"my bad" revisited one more time

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:57 PM -0400 6/21/10, Alice Faber wrote:
>On 6/21/10 9:39 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>Manute Bol, the legendary (but real) 7'7" basketball player who
>>hailed from the Sudan and remains the only player in NBA history to
>>average more blocks than points per game, died a couple of days ago
>>at age 47 of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, a painful skin disease from
>>which he long suffered. He is known for his humanitarian work in
>>Sudan with the "lost boys" and other refugees from the genocidal war
>>there, as well as for his unusual body shape, set off in this famous
>>photo by that of his sometime teammate, the 5'4" Muggsy Bogues:
>>http://trueball.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/manute-bol-n-muggsy-bogues.jpg
>>
>>But what I *didn't* know (possibly because it isn't true) is that,
>>according to sports reporter Bill Plaschke on today's "Around the
>>Horn" (ESPN, 5:00-5:30), Manute is also known for something else:
>>
>>"You might not know this. He coined the phrase 'my bad', back in the
>>late 1980's. Language experts have pretty much proven this. When
>>they said 'My fault' he would say 'My bad' because he didn't
>>understand the language."
>>
>>Plaschke apparently didn't invent this story: cf.
>>http://beforeitsnews.com/news/83/134/Manute_Bols_legacy:_did_he_invent_the_phrase_my_bad.html,
>>
>>which cites, inter alia, this post by Geoff Pullum on Language Log:
>>http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002693.html
>>
>>Am I wrong to be skeptical?
>>
>
>Funny, one of the blog postings on this that I saw yesterday (citing one
>Prof. Horn's comments to Bob Greene of the Chicago Tribune) elicited
>some comments asserting that the phrase was playground usage in
>Washington in the 60s.
>
><http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dcsportsbog/2010/06/manute_bol_and_my_bad.html>

Interesting.  For a minute I thought *I* was quoted as tracking it
back to the 60s, but I see it's just fdlaidback69aolcom who does so.
So it's commenter fdlaidback69 vs. commentator Plaschke.  As long as
we can agree that "language experts" haven't "pretty much proven" the
connection...

LH

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