"my bad" revisited one more time

[Benjamin Zimmer]

I try to set the record straight in my latest Word Routes column...

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2327/


On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 10:25 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> 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...
>

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