use of "my bad"

[Jonathan Lighter]

The fact that some idiots asserted that Black English was like baby talk
hardly proves that baby talk - uttered by tots or indulged in by relatives -
doesn't exist.

Still less does it suggest that "my bad," *if* it was consciously affected
as some sort of baby talk, especially appealed to teenage black basketball
players (*if* it did) because some of them spoke Black English.

JL




On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 7:10 AM, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: use of "my bad"
>
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> Do we need a name here.  Kidsisms
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> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
> see truespel.com
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> ----------------------------------------
> > Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 02:49:59 -0700
> > From: mlee303 at YAHOO.COM
> > Subject: Re: use of "my bad"
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> > Sender: American Dialect Society
> > Poster: Margaret Lee
> > Subject: Re: use of "my bad"
> >
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> >
> > The same descriptors--"childishness" and "baby talk"--were used=A0by the
> un=
> > informed in reference =A0to early (late 19th-early
> 20th=A0centuries)=A0use =
> > of AAE (Black English, Negro dialect, etc.),=A0unaware (or refusing to
> acce=
> > pt the fact) that=A0it is a=A0rule-driven language=A0system.=A0=A0
> >
> > --Margaret Lee
> > ________________________________________
> >
> >
> > --- On Fri, 5/29/09, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
> >
> >
> > From: Arnold Zwicky
>  > Subject: Re: use of "my bad"
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Date: Friday, May 29, 2009, 4:57 PM
> >
> >
> > On May 29, 2009, at 7:36 AM, Jon Lighter wrote:
> >
> >> The 1986 Wielgus & Wolff ex. was discovered by me. The seeming
> >> childishness
> >> of the phrase, combined with a paucity of good cites, kept it out of
> >> HDAS
> >> I.
> >
> > what's the surrounding context?=A0 i ask because there's a repeated
> > suggestion that the early uses were specifically from black basketball
> > players, in which case cites might be hard to come by.
> >
> > but "seeming childishness" is problematic.=A0 you came across the
> > expression and asked yourself who would talk like that, and *given
> > your prior experience* your impression was that it sounded like
> > something a child would say.=A0 but that's not the question to ask.=A0
> the
> > right question is: who are the people using this expression, and what
> > are they doing with it?=A0 in the case at hand, they were pickup
> > basketball players, and i doubt that the expression seemed at all
> > childish to *them*.
> >
> > the problem is that you're projecting your own attitudes onto the
> > speakers.
> >
> >>=A0 Naturally, within a few months of publication (April 1994), I was
> >> hearing it frequently on campus.
> >
> > the OED has a 1986 UNC-CH Campus Slang cite, already not in a sports
> > context.
> >
> >> FWIW, I doubt that "my bad" enjoyed much currency anywhere before
> >> the early
> >> '80s except possibly as baby talk. FWIW.
> >
> > do we have any evidence that it was *ever* used as baby talk?
> >
> > arnold
> >
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