만국 공통어 OK(오케이), Okay의 유래
[lwptoc]
1. Okey에서 유래됐다
Okay는 원래 아프리카의 담론에서 “승인”이나 “찬성”을 나타내는 말인 “okey”에서 유래했다는 주장도 있습니다.이것은 미국의 흑인들이 사용했던 단어인데, 이 단어가 미국으로 유입되면서 “okay”로 변형되어 사용되었다고도 합니다.
2. 영어가 아니라 인디언의 언어
Okay는 본래 영어에서 나온 말이 아니라 인디언이 사용하는 말에서 나왔다. 인디언들이 서로 ‘그렇다’라고 생각하거나 합의를 하면 ‘오케'(Okeh)라고 했다는 것. 곧 ‘all right’란 말이다. 그만큼 합의를 존중한 것으로 보인다. 그런데 아메리칸 인디언들은 유럽인들이 들어와 땅을 차지하고 자기들을 죽이는 것에 대해 결코 오케이라고 말하지 않았다. 그럼에도 불구하고 그들은 “오케이?, 오케이?” 하면서 밀고 들어왔다고 한다.
3. 문서상의 오타였다
Okay는 19세기 초 미국에서 비공식적인 문서나 문서상의 오타였던 “oll korrect”에서 비롯되었다고 합니다. 그래서 이 단어는 “all correct”의 약어로 사용되었으며, 처음에는 농담 같은 문맥에서만 사용되었지만 이 단어는 후에 “OK”로 줄여 쓰여 사용되기 시작했으며, 이후 20세기 초반부터 현재까지 지속적으로 사용되고 있습니다.
4. 올더 킨더훅
아래 영상을 참고하세요. 아쉽게도 영어 번역본이 없는데, 다행히 영어 자막이 나와서 그대로 타이핑을 쳤습니다. 번역은 파파고로 했고 조금 의역했습니다. 3-4번의 내용이 이어집니다.
What is the real origin of “OK”. It’s the all-purpose expression that can do anything. It can be an enthusiastic thumbs up, an unenthusiastic eh, a way to draw attention to
a topic shift, or so many other really useful things. It’s amazing that we ever got along without it at all.There may be more stories about the origin of OK than there are uses for it: it comes for the name of a Haitian port, from a Puerto Rican rum, from a battlefield sign for 0 killed, or German Ober-Kommando, from Scots och are. From Greek, from Latin
or Choctaw or Wolof.
From bakers stamping their initials on biscuits, or shipbuilders marking wood for “outer keel.” It’s easy to come up with a just-so story, but there are word researchers, called lexicographers, who devote themselves to digging through old newspaper clippings, books, and letters, to find real, hard evidence for how words developed and spread. A professor named Allen Walker Read researched OK for years, and uncovered the true story. It begins in 1839 when a Boston newspaper editor jokingly used o.k. as an bbreviation for “all correct.” what? How is that an abbreviation? Let’s back up.
In the 1830s there was a craze sweeping Boston for the early ancestors of OMG and LOL. People shortened things like “It shall be done” and “small potatoes” to be flip and cute. They would mess with spellings to be even more flip and cute. KG for “no go” OW for “all right.” So Ok, for “all correct, ” cute, right? But we don’t say i.s.b.d or k.g. anymore. Why did OK stick around? It got lucky, because of the heated 1840 eletion of president Martin van Buren, also known as Old Kinderhook. His supporters formed the OK Club.
It was hip, it was winky, he was Old Kinderhook and he was Oll Korrect. When things gotrough and his supporters started getting into tussles with Harrison supporters, pundits offered their own less flattering takes on ok. It was the refudiate or binders full of women of its day – carried along on waves of press converage until it was firmly planted on the beach of English….. where it might have wahed back into the sea of forgotten words, if the telegraph hadn’t come on the scene right then. Operaters used it to confirm that signals were coming through. Shorter than “message received” or “everything’s working” or even “yes, ” OK was right there at hand.
After a few decades it was everywhere, butthe origin story had washed away. But we don’t need to know the origin of a word to find it useful. That’s the nature of language, and that’s OK.
: : 어떤 이유에서든, 어떤 역사가 있든 “OKAY”는 만국 공통어입니다.
