English Derivatives of Tagalog

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, good morning. My name is Gabriel. I’m calling from Marietta, California.

Okay.

I just have a question for you guys. And first of all, you know, English is really not my first language. I’m from the Philippines, and I’ve always been curious about the word okay, because it’s very universally used. I use it back home, I use it here. And I just want to know, where did it come from, and is it an acronym or an abbreviation of something? But I know it’s just an affirmation of, like, if somebody’s talking to you and you’re agreeing, you say okay.

Well, cool. Gabriel, so you grew up speaking Tagalog?

Yes, I did, yeah. I speak Tagalog fluently, and I’ve only been here in the States for about nine years. And, Gabriel, have you heard theories about where this term might have come from?

I remember I asked a friend, and he told me it was something from a letter that was sent to a, I think a president or a senator. And there was a script there, and they saw a word like an O and a K. And I’m not really sure if that’s correct.

Yeah, that sort of sounds like different elements of the real story that got stuck in a blender and all mixed up. And there’s a lot to say about that, but let me try to boil it down for you. First of all, there are lots and lots and lots and lots of theories besides that one about where it came from. Or I shouldn’t say theories, but stories. And so let’s just dismiss those right from the beginning. There’s not evidence that it comes.

You spit again.

What’s that?

I said it again.

You said okay.

Okay, let’s see.

Oh, see, I did it too. I was going to say okay. Let’s see how many times we can.

Right then.

Right then. Correct. I mean, people are probably getting ready to send us emails about, oh, it comes from ancient Greek or it comes from Choctaw Indian language or it comes from Irish or Burmese or Finnish. Scots or Wolof or Martian.

Right. West African. Yeah. Maybe it comes from Martian. I don’t know. No. But anyway, we don’t have evidence for those stories, even though they’re floating around. Now, here’s the one that’s the most plausible. Gabriel, back in the 1830s and 1840s in this country, there was a period of great linguistic playfulness, kind of like today. People were just, they loved making up words. This is the period of time when you start hearing words like hornswoggle or gosh, bustified, which means very, very happy. And people also played with letters and abbreviations, particularly in newspapers in the Boston area. Columnists would misspell words occasionally. On purpose, mind you.

Yeah, on purpose. And they would use funny abbreviations. And one of those abbreviations was OK for all correct. They spelled those words incorrectly, O-L-L-K-O-R-R-E-C-T, which is not correct. And, Grant, there were a lot of other different initials that were used in those days, right?

Yeah, a ton of them. None of them seem to have lasted the same way that OK has, however.

Exactly. And apparently one of the reasons is that although all of these fell away, OK stuck around in part because of President Martin Van Buren, President No. 8. He was born in Kinderhook, New York, which is in upstate New York. And people used to call him Old Kinderhook. And if you think about it, Old Kinderhook is abbreviated OK. And so people formed a Democratic OK Club in his name. And somehow we think that that had a role in the all-correct OK abbreviation taking off and becoming popular. There was a kind of reinforcement there.

And now there are citations for this from newspapers going back to the 1830s. We can find a pretty good pattern, which is why this theory, out of all of the theories about OK, has the most support behind it from linguists and lexicographers. There are other theories that have a little bit of evidence, but this is the strongest one. There’s an unbroken record back to the 1830s on this.

Yeah, so it’s kind of a long story, but it goes back to all correct.

All correct. I’ll remember that. All correct.

Hey, Gabriel, I have a question for you.

Sure.

Is there a Tagalog word for mountain that maybe starts with a B?

Yes, there is.

What is that word?

It’s called boondock.

Boondock.

-huh.

Okay.

Mountain. I had to ask because, you know, we gave you guys okay, but you guys gave us the word boondocks.

Really?

Oh, yeah, that’s right. I didn’t even thought of that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because it means mountain, right?

Yeah, it means mountain.

Yeah. We brought that back from the Philippines and a few other things besides. At least we’ve contributed something.

Yeah.

OK, one of the theories behind why it spread so easily, besides the rise of American power throughout the 1800s and into the 1900s, was the fact that O and K are two sounds that are almost universal in languages spoken around the world. They are incredibly easy to say, incredibly easy to understand, and difficult to corrupt.

Exactly, exactly.

OK.

Wow, you guys are great. Amazing. I love your show again, and that’s really, really helpful.

Gabriel, thank you so much for calling us today. Best of luck to you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Take care.

Okay, bye-bye.

Okay.

Okay, bye.

Thank you, bye.

Boy, it’s hard not to say that, isn’t it?

Yeah.

Well, help us make the linguistic connections. Find out the history of language here on A Way with Words, 1-877-929-9673. Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.