Conference thebay::joyoflex

    O.K., according to folk etymology, is supposed to come from
    Andrew Jackson's notation that something he was reviewing
    was "Oll Korrect."  
    
    An explanantion closer to the truth is probably "We don't know."
    
    					andrew

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    There was a discussion on this starting on 411.102. It's a bit mixed
    up with other things though.

    Another suggestion is Scots "Och, Aye".
    
    I agree with Andy that I've only seen speculations in my
    reading.  There seems to be no definitive etymology for "OK".
    
    		-John Bishop

    	As I probably mentioned, "oc" is the word for "yes" in the local
    language here, and has been for at least 1000 years. Dante was
    sufficiently acquainted with the language to write a few verses of his
    "Divine Comedy" in it to commemorate a Proven�ale poet. It has become a
    symbol of the local language and culture, and you see many cars in this
    area with stickers on them that just say "OC". There is also the spray
    paint on walls and bridges saying "Parla ta Lenga", which I probably
    don't need to translate.
    
    	Most of the Protestants in France were in the South, and many of
    them fled to America to escape religious persecution by Catholics (same
    sort of reasons as the Pilgrim Fathers from England), and I suppose it
    is possible that as a symbol of national pride they held on to the
    "oc".

    ... with vague recollections of some linguistic bifurcation in medieval
    France -- "langue d'oc" vs. "langue d'oeil"??  The first of which was
    transformed, was it not, into the name for perhaps the same region as
    you called "Occitanie" -- Languedoc...?  Confirmation or correction
    from one closer to the scene would be appreciated. :-)
    
    Happy New Year, JOYOFLEXers!
    

    	More or less correct. Languedoc is the name of a French Departement
    (administrative region) these days. The kingdom of Southern France and
    the region through which the "langue d'oc" was spoken (and still is to
    some extent) had much wider boundaries than the current departement.
    
    	Valbonne is probably about 150 miles east of the departement, and
    100 miles east of the royal capital of Aix en Provence, but I am told that
    some of the people in the mountain villages near here still speak the
    langue d'oc as their first language, and Valbonne has public poetry
    readings in the language, the "welcome to the village" signs are
    bilingual, and there are evening courses in the language for those who
    want to learn or improve.
    
    	Languedoc (the current official departement) is a smallish part of
    what the local people consider Occitanie.
    
    	Monaco jealously guards its own language, which is probably closely
    related, though I have never seen a formal comparison of the two. That
    is about 40 miles further east again.

    Dave has already said most of it, but here are a few additions and
    nits:
    Languedoc was originally the name of a province of Southern France in
    the time of the monarchy. It was located at the South-Western limit of
    the kingdom of Arelates (or Arles in the modern form of the name). I
    think, but am not sure, that Aix was the capital of the later county of
    Provence. At the time of the kingdom of Arelates (we're talking of the
    Carolingian period, from 9th century onward) I think that the part
    where was the later province of Languedoc was still called Septimania,
    same as in the late Roman period. The name Languedoc for that province
    does not appear in current use before the time of the Albigensis crusade
    (12th century), I think (I should check that).
    	The language spoken in most Southern France (roughly, South of the
    Loire, with a few local exceptions -Basque, Catalan, etc...-) came to
    be known as "langue d'oc" because "oc" was the word for "yes" in it,
    while the language in Northern France was "langue d'oil" (not "d'oeil",
    "oeil" is the present French word for "eye" ;^), and "oil" has today
    evolved into "oui"). As Dave mentionned, Proven�al is a dialect of
    Occitan or Langue d'Oc.
    	A nit, today Languedoc, or rather Languedoc-Roussillon, is a
    region, not a departement. The regions are recent entities (about 20
    years) and are composed of several departements (Loz�re, Gard, H�rault,
    Aude and Pyr�n�es-Orientales in the case of Languedoc-Roussillon). The
    old province of Languedoc was significantly different from the present
    region in location and extent, although there is still a big part that
    is common to both.
    	Occitanie is a word that designates the whole region where "Langue
    d'Oc" was (and sometime is still) spoken, i.e. the Southern half of
    France, but it has no official or administrative meaning.
    			Denis.

    I thought it was pretty well settled that OK came from "oll korrekt",
    NOT as initials given in ignorance, but as part of a sort of fad for
    fake initials that enlivened life and conversation back in the 1840s. 
    OK is the only one of these to survive into the modern era, but it
    survived with a bang.  It was all written up in a language journal of
    the early 60s.
    

re .-*

  O.K. to all!
  On the other hand, the explanations can't be *oll correct* ;-)

  Happy New Year

  Dirk
						(cross posted in GRAMMAR)

    > On the other hand, the explanations can't be *oll correct* ;-)
    
    Why ever not??
    
    Surely it's possible that these different origins could occur
    independently in time and space.  Then they amalgamate and integrate
    the nuances of meaning as the occurences from different sources meet.
    
    Remember:
    
    	Originality is not _always_ plagiarism that hasn't been found out.
    
    Nick

>    
>        Originality is not _always_ plagiarism that hasn't been found out.
>    

The original quote is "Originality is only undetected plaigiarism".
As someone said of J.S.Barker, the reported originator of the quote ...
"He ought to know!"

There being a subtle difference in meaning to the opposite of your quote
which implies that the person doing the plaigiarism knew about it.  The
original quote does not.

>    Surely it's possible that these different origins could occur
>    independently in time and space.  Then they amalgamate and integrate
>    the nuances of meaning as the occurences from different sources meet.
    
    The Random House derives OK from such a confluence, although it doesn't
    mention the "langue d'oc" stream:
    
    "initials of a facetious folk phonetic spelling, e.g., _oll_ or
    _orl_korrect_, first attested in Boston in 1839, then used in 1840 by
    Democrat partisans of Martin Van Buren, who allegedly named their
    organization the _O.K._Club_, in allusion to the initials of
    _Old_Kinderhook_, Van Buren's nickname, derived from his birthplace,
    Kinderhook, New York"
    

    To take the languedoc discussion back a bit further, the LINGUA DE HOC
    and the LINGUA DE HOC ILLE were two sorts of Vulgar Latin distinguished
    (among other things) by the words they used to make up for Classical
    Latin's lack of a word for `yes'. HOC ILLE won out, and now takes the
    form `oui'.
    
    I don't believe this has anything to do with OK, though if someone
    were to say something authoritative about the AK sign in Morse
    (surely it's not --- -�- ?) I'd tend to prefer that to the Orl Korrect
    version, which I've never been fully convinced by (which is not to say
    that it's not true).
    
    b

	Hmmm - this thread of langue d'oc and langue d'oil is all very
	interesting - run the 2 affirmatives together quite quickly and
	what do you get? - oc-oil (or ock-eye phoenetically).  Now, ask
	a Scotsman for the entymology of their very own colloquial
	affirmative....

	Ock-aye Jimmeh,
	Chris.

    Re .14
    
    >entymology
    
    I thought that the only word to have an entymology is the word "bug" ...
    and of course the one that's often repeated in folklore is false (it
    really happened but wasn't the root of the word's usage).
    
    -- Norman Diamond