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  • Good morning John. OK.

    約翰,早安。 OK。

  • That's a weird word.

    這是一個奇怪的詞。

  • By which I mean, "OK."

    我是指 ,"OK"。

  • "OK" means like fine, good, satisfactory, approved.

    "OK" 意味著美好的,愉快的,令人滿意的,被認可的。

  • None of those words even have K's in them!

    這些單詞中甚至沒有一個含有 K 這個字母!

  • There aren't any words that are just capital letters.

    沒有任何單詞是只用大寫字母的。

  • This isn't normal!

    這不太正常!

  • And yet, "OK" is possibly the most spoken word on the planet.

    不只如此,“OK”可能是這個星球上口語中最常用的單詞。

  • Not because we say it a lot in the US, which we do,

    不僅僅是因為我們在美國常用

  • but also because we say it a lot everywhere.

    也是因為我們到任何地方都常用。

  • So many other languages have been like,

    所以許多其他的語言會用像是

  • "Yeah, actually, that one's good. We'll take that."

    "Yeah, actually, that one's good. We'll take that." 這些語詞來表達

  • So from Mandarin to Hebrew to Flemish to Russian to Indian to Portuguese,

    而從華語到希伯來語,到法蘭德斯語,到俄語,到印度語,到葡萄牙語

  • "OK" is "OK"!

    "OK" 就是 "OK"!

  • It's a common, affirmative word.

    這是一個普遍的,表示肯定的單詞。

  • What does "OK" even mean?

    “OK”還意味著什麼?

  • It's like you want to approve of something, but not a lot.

    它就像是你同意某件事,但又不是完全同意。

  • The way we have a word for "good" without all the GOOD tied up in it.

    我們用一個詞來形容「好」,但是並不是把所有的好都包含在裡面。

  • Like if I fall down, you say, "Are you OK?"

    譬如我跌倒了,你說,「你還好嗎?」

  • All you're really asking is, "Is there something wrong?"

    其實你真正要問的是,「有沒有受傷?」

  • It's like an acceptance without any values or perspective or opinions laid on top of it.

    OK 就像是一種,不包含任何價值觀,或觀點或意見的同意。

  • And I want that! I can just be OK, and that's OK!

    我想要那樣!我可以簡單的用 OK 表示,這樣也很好!

  • But where did it actually come from, though?

    然而,OK 實際上是源自於何處呢?

  • Allow me to introduce you to the only Wikipedia page that is a list of potential etymologies for a word.

    讓我向您介紹唯一的一個維基百科頁面,它是一個單詞的潛在詞源列表

  • And it's very long!

    這個頁面很長!

  • Maybe it comes from "och aye". Like, Scottish. Oh yes.

    也許它源自於 "och aye" 。就像,蘇格蘭語。 哦,是的。

  • Or from the Greek phrase, "ola kala," meaning "all good." Maybe!

    或源自於希臘語“ola kala”,意思是「一切都好」。 也許吧!

  • But etymologists and historians have settled on three prime theories.

    但是語源學家和歷史學家已經確定了三個基本理論。

  • We'll get to the most settled-upon one last, but let's start with a West African origin.

    我們把大多數人認同的起源,留到最後再說,現在讓我們先從源自於西非開始講起

  • Thus brought to the US by slaves.

    從那裏,把奴隸帶進了美國。

  • A 1784 verified use of the word "K," rather than "OK,"

    1784 年,在北卡羅萊納州,一個奴隸說過的話的抄本

  • is a transcription of something a slave said in North Carolina.

    被證實是 "K," 而不是 "OK,"。

  • And this may come from a common West African phrase "o ke," or "waw-kay," depending on the language,

    這可能來自一個常見的西非短語“o ke”或“waw-kay”

  • that's basically an affirmative or a backchannel.

    基本上是一種表達肯定,或是應答發話者的用語。

  • A backchannel is what linguists call that thing that you do where you make a noise or you say a phrase or a word

    語言學家對 "backchannel" 的解釋是,你用一種聲音,或說一個單詞字或短語

  • just to let somebody know that you understood what they said.

    讓發話者知道,你明白他們所說的話。

  • And among the many uses for the word "OK" remains backchanneling.

    "OK" 有許多用法,但最主要還是拿來當做對發話者的應答語。

  • Like you're on the phone and you're like, "OK, uh-huh, yup, mhm, OK," - Like that!

    就像你在打電話說,「好吧,嗯,嗯,嗯,好吧,」 - 就像那樣!

  • Second, the Choctaw word "okeh", which maybe was also somewhat similar and other Native American languages,

    第二,源自於喬克托 (美洲原住民) 語“okeh”,也許與其他美洲原住民語言有些相似

  • and from what I can tell this is not particularly easy to translate,

    而且據我的理解,這個單詞並不容易翻譯

  • but probably it means something to the effect of "it is so,"

    但可能它意味著「就是這樣」的意思

  • and is also apparently sometimes used as a backchannel, weirdly enough.

    並且很顯然地,有時也被用作應答語,滿奇怪的。

  • The definite thing that we do know is when it entered into the popular lexicon of average Americans as the letter O and the letter K:

    我們可以確定的是,當它以字母 O 和 K 的形式,成為一般美國人的流行詞彙時:

  • In the late 1830s, there was this weird fad for comically misspelling things in newspapers --

    在19世紀30年代後期,當時有一種奇怪的時尚,就是報紙詼諧地將一些字故意拼錯 --

  • I don't know...

    我不知道 ...

  • -- and then you would take those common misspellings and create acronyms from them.

    -- 然後你會把這些常見的錯誤拼寫記下來,並從中創造出字首縮略詞。

  • Like another example of a similar word was "OW", which was for "oll wright".

    另一個類似的例子是,將“oll-wright”縮寫成“OW”。

  • Later, they had "oll korrect" - "OK."

    後來,他們就有了 "oll korrect" - 寫成 "OK."

  • Ugh!

    呃!

  • Now this, like all of the other weird comical misspelling acronyms, would have been completely forgotten

    如果不是馬丁.范布倫,就會像所有其他奇怪滑稽的拼寫錯誤的字首縮略詞一樣

  • if not for Martin Van Buren.

    完全被遺忘。

  • The democratic party decided to take this weird "OK" meme and apply it to Martin Van Buren,

    民主黨决定把這個奇怪又流行的 "OK" 應用到馬丁.范布倫身上

  • whose name sounded too Dutch, I guess?

    我猜他的名字聽起來太荷蘭味了吧?

  • But he was from Kinderhook, New York and they called him "Ole Kinderhook",

    但他來自纽约的金德霍克,他們稱他為「老金德霍克」

  • but that probably also wouldn't have stuck around if people hadn't been looking for ways to save characters on telegrams because you payed by the letter.

    但是如果當時的人沒有設法找到方法來保存電報上的字元,那可能也不會保留到現在,因為電報是以字數來收費的。

  • And then "OK" continued to trundle down the decades until we got to where we are now.

    然後 "OK" 繼續苟延殘喘了幾十年,ㄧ直到發展成今天的樣貌。

  • For me, the amazing thing about this word is how normal and everyday it is,

    對我來說,關於這個詞的神奇之處,在於它是那麼通俗又普及

  • despite the fact that it is very weird and unusual and we never noticed that.

    儘管它很奇怪又不像個正常的詞,但我們從未注意到這一點。

  • And it sort of exists in the background as part of the fabric of culture,

    它好像已經融入我們的生活中成為文化結構的一部分

  • not as something that we immediately identify as something that we're confused and amazed by.

    而不是我們一個,我們一看到就會覺得特別的東西。

  • But it is confusing and amazing,

    雖然它是那麼令人困惑和感到驚奇

  • and I guess that's OK.

    但我想這是 OK 的。

  • John, I'll see you on Tuesday.

    約翰,我們星期二見。

Good morning John. OK.

約翰,早安。 OK。

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