The REAL Reason We Say “Roger That” Instead of “Understood”

🔗 Save $6,000 A Year with My Complete Amish Home-Saving Method I teach: https://eliasyoder.com Somebody asks a fellow to do something, and he answers, roger that. You hear it in the movies, you hear it from the pilots, you hear folks say it in an ordinary office or a work crew, half in jest. It means plain enough, I heard you, I understand. And nobody blinks at it. But stop and truly hear it for a moment. Roger. That is a man's name. It is somebody's given name, the name of an uncle or a neighbor. Why on earth, when a person wants to say I understand you, would they say a man's first name instead? Where did that come from? Is there some famous fellow named Roger at the bottom of this, who was always understanding things? And why did folks not simply say understood, which is the plain and obvious word for it? I am Elias Yoder. I am Amish, and I farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Now I will say plainly right at the start, this word comes out of the world of the military and of flying, and that is a world I have no part in. We Amish are a nonresistant people, and we do not go for soldiering, by the conviction of our faith, and I have never flown in an airplane nor worked a radio in my life. So I am no soldier, no pilot, no radio man, and I will not pretend to be one. I am simply a curious farmer who heard that odd little word rolling around in everyday speech and went and learned the answer. What I walk you through: ✔ The trouble that made the word necessary: the early radios crackled and hissed, the men were in roaring aircraft, and a great many ordinary words sound alike through all that noise ✔ Why a garbled word was no small matter: if a pilot did not rightly hear an instruction, folks could die ✔ The clever plain solution: a spelling alphabet, a whole distinct word standing in for each letter, so no letter could be mistaken (the same thing you do saying "M as in Mary" on the telephone) ✔ The answer to the riddle: in the alphabet of those days, the word chosen for the letter R was, of all things, Roger ✔ How it all comes together: "received" begins with R, so a man simply sent back the letter R to mean received, and the way you say R without being misheard is to say Roger ✔ So roger that means, at the bottom of it, simply R, that is, received. There never was any Roger at all ✔ The careful distinction most folks have lost: roger does NOT mean I agree, and does NOT mean I will do it. It means only, I have received and understood your message ✔ Why they had a separate word for the other thing: "wilco," short for will comply, meaning I will actually carry it out. Two different things, two different words, never confused ✔ The quiet wonder at the end: the alphabet was later changed and R became Romeo, yet Roger had lodged so deep in the mouth that it stayed anyway, and lives on long after its reason was taken away The plain old wisdom underneath it all: those men understood that clear speech matters most where a misunderstanding is costly. They would not let "I heard you" be muddled with "I agree" or with "I will do it." Three different things, kept plainly apart, each with its own honest word. That is a wisdom my people have held for a very long time. Plain speech. Letting your yes be a true yes and your no a true no, so a person can rely on your word without guessing at your meaning. Think how much grief comes from a vague word left to mean three things at once. This is one of a series on Elias Yoder Explains, where I take the ordinary things of daily life that everybody handles and nobody really understands, and explain them plainly, the way the careful old folks understood them. Tell me in the comments below. Did you know roger simply meant the letter R, standing for received, or did you always suppose there was some fellow named Roger at the bottom of it? And are any of you radio operators, or pilots, or folks who worked in a trade where a misheard word could do real harm? Tell the rest of us what it taught you about speaking plainly. I read every single one. Next video: why we say a person is under the weather when they are feeling poorly, where that odd phrase truly comes from, and how it came to mean sickness at all. Subscribe so you do not miss it. #RogerThat #WordOrigins #Etymology #HowThingsWork #AmishWisdom #PennsylvaniaDutch #PlainSpeech #RadioAlphabet #PlainSense #Language #Wilco #SayingsExplained #SimpleExplained #EliasYoderExplains #EverydayHistory