Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 540 posts

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#311

Post by coredog64 »

csunbird wrote: post #75
Insanity wrote: post #38

This 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?

25 years ago (give or take), a man filed a lawsuit against Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia. He was helping his son write a report on Niger but accidentally added a letter. The emotional distress it caused to him and his son led to the lawsuit.

TL;DR: There is nothing new under the sun.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#312

Post by Klinky »

phkahler wrote: post #291
Klinky wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uttering a word someone finds offensive "with the best intentions" doesn't make it less offensive. If you continue to utter the word, then your intentions are probably not as pure as you think.

>> Uttering a word someone finds offensive "with the best intentions" doesn't make it less offensive. It was a Norwegian word probably new to those offended. Isnt the offense absurd? Nobody should bend for that.

I am guessing the word here is "neger", and is more akin to the US use of the word "negro" than the slur "Nier"[looks like HN censors even my censored version of the slur to "Nier"]. Even in the US "negro" has mostly fallen out of general use, and is considered derogatory in most casual contexts.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#313

Post by corey_moncure »

neonate wrote: post #244
Yetanfou wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how those who want to find the cause of their failure in other people's success eventually deal with the fact that Nigerian immigrants into the USA are far more successful compared to African Americans while they are visually indistinguishable from them. Will the Nigerians be accused of having some form of privilege? Will they be called 'white' just like Asians are now often considered to be 'white'? Will sa…

It's not so hard to understand. The issue is the legacy of slavery, and Nigerian immigrants aren't dealing with that.

Nigerians today have to deal with the legacy of colonialism, war, pogroms and famine. (1)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Civil_War "The Nigerian Civil War (also known as the Biafran War and the Nigerian-Biafran War) ... between 500,000 and 3 million Biafran civilians died of starvation."

This is just scratching the surface.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#314

Post by shajznnckfke »

javajosh wrote: post #278

This action is so obviously wrong I can't but wonder if its not some prank. It would be an ideal prank for the Chinese in particular, to audit the course (at first as an attempt to see how Chinese language and culture is taught here), and then stumble upon this coincidental pronunciation, in the context of a tinder-dry atmosphere of political correctness, and send in (multiple) complaints and watch America burn just…

> We need to accept the truth that there are real differences between people (even groups of people) and celebrate those differences and not pretend they don't exist.

Is this a position that lots of people disagree with? You see the left talk a lot about the value of diversity, and you see the right talk a lot about differences between groups of people.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#315

Post by newsbinator »

Reminds me of this (2011):

https://www.amren.com/news/2011/08/foreigner_on_ko/

> “A video is circulating on the Korean Internet of a black gentleman yelling at and threatening an elderly Korean couple. His violent behavior was the result of him misunderstanding the elderly man’s comment to him. The elderly man reportedly said “니가 여기 앉아” (a sign of consideration) (“You can sit here” = Niga Yuh gi anja”), but not knowing Korean, the man in question interpreted “니가” as the N-word which led to his violent outburst.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#316

Post by tootie »

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.

How many times have you read a story like this? Like 5 times in the last 10 years? It gets a lot of headlines because it's ridiculous, but it isn't common.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#317

Post by darawk »

geofft wrote: post #307
darawk wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radical ideas can be presented just as civilly as conservative ideas. Noam Chomsky does a perfectly fine job of being civil.

Sure, and I think they are being presented civilly - the "math is racist" CNN article is quite mild in tone https://money.cnn.com/2016/09/06/technology/weapons-of-math-... - but that doesn't help much when your interlocutors think that certain ideas are inherently uncivil. (The problem in some sense is the opposite of what the interlocutors say - "racist" is a well-defined term, and one can debate whether a thing is…

> Sure, and I think they are being presented civilly - the "math is racist" CNN article is quite mild in tone https://money.cnn.com/2016/09/06/technology/weapons-of-math-.... - but that doesn't help much when your interlocutors think that certain ideas are inherently uncivil.

I don't think anyone thinks the "math is racist" article is uncivil. I think they think it's stupid. And the title "math is racist" is pretty undeniably laughable.

The content of the article "Sometimes mathematical tools are used to reinforce aspects of racial inequality" is much more reasonable. But people dislike this because it's a motte and bailey argument - the headline "math is racist" is a ridiculous proposition that is totally unsupported by the content of the article.

> (The problem in some sense is the opposite of what the interlocutors say - "racist" is a well-defined term, and one can debate whether a thing is racist or not, but they're not willing to engage with any argument that something is racist, and they respond to it by shutting down debate and saying their opponents are unreasonable.)

There is no serious argument that 'math' is racist. There are serious arguments that mathematical tools have been and are used to reinforce racial inequality. That is nowhere near the same thing as "math is racist".

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#318

Post by pedroma »

koonsolo wrote: post #142

Am I the only one who finds it very ironic that you can't use the "n-word" because it offends the African American community. Yet when you listen to rap music, it's all nigga this and nigga that. Makes me wonder if these offended students first complain, and then drive home singing along with Snoop Dogg.

So is it okay to sing along to Snoop Dogg and say the n-word, or no? I'm actually unsure, since my close friends wouldn't care.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#319

Post by oh_sigh »

seodisparate wrote: post #29

So in Korean, the word for "you" is 니가 (pronounced "nee-gah"). Example usage: 니가 언제 먹었어요? (When did you eat? "Nee-gah un-jeh mug-uss-uh-yo") I can't help but wonder if the use of this word would also elicit a similar reaction... EDIT: I briefly forgot this, but there is a similar Korean word "내가" which is "me" or "I", and pronounced "ne-gah". Example usage: 내가 이 밥을 먹었어요. (I ate this food. "Ne-ga ee bap-uhl mug-uss-uh…

Here's a fight(more like an assault on the elderly) that broke out between a black American on a South Korean bus because the elderly people, who probably don't speak a word of English or know English racial slurs, referred to him as "you" in their own language in their own country: https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/88xlz4/a_bl...

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#320

Post by kristjansson »

And at no point before it got this far did anyone ask ‘perhaps, part of the knowledge we’re buying for $120,000 and part of the value our future employers will impute into that degree is the cultural literacy and emotional competence to discern when a Chinese colleague is saying “ummmmm” and when they’re casually tossing out racial epitaphs midsentence?’
Post reply on HN