Whose bad?

Users of correct English will quite naturally assume I've made a grammatical mistake in the heading. Isn't that supposed to be "Who's bad?". Haven't I mistakenly used a possessive where I should have used the contraction of "who is"? Not in today's world apparently. This is the age of "my bad", "your bad", "his bad", "her bad" and "their bad". The "bad" in those sentences - if you can call them that - means mistake. Every time I hear these expressions, I get very distressed. I don't know why that should be, but I invariably do.

The first time I came across the term was while watching an American programme on television. It took me a while to understand what was said. Now the usage has become quite common, so much so that these expressions are commonly heard even in children's television. So it was just a matter of time before my older son, whose brain is like a sponge, picked it up and used "my bad" after doing something wrong. My insides churned in revulsion when I heard that coming out of his mouth. I explained to him patiently that wasn't the correct way to say what he was trying to. But I really wanted to scream "Nooooooooooooooooo"!

I also get inexplicably peeved when someone mixes up "its" and "it's". I found out really early on that it's completely lost on them that the former is a possessive pronoun and the latter a contraction of "it is". They just don't get it. I also get peeved with the Indian tendency to generously scatter apostrophes around, but always in places they don't belong. Like when naming a family. "The Singh's came to visit", they'll write, instead of "the Singhs came to visit". Why? Why can't they understand that the former denotes possession, for instance "this is Mr. Singh's son"? And if you want to denote possession for the entire family, it'll be Singhs'. For instance, "This is the Singhs' home" and not "this is the Singh's home".

Knowing about this deep aversion I have to poor punctuation, a friend of mine gifted me a wonderful book called Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. The title is derived from a joke that amply demonstrates how a misplaced punctuation mark can at times completely change the meaning. Here's the joke from the book:

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons. 'Why?' asks the confused surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes for the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder. 'Well, I'm a panda,' he says, at the door. 'Look it up.' The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. 'Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.' Get it? The addition of a comma in the final sentence makes all the difference. 'Eats shoots and leaves' would have meant something entirely different, wouldn't it?

Anyway, I'm digressing. The point is language - and not just English - is evolving in a not altogether nice way. The result is an exponentially larger proportion of each successive generation is less articulate. More and more kids and young adults find it hard to verbally convey their thoughts and feelings. I'd hoped the "like,.....like,....you know" syndrome would die out with the coming of age of my generation, but that hasn't happened. People young and middle-aged still suffer from it. If video killed the radio star four decades ago, text messaging is killing language and spelling today. The abbreviations and contractions used in text messaging are alarmingly spilling over into other domains. I am one of very few people I know who doesn't ruthlessly abbreviate every word in a text message.

I suppose in a world that's perpetually in a hurry, "my bad" is more economical on effort and time than saying "sorry, that was my mistake". But I'm not ready for a world like that. I don't think I will ever be. And that's not "my bad".