When we watch an action movie about a police or military operation, police or soldiers talking over the radio use the line “Roger that”. Have you ever thought about this line? If you know even a little bit of English, you can see that this word doesn’t really do what it’s intended for. In fact, the word roger that, which is used to tell the other party that the incoming message was delivered without any problems, became so popular with Hollywood movies that people began to wonder about the past of this word.
Today we will explain to you where the indispensable line of Hollywood movies “Roger that” came from. Actually “message recieved” in English; In other words, let’s get to know the etymological origin of the pattern roger that, which is used as the equivalent of “message received”.
We are going back to the pre-radio era, when communication was done with morse code.
Before radios came out, communication was mostly done with Morse code. In the period when 2 people were communicating over the wires, after the main message was sent, the letter “r” was coded instead of the word “received” to verify whether the message reached the other party. Although “received” seems like a small word, when you want to send it with morse code, it increases the workload of the operators. For this reason, operators using only the letter “r” were performing the verification process much faster.
So where did “Roger that” come from?
Communication, especially in the military, is also racing against speed. For this reason, many words or phrases were coded and communication was established with a single letter. As for the word Roger, we need to look at the phonetic alphabet. Today, the phonetic alphabet of English is different. For example, the letter “R” is Romeo in the phonetic alphabet. However, in World War II, the phonetic alphabet was different and the letter “R” was Roger. This resulted in a word that has become stereotyped from the days when morse code was used. We can better summarize the communication in Morse code days by giving examples:
Commander: Has the message been sent? (Has the message been sent?)
Morse operator: Yes, it has been sent, sir. (Yes, sent sir.)
Commander: So did the other side Roger? (Did they roger that?) * Here, the commander asks if the other party has encoded the letter “r” indicating that he has received the message.
Morse operator: Yes, confirmed sir. (Yes, confirmed sir.)
Here comes the line “Roger that” that we see in action movies from such a date. When they left Morse code and turned to radios, people kept saying “roger that” instead of “recieved” because they were already used to this pattern.
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