The first time I knew the two words (那个 and n*gger) was from a report about Yao Ming who was a basketball play in NBA. I just thought it'e more like a joke...but, it become real and unreal today
Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge
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Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge
#72> "Professor Greg Patton repeated several times a Chinese word that sounds very similar to a vile racial slur in English. Understandably, this caused great pain and upset among students, and for that I am deeply sorry. It is simply unacceptable for faculty to use words in class that can marginalize, hurt and harm the psychological safety of our students. We must and we will do better." It's unbelievable that this "un…
Acts like these set precedent for future actions by colleges across the spectrum.
Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge
#73For people who are confused, here's an informative video on the phrase and misconceptions: https://youtu.be/bqmO4yvoXwQ?t=46. He does a great job with the correct pronunciation too.
Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ponounciation of "那个" in Chinese is similar to "nigger", which makes some students unhappy.
One note - there's no hard r in 那个 unless you're speaking a Beijing dialect. In that case there's hard r's (儿) after basically every word. Edit: TIL there's a Wikipedia article dedicated to the "r after every word" in Beijing dialect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhua
那个 doesn't have a hard r in the Beijing dialect either.
Source: lived in Beijing for 5 years & wife is from Beijing.
Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge
#75This doesn't make sense to me at all. Like.. in Spanish the word "negro" is "black". Can Spanish teachers now no longer use that word? Crazy. It's like when chat filters (e.g in games) censor words based on the 'English' language. When I chat in dutch / flemish, my friends just see me censored for quite common words in our language. And they're often not even spelled the same as the English word that is bad.
Two countries in the world are called Niger and Nigeria. Shall we stop talking about those countries too?
Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge
#76Two possible futures for ill-informed over-political correctness: 1. It continues to be pushed by those at the tops of organizations, which leads to a new pseudo-language of baby-talk that is constructed to be as inoffensive as possible. Simultaneously a ‘black market’ counter-culture emerges of those who don’t comply. 2. The entire enterprise collapses under its own weight and exhaustion. People get tired of being o…
> The entire enterprise collapses under its own weight and exhaustion. People get tired of being offended and move on.
You'd hope so. But that complaint in the article might have happened regardless: it only takes a few indefatigable die-hards to keep that machine going.
Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge
#77Again, context is everything. What an utterly spineless, pathetic response from a risk averse management type - to throw their colleague under the bus.
> Again, context is everything.
Exactly. Otherwise it is nothing more than a politically correct reaction to everything that moves in the direction of what they think is 'offensive'. Even if it unintentionally "sounds" like it.
For the professor there is no 'Please, I can explain...' and there is no redemption. Instantly found guilty. This is the clownworld order folks.
Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge
#78>psychological safety of our students
Are those student's even allowed to watch the news or is "Detective Barbie" the only watchable thing?
Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge
#79> "Professor Greg Patton repeated several times a Chinese word that sounds very similar to a vile racial slur in English. Understandably, this caused great pain and upset among students, and for that I am deeply sorry. It is simply unacceptable for faculty to use words in class that can marginalize, hurt and harm the psychological safety of our students. We must and we will do better." It's unbelievable that this "un…
Yup, this "excuse letter" looks exactly like what a victim of a sham trial would write under Stalin or Mao. This is frightening.
Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge
#80I heard nega (as in negative), not niga (as in shenanigan), are my ears off?
If you grew up speaking mandarin, you would likely hear it yet a different way.