The African proposal comes from a London Times article David Dalby back in 70s, I think. Dalby, a faculty member at the London University School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) has published quite a lot in African languages and linguistics and has specialized somewhat in the Atlantic languages. He claims in his article that quite a lot of American English slang comes into English via AAE originally from a language called Wolof, spoken in Senegal and surrounding countries. His source for ok is the Wolof phrase "waw gay" (where "gay" is pronounced as "guy"). The article is fascinating, and he may be right on some of his claims, but his etymology for ok doesn't hold up well. There have been several articles in American Speech that have considered Dalby's proposal and others critically.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C
Sent: 2009-04-29 18:29
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: cutting the pear in half
That example also more generally raises questions about what happens
when we apply a "formal" system to writing that's transparently
informal. There's a kind of tension involved in the whole process. It's
like catching yourself wondering whether it's a faux pas to serve red
wine rather than white with the tater-tot-n-tuna casserole (I'm not
knocking casserole! Honest! It's just that it's one of those things
that's designed *not* to be formal).
BTW -- The "Story of English" film series has an episode in which the
major narrator (McNeil) implies that the consensus position on the
etymology of "okay" is that it's a word used in several African
languages (pron. roughly wah-kay; I can't do IPA in email). I used to
stop the film momentarily at that point and tell students the situation
was more complicated, but then I realized it would make a great hook for
an info-gathering homework assignment.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 1:42 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: cutting the pear in half
Thanks Brian,
My surmise that a contemporary neologism was taken over for use in the
campaign of Martin Van Buren, was probably OK. [Was the Baltimore Sun
note dated 1840?; a 1940 date would seem to be irrelevant.]
My point was in balancing the teaching of orthography over against other
elements of language. I was also concerned that sometimes content
drives out some of these elements. I see that etymology is apparently
one of the elements that I may neglect too much.
Bruce
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of O'Sullivan, Brian P
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 10:33 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: cutting the pear in half
There's an interesting New York Times blog article about the etymology
of O.K. at
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/a-spitzer-tale-is-not-oll-k
orrect/. Apparently, Eliot Spitzer, in a speech, gave a variant
explanation--that the phrase stands for "off to Kinderhook"--but it
seems to have been unsubstantiated.
The article quotes Edward L. Widmer, a historian who is the director of
the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University,as saying that "the
phrase was briefly short for 'oll korrect,' a Dutch phrase for 'all
right,' but then got shifted onto Van Buren as he ran for president."
William Safire, too, found the "oll korrect" was the original meaning.
Another scholar says, unsurprisingly , that there is no definitive
answer.
The Times blog piece cites a 1960 article, The Basic Derivation of 'O.
K.', Ralph T. Eubanks, American Speech, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Oct., 1960), pp.
188-192. I looked at the Eubanks article on JSTOR, and it seems that
Eubanks found that the earliest appearance of "O.K." was in a 1940
Baltimore Sun note, which says "We hope that this will satisfy him, and
that he will give us an acknowledgment that it is o.k. (all correct)."
(The context, oddly enough, involves the quality of a "a large,
fresh-looking julep, having all the appearance of one made in July.")
Eubanks says this occurrence predated what scholars had (sorry, Brad)
previously thought to be the first published "O.K."--a New York _New
Era_ reference to the Democratic OK Club, which had supported the "Old
Kinderhook" derivation.
Incidentally, the piece in the Times uses the periods in O.K., as
Eubanks did.
Brian
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Bruce
Despain
Sent: Wed 4/29/2009 10:06 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: cutting the pear in half
Thanks all for your comments. Folk etymologies are sometimes stronger
than a "true etymology" in the way they reinforce the popularity of an
expression. I'm not sure about the importance of the validity of an
etymology in terms of its appropriateness and acceptability. I believe
the first documented use of "OK" was in 1839 while Old Kinderhook was
President of the U.S., so that origin certainly makes sense. I'm not
sure about the ultimate documentation for my explanation that it stands
for the facetious acronymic abbreviation of "oll korrect," but this is
what's published in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed.).
Bruce
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 7:07 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: cutting the pear in half
I'm not sure how accurate it is, but the story around Kinderhook New
York (I live in the town of Kinderhook, but the village of Valatie) is
that OK derives from Martin Van Buren, whose nickname was Old
Kinderhook, and who would approve documents by initialing them O K (not
sure if that included periods.) Folk etymologies are not always
accurate, and this one is a source of local pride. I have never checked
up on it in part because I suspect it's not overly solid. I usually tell
it like that: "I'm not sure how true it is, but...."
Craig
O'Sullivan, Brian P wrote:
> Thanks. Now that you mention it, I'd agree with the politically
correct about this--at least, I'd agree that the troublesome derivation
of "dutch" would be more interesting and more important to discuss with
students than the other kinds of "incorrectness" in the sentence.
Ideally, I'd want to treat the etymological issues not as a matter of
correctness but as a matter of rhetorical awareness; I'd want to ask
students to be aware of the figures of speech they use and to think
about how different kinds of readers might react to a casual word
choice.
>
> (Or maybe, with a big stack of papers in front of me and only a few
hours to comment on them, I wouldn't notice anything interesting or
problematic about the sentence at all!)
>
> By the way, your comment has made me think that big-D "Dutch" might be
better after all; at least it draws attention to the derivation of the
word, which seems more honest somehow.
>
> Brian
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of
richard betting
> Sent: Tue 4/28/2009 6:22 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: cutting the pear in half
>
> Brian,
> You make a good point about effectiveness. And it seems to me that you
pose an interesting question about dutch/Dutch. I think that some people
find Dutch politically incorrect so for them its use might be more
significant than the other language conventions being discussed here.
Dutch with a small d might be preferable for them. The kinds of
priorities teachers teachers impose will help determine what students
view as significant and will influence how they write.
> Dick Betting
> Professor Emeritus
> Valley City State University
>
>
>
> On Apr 28, 2009, at 4:29 PM, O'Sullivan, Brian P wrote:
>
>
> Bruce,
>
> I agree, on a technical level, with your points about
orthography in the sentence under discussion. However, I want to explain
why I might ignore these points if I were responding to a student paper.
>
> It's not that I consider "what we [write] somehow more important
than how we [write] it"; it's that I consider the effectiveness of how
we write more important than the conventional correctness of how we
write. Often, I would agree, effectiveness and correctness are related;
incorrect grammar, usage and even orthography often impair effective
communication. I'm just not sure that such is the case in the sentence
we're talking about. While the quotation marks and periods in this
sentence do appear to be incorrect according to the conventions you
mention, I'm not sure that the writer of this sentence runs any real
"risk of not being understood," or even much risk of being significantly
less cogent or elegant than a writer who follows the conventions. In
particular, it seems to me that the periods in "O.K." will not confuse
or distract most readers. And I don't think it's always a good idea to
point out all the low-priority problems in a paper; if there are a
number of higher priority problems that require discussion, it seems
better to focus on them.
>
> As for the risk of changing the conventions of language, I'm not
sure that I see how the language would be impoverished if these
particular orthographic conventions were to change. We shouldn't resist
all changes to conventions of language, should we? There are some
changes, like the turn away from using masculine pronouns as universal,
that seem positive; there are others, like the diminishing use of the
semicolon, that I regret. But there are many changes that are neither
good not bad, as far as I'm concerned.
>
> Finally, I have one specific question, out of curiosity; why do
you find "Dutch" clearer than "dutch" in this sentence? To me, the
meaning of the expression seems very distant from that of the proper
adjective from which it is derived--so mightn't proper adjective form be
irrelevant, if not distracting?
>
> Thanks for a thought-provoking post.
>
> Brian
>
>
> --- On Tue, 4/28/09, Bruce Despain <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
>
> May we go back to the original question? Perhaps the following
reply would take us on a different tack.
>
> "That's O.K. We would have had to go 'dutch' anyway."
> What's the verb tense in the reply?
>
> The time reference is present: "That's OK; we would have had to
go Dutch anyway."
> I am impressed that the conventions of regular orthography do
not seem to be being adhered to in the quote. Here again being literal
is dangerous. Maybe we could all adopt the conventions of e. e.
cummings and buck regular orthography at the risk of not being
understood. An added risk is that we are in the act of changing the
conventions of language -- going along with the drift of the younger
generations, who must have things simple. Maybe what we say is somehow
more important for English teachers than how we say it, or in this case
how we write it. The "OK" is an acronym that does not need periods:
"oll korrect." The adverb "dutch" does not need quote marks. In this
expression it may perhaps be better understood if kept in the form of
the proper adjective from which it derives.
>
>
>
>
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