bad

[M. Lynne Murphy]

Some instances of "x bad"  "y good" were inspired by Saturday Night Live
sketches a while back (and now on several times a day on Comedy Central)
that involved Tonto, Frankenstein('s monster), and some other linguistically
challenged character played by Jon Lovitz.  Frankenstein (played by Phil
Hartman) had a language ability limited to "x baaad"  "y goooood"  (e.g.,
"fire baaaad"  "bread goooood").  Some of my fellow under-40-somethings and
I have been known to imitate this (e.g., "committee baaaad"  "wine
goooood").  I'm not sure whether the SNL sketch was in turn inspired by
something else (to my memory, the monster in Young Frankenstein enunciated
nothing).

All this is completely unrelated to "my bad."

Lynne Murphy
----------
From: Anson Olds <ansolds at MASSED.NET>
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: bad
Date: Sat, Sep 4, 1999, 3:48 PM


Here is another example of teen language that "my bad" reminds me of.  Not
so long ago it was common to hear young people say things like "Homework
bad,"  or "pizza good."  Often this was used as an understatement, like
"Hitler bad," or "ethnic cleansing bad."  Am I wrong in assuming that this
is a return to a more "childlike" construction?  As I am new to dialect
study, I don't know what the proper terminology is.

Emily Olds

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/attachments/19990904/8d26a00b/attachment.htm>