Eliminate "My Bad" from your vocabulary
By SOPHIE BUSHWICK, York Suburban Senior High School
Languages always have, and always will, evolve.
The meanings of some words may change, as when “gay� went from meaning happy to describing homosexuality. Other phrases, like “I’m not gonna lie,� may suddenly work their way into almost every sentence, only to — with luck — fall out of favor just as quickly.
We may like or hate these linguistic changes, but ultimately, we have little power to delete them from our friends’ conversations. This is a pity, because I truly loathe the phrase “my bad.�
When did “sorry� become so difficult to say? No amount of open-mindedness about the natural growth of English could ever make “my bad� grammatically correct. But this isn’t my biggest beef with this new phrase. My problem lies in the way people utter it.
When I apologize to a person for accidentally stumbling into her, playing a sour note on the clarinet or hitting him with a pingpong ball, I adopt a regretful tone to convey my sincerity. I think that the word “sorry,� with its undertones of humility, serves the same purpose. But when most people say “my bad,� they do so in a tone of voice that indicates that they don’t really care. “My bad,� a girl said as she knocked into me in the hall, already laughing at a friend’s joke.
I suppose that I don’t really hate “my bad.� What I hate is the fact that it really means, “I don’t care.� Perhaps daily rudeness comes with attending high school. But that doesn’t mean that I have to like it. And if that offends you — well, my bad.
Kelly · April 22, 2007 11:56 PM
I AGREE.
People should respect language.