OK .... Right .... Yeah ... ??

[chijiki]

When and why did English speakers start to prefix their utterings with these words ? I have noticed it for a long time with the spoken word and the usage now appears to be common in writing as I have seen with several questions on this site.

[Quizmonster]

You say you have noticed this 'for a long time', but actually it's quite recent. I doubt if they ever appeared commonly in British-English speech/writing before the 1990s. The same is true of the tendency to say statements as if they were questions, as in: "I went to see him yesterday(?)"...I put the question-mark in brackets, as it is only notionally there in writing but quite obviously there in speech.

The three introductory words you list are all inherited from American-English, I suspect, and the permanent-question delivery seems basically Australian. TV is to blame, I'm certain, what with 'Neighbours' and similar imported trash.

[katejess]

I've got another one for you! The trend of using the word "like" throughout a conversation!

I was like walking down the road and like this woman like grabbed my by the arm and like started shouting like right at me etc, etc

I think Quizmonster is right.....blame the TV. You would never hear the the Queen starting a sentence with OK, Right or Yeah and she definitely wouldn't be "liking" all over the place!!

[smorodina]

I'd agree about the 'question intonation' - a recent phenomenom imported from oz, but the addition of words like 'right', 'yeah', etc, along with some that have gone out of fashion like 'man', 'hep' and so on, have definately been around since the 'counter culture' days of the late sixties and early seventies and, I suspect, the 'beat generation' days of the fifties. It was considered 'cool' amongst the hippies to speak in this fractured style imported, as the previous answer suggested, from the American 'counter-culture'. These words are partly a way of giving yourself time to think (and RP speakers like, for example, HRH Prince Charles, are not immune - listen to his constant 'eeeer, eeer,' between words) and partly a way of identifying yourself with a peer group through vocal mannerisms. It tends to be a youth oriented habit, and American educators also frown upon it: http://www.schoolmatch.com/articles/CDAPR98.htm

[Quizmonster]

Smorodina is right to say these words have been around for over 40 years as what are called redundant fillers - 'speech-interruptors', as it were - but their use as words at the beginning of utterances in the UK at least is very much more recent. That is what Chijiki meant, I imagine, when he/she used the word 'prfix' in the question. They're still 'redundant', but they're not quite 'fillers' any more, in the sense of being 'internal'...now, they're attached to the 'edge'.

[FredPuli]

Well, I would say that the 'filler' has been around at the start of the sentence for, well, a long time. Well, it depends what you mean by that. Well, I suppose ....... Well, do you get my drift?

[coggles]

So, OK, right, you all sort of agree, yeah? Cool, sorted!

[Quizmonster]

Quite, Fred, but the question referred to OK, Right and Yeah...not Well. I would still maintain that the three relevant words started being used as openers here only very recently.

[FredPuli]

My real point is that we ought not to be sniffy about these words. 'Well' is worse if anything but has acquired respectabilty as educated people iuse it.. 'OK', 'Right' and 'even 'Yeah ' do at least mean 'Agreed', 'Accepted' , 'Granted' or 'So' and have some meaning. 'Well ' adds nothing at all to the sense or the tenor of what follows; at best it is a polite pause to stop the reply sounding abrupt, but it is rarely even that.

[chijiki]

I thank you all for your responses. English is not my mother tongue and I often have difficulty understanding your slang and colloquial expressions. The addition of words like those I have described often makes it harder for me to understand the context of what is being said or written. I was interested to know if those who use such words are of the opinion that they better illustrate what they are thinking.

[coggles]

Chijiki, I hasten to add, that is not how I normally speak!

[Roxy]

my advice to you chijiki, is to igonore "right, ok an yeah an well" if they're at the begining of the sentence because they don't add anything to it, they just reinforce it.

[Roxy]

oh, and by they way QM, neigbours is NOT imported trash, no one really talke like they do in Eastenders so don't blame the new found question intonation on Neigbours- a good, light hearted family soap.

[Chinajan]

A more recent phrase prefix that is encroaching, I've noticed, is, "Yeah..no..." How meaningless?

[Quizmonster]

Lighthearted, Roxy? The last bit of it I saw showed a newly-married husband driving his wife in a flying dive into the water!

I have to confess that all I have ever seen of 'Neighbours' is the few minutes - such as those described above - I might accidentally catch prior to the 6 o'clock news. Most of these seem to have been in a similarly depressing vein.

On the basis that one does not have to drink an entire bottle of whisky in order to decide if it's any good, it was clear to me that the programme was trash years ago. If my own direct, if brief, experience of the pathetic standards of acting and direction needed reinforcing, it has been more than amply provided by newspaper TV critics over the years.

Each to his/her own, though! I'm perfectly happy for you to go on enjoying it. Cheers