ic)

"Understood" might fill that roll depending on the context. Or just "acknowledged" on it's own would be understood just fine.

How about "got it"?

That's what I use.

It can be very useful in violent arguments. Rather like "I hear you".

'mhm' and or 'mm-hm'

From military lingo:

"Roger" meaning "Received and understood"... exactly what you're looking for "I acknowledge what you said". Sometimes used as "Roger that"

I learned this in the army and still use often in conversation or text.

Except that colloquially it seems to be used basically like ok, particularly with the roger that

I worked a job where I would use roger in this sense. After I put in my 2 week's notice, a coworker told me that this actually annoyed my boss to no end. We used IRC extensively for communications, so I wrote an IRC bot that would reply "roger" to everything he said (along with some other sayings that annoyed him) and cron'd it to run a week after I had left.*

* The rest of the story is that I wrote two bots to say different things, but forgot that they'd trigger "roger" off of each other, so the end result is that I had two bots constantly spamming the channel with "roger". I guess I should have written tests!

IIRC, "Roger" came about in the early days of voice-radio communication as the old-style phonetic alphabet version of "R" (in the modern phonetic alphabet, "R" would be "Romeo") ; the single letter R was a "prosign" abbreviation used in Morse-code telegraphy (as • — • or dot-dash-dot) to indicate "received and understood." [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code_abbreviations

I can't help but think of the battle droids in the (mythical) Star Wars prequels. Roger Roger.

And now you'll be thinking that all day. Sorry.

But then what happens when you hire someone named Roger?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfDUkR3DOFw#t=54s (from Airplane!)

that sounds awful if you speak to someone who's named Roger

> I wish English had a word more neutral than OK or uh-huh. "I acknowledge what you said" is too clunky.

"Got it" works well for that, in almost any context. As long as you have enough context for it to come across the right way, "noted" can work too. Doesn't imply agreement, just acknowledgement.

My boss uses "understood" heavily for that purpose.

I use it all the time, and wakatta or wakarimashita in Japanese, too.

"Alright" works pretty well for me. It probably falls into the same bucket as "OK" however. Tone and context keep it out of the affirmative. "I hear you" gets thrown around a lot but if someone is looking for an answer it infuriates them in a way that "Alright" doesn't.

'Ack' works for me.

I've been using ACK and NAK with friends, but I'm not sure we can get the non computer scientists on board...

You'd probably be surprised it also works with some older workers who were at companies that had to pay per character on the old teletype. Often, those companies had abbreviation lists and two I worked with had ACK on them. It also provided an interesting insight into what words were very important in their business communications.

10-4

There exists a word for that in English too... I use ’acknowledged’. ;)

I believe mainlanders normally spell it "en".

how many languages have their own spelling? i.e like this

Finish spelling: okei

Swedish spelling: okej

Russian spelling: окей

Fyi, that word is "en" written as 嗯. On internet chat it is usually repeated, 嗯嗯, and Chinese chat clients have emoticons for it.

I say "go on", usually with a nod, for this.

I use the "white-heavy-check-mark" emoji in text or slack chat to acknowledge without agreeing

http://emojipedia.org/white-heavy-check-mark/

> In Chinese there's a word I don't know how to write but sounds something like "uh" that means more "I acknowledge" without implying agreement. Actually, I don't know if it's a word, but I hear it a lot.

> Whether it exists in Chinese or not, I wish English had a word more neutral than OK or uh-huh. "I acknowledge what you said" is too clunky.

Not exactly Chinese, but colloquial Singapore English (Singlish) has a word "orh" [1] which sounds like what you might be looking for.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singlish_vocabulary#O

The Boston Morning Post theory is well supported, but so are a few other alternative theories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK#Proposed_etymologies

I much prefer and almost always write "okay" vs "ok", and I feel like most of my friends do the same. I wonder if it's a generational thing. I and most of my friends are early-mid 20s.

I agree and am in a similar demo. I think I just as often use "kk" but I'm not able to place exactly where I picked this up from or what it's origins are. UrbanDictionary claims it's internet slang for "okay, cool" == "k, kool" == "kk" which seems believable. It actually hadn't struck me until writing this comment that "kk" was internet specific slang, and thinking about it it's something I don't really see from most people.

Sidenote: kk is what teens here use a lot to swear with cancer (which is spelled with two 'k's instead of 'c's in Dutch). For some reason many people take big offense, but other illnesses are perfectly fine to them. I've heard people take such offense over what was meant to sound affirmative. I always cringe at the potential reactions when seeing kk somewhere.

> For some reason many people take big offense, but other illnesses are perfectly fine to them.

Not the case at all! Dutch use a diverse set of illnesses as profanity. It's just that the big C (or should I say K?) happens to be one of the most severe profanities.

Also dutch, and while kk can mean kanker (cancer) in chats its often used as just 'ok ok'.

Though I did have an awkward incident once where someone thought 'kk' meant cancer and they got very upset.

Within a certain age bracket, many American girls who prefer to be perceived as cute and girly, simply type the letters "kk" to exude a sense of affable agreeableness. This is often paired with "oo" to present surprise or acquired understanding.

I get the sense that American girls are doing it both to promote a youthful personality, and because a double-tap of the same letter is efficient, reducing effort while typing. It's also used by older women adopting a cutsey voice or tone, especially women raising teenage daughters, sometimes as a mock teeny bopper act.

Males almost never ever use this regardless of age, unless engaging in feminine play as parody, and it gets dropped among females cognizant of their perception as adult women retaining possession of responsibilities and authority.

Probably, among all non-users, "kk" is dropped in fearful avoidance of the dreaded accidental "kkk" in an unnacceptable context.

Among all, a curt use of "k" with a cessation of further conversation is sometimes an expression of annoyance, either because the conversation took a turn they didn't like, or because they're busy or being interrupted somehow.

Capital "K" in this sort of context, combined with habitually minimized capitalization and little or no grammatical punctuation as a personality trait, is almost always an expression of sulking, pouting or open anger with consequences pending. Capital "K" after receiving bad news is as if to say "someone will pay for this, maybe you."

>Males almost never ever use this regardless of age, unless engaging in feminine play as parody, and it gets dropped among females cognizant of their perception as adult women retaining possession of responsibilities and authority.

I'm a heterosexual male in my mid-20s and many in my gender and age bracket say "kk" and "ooo" online as casual responses to things all the time - including myself. I wasn't aware we were teenaged girls. I don't think either word is inherently feminine, cutesy or immature; just very informal.

The thing I'd associate the most with younger American girls is frequent use of ellipses, often (but not always) with 1-2 less or more dots than is required. Like "k.." or "nice....". I think this is to some extent emulating the "high rising terminal" vocal pattern commonly associated with American women: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal#Implicati...

And of course emojis/emoticons.

OO Wow there is a technical term for what I refer to as 'backwards speaking'.

This is good.

Though (M) I definitely use ellipses in instant communications to imply a pause in expression. And 'yar' instead of KK.

My comment is to be taken as anecdotal evidence only. My personal experience. Nothing more.

It's just what I've encountered as an American interacting with other Americanized Americans in the United States, with whom I've had a direct face-to-face relationship. Without any IRL interactions, I have absolutely no idea who's on the other side of the internet, and don't claim to know anything about anyone anywhere else.

Same here -- I'm a British male, 20s. I use kk casually and always have. I've never thought of it as being "feminine" in any shape or form.

kk at least how I understood it was the 'kay' part in okay so kk == kaykay or okay okay.

I believe this spilled out of the early days of MMOs... The first people I heard use it were all DAoC players.

I just use k.

I wonder if that has anything to do with auto correct on phones changing "OK" to "Okay".

Hmm... I performed a quick test on iOS and, at least on my phone, autocorrect does not change "OK" to "Okay".

Well there goes my idea. I think on my older phones like the LG Shine, it would auto correct to "Okay." Realistically I'm just remembering what I want to remember though.

Appreciate you checking that. Didn't even cross my mind to do it on my phone right by me.

I use 'kk' a fair bit to indicate acknowledgement, over affirmation.

Your phone idea might be on the right track tho - for those of us who are so old that we used SMS before T9 was invented, typing 'kk' would be way quicker than 'ok'.

Just a thought.

Presumably it would try to correct to whichever you usually use - though if that's 'OK' it might give up on the correction by the time you got as far as 'y'.

I'd have said the opposite. I'm in my mid 50s and always spell it out; while most people I know in their 20s use "OK."

I don't think it's generational at all - it's just whether you prefer to write something that looks more like a 'real' word.

Yep. Depending on context I might write "okay", "ok", "kk", or just "k". All depends on who I'm writing to and how formal I want to be.

I read a paper a few years ago telling a different story about OK having evolved from the abbreviation 0K for "zero killings", used during World War II. Anyone heard about that?

I've read that too. Myth busted I guess.

I'm learning hindi (slowly) and there it's "teek hai", which to me always sounds like T-K, and always makes me want to laugh a little.

Technically, it's "theek hai", like in "eighth"; and not "teek hai" like in "eight". Would it still sound close enough to "T-K" to sound funny to you?

Just do the head bobble..

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

I always liked

OK>

as a prompt, e.g., on a bootloader.

Modify it to say:

YAY>

We booted and are live!

That's adorable.

I prefer the

YAR!

prompt.

My experience both in US high school and college English classes was that 'okey/okay' is taught as a proper American English word, universally accepted as synonymous with 'alright', 'OK' being a contraction/slang. Interesting to read this may not be the case.

Interesting, I've never seen it spelled 'okey' until now.

Not at all used in Brazil from what I can tell. I told a fruit vendor after tasting his wares "it's ok" and he though I said "shocking" which apparently has a portuguese cognate.

Thankfully the thumbs up gesture is pretty pervasive there.

You'd say "ta bom"

I notice a trend in my environments where an acknowledgement went from "okee" (Dutch) or "okay" to "OK"/"ok" to now just "k".

I don't see any change in my env, people still say "okee" in text to me. Sometimes "ok", but never "okay" (the English one)

My experience (Dutch-born student in NL) is that "k" sounds sort-of less interested than "ok" or any longer variety, even in spoken Dutch ("k" is actually a used word in my environment). It seems that "k" corresponds to "fine"/"acknowledged" while things like "ok" or "oke" (yes my friends spell it like that, probably being too lazy to type é) correspond to "yes"/"agreed"/"acknowledged". I wrote "acknowledged" in both categories because they both acknowledge something, and sometimes the meanings do get muddled. :)

With it's roots in the age of the telegraph, it would appear that OK is a distant predecessor to other abbreviations of convenience such as LOL.

The origin of the term has been embedded in my memory (right next to Ben Stein's description of Voodoo Economics) since I first heard it in the 1987 Dudley Moore/Kirk Cameron father-son switcheroo classic Like Father Like Son.

I was hoping this guy took over the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Obgnr9pc820

I'm curious as to how it was adopted by countries for which English is not the primary language. I remember being surprised when I heard Parisians using it regularly in their speech.

For one, it's an easy pick for someone with a cosmopolitan spirit. Then there's also a lot of gadgets or software that come with the untranslated "ok" which serves as a pushing base for all but the most aware and opposed to the adoption of foreign words.

>Then there's also a lot of gadgets or software that come with the untranslated "ok"

The word has been used a long time before gadgets and software became common here in Sweden. I would guess it comes from films and tv-programs.

Have heard somewhere else this was widely spread in WWII era or thereabouts since it was good for radio communications and there were many USians around

I heard it got picked up from US soldiers during WW-II.

It's used in Denmark, but "k" is pronounced "ko" (like co in co-working) here, so they, especially older ones, say "oh-ko!"

"Oh-ko" makes the vowels long, but the vowels should be short, almost clipped.

In IPA notation "ko" would be /kʰɔ/, I think.

You're looking for brackets, not slashes, since you're giving a phonetic discription, not a phonemic one.

Sheesh, totally outnerded :-)

In French, "au quai" means "in the harbour."

Cargo in the harbour, is not lost at sea, or in transit.

Instead it is safe and sound, or O.K.

The "au quai" etymology isn't universally accepted, and isn't recognised by the Academie Française, who don't concede its use.

Generally, people use "d'accord" (sometimes shortened to "d'ac") over "OK" in French.

I can understand that the etymology is disputed, but what does the modern French expression of agreement have to do with it?

For all I know, it's entirely possible a misunderstanding/reappropriation of a foreign phrase could be it.

I always thought it was the opposite of K.O.

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