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Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

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Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#131

Post by OJFord »

The craziest thing about this is that it wasn't - as I initially assumed - a misunderstanding. The Dean's email says the professor used 'a Chinese word that sounds very similar to a vile racial slur in English'.. 'Chinese'.. 'similar'... ok, yes, and?

Edit: No - wait, it gets weirder - http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/zoom_0.mp4?_=1 - he even introduces it! He doesn't just use it himself, he's actually talking about it!

> in China the common word [for pauses in speech] is 'that', so you might say 'that-that-that': 'nage-nage-nage'

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#133

Post by __blockcipher__ »

kebman wrote: post #89
dgellow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without trying to be alarmist, I have a feeling that's slowly spreading to Europe too, at least France and Germany.

The Norwegian word for blacks used to be something that isn't allowed to be uttered anymore. It started becoming a problem only after we got a few black American migrants, and other migrants influenced by American culture to Norway. These people didn't understand the context of the word, and so they became violently offended when anyone used the word, even if the the word has always been a completely harmless descrip…

> ... or forcing someone to submit to arbitrary rules to avoid that they get offended, even if you utter such words with the best of intentions.

Spoiler alert: this one is worse.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#134

Post by undecisive »

ppf wrote: post #119
nix23 wrote: post #78

>psychological safety of our students Are those student's even allowed to watch the news or is "Detective Barbie" the only watchable thing?

Detective Barbie is very problematic due to extensive transphobic and gender-normative storytelling. Here at the UCC (University of Corrected Culture), we only allow our students to watch videos of kittens.

I'm writing to tell you how deeply offended we are by your flagrant use of s_xualized language in a technology-based forum. It's utterly reprehensible to use a word so closely related to the P-word in a context where people might not reasonably expect to encounter it, and you appear to have no remorse for doing so. Please remove this horrible word (ki____ns) immediately or we'll have no choice but to report you to the moderators.

(Just a joke... for now...)

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#135

Post by skrebbel »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #129

[flagged]

> decades-long subversion campaigns

I get where you're coming from, but by phrasing it this way you draw up the image of a secret cabal of influential marxists waging a "campaign" via gullible students. That's not really doing the rest of your argument justice.

As always, the much more likely story is that these students are gullible and silly totally by their own means.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#136

Post by bonoboTP »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #95

Honestly, I'm shocked everytime I read this stuff from american universities. Why is this happening? Because it's not the first nor second time that I read about events similar to this one.

The leadership is afraid of getting canceled themselves by not acting concerned enough, so they try to save their asses by running in front. Just a way to hold on to one's job in the current environment. I don't think they are true believers.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#137

Post by mytailorisrich »

latch wrote: post #19

This word means "uhmm" and you can hear it dozens of times in a single conversation. It sounds like an English-language racial slur, but you stop being surprised to hear it pretty quickly when living in China. The story isn't loading for me, so I don't know the context, if this was a native Mandarin speaker speaking in Mandarin... Reminds me of the time someone pointed out that "salut" the french for "hi" sounds like…

Chinese sometimes joke that "bonjour" sounds like 胖猪 (pangzhu, which means 'fat pig').

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#138

Post by jhanschoo »

In combating against bigotry, it is important that we do not become bigots ourselves.

Regarding painful words, it is my position that policies against uttering them (for people without any intent to hurt) must essentially be no more a courtesy to those sensitized against them, because of words with multiple meanings and foreign languages with different meanings, and also because what is taboo on one society may not be taboo in another. Punishing the reasonably ignorant seems to be immoral to me.

Being sensitized to painful words spoken by people who don't mean them seems to me that it needs to be counted not on the person who says them and does not mean them, but on the people who said them and meant them and made people sensitized to them in the first place. It is the continued damage created by bigots, making words that in some situations are necessary to speak (or far too inconvenient to not use) painful to some because of their bigoted use. The rest of us can try to avoid them, but morality-wise, it looks to me more supererogatory for those in a position to do so rather than a moral obligation.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#140

Post by nix23 »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #129

[flagged]

>But why are the students like that in the first place

Show their might over others probably.

Please leave Marx alone, he was the guy that spoke against the royalty and for a fair system. Lenin and Stalin of course is a complete different thing.

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