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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

#321

Post by galimaufry »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #298
anonu wrote: post #255

The comment at the end is spot on: Please know that there are many people that support you and are sick of this hyper-sensitive, McCarthyism-like environment that is being fostered across the country." My view on this is it's the culmination of years of anti free speech trends on campus. It's a sad day when universities which should be bastions of tolerance, exploration and ideas have their culture consistently chipp…

I have said this before and will continue to say this: to put an end to this, liberals in the United States need to openly repudiate identity politics progressivism and cancel culture. Former-President Obama has ( https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/obama-woke-ca... ); we should too. Please speak up and, more importantly, please vote for old-school liberals instead of progressives.

Politics isn't going to solve this. You could elect an anti-PC theorist like Donald Trump, or an old school liberal like Nancy Pelosi, and this sort of thing would keep happening.

The real solution is just awareness. As people see more examples of this sort of thing going wrong they will be more careful about it.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#323

Post by jnurmine »

DC-3 wrote: post #59
Symbiote wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Students of Swedish or Danish at this university will (presumably) be ignorant of the word "slut" (end, finished), and maybe the number six ("sex" / "seks") too. "We will start the Danish course with the numbers. En, to, tre, fire, fem, fem plus en, syv, otte, ni, ti."

I'm currently studying Danish and can't help but be amused when every 'lyt og gentag' exercise ends with 'slut'. But just as in the OP, it's not even the same vowel as the English word, so the resemblance is only passing. How absurd that careers may be ruined by using the wrong two consonants next to each other. How absurd that we call it progress.

In Swedish, the last station of e.g. a subway line (the terminus) is a "slutstation". (slut=end, station=station)

It should be the same word in Danish, too.

I've seen native English speakers giggle at that word, for obvious reasons -- when this word pops up all of a sudden while in a mass transit, and one interprets it as an English word, the association is truly bizarre.

But of course the word obviously does not mean some kind of a prostitute central, just like "nà ge" is not part of rap music lyrics.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#324

Post by Klinky »

marvin wrote: post #297
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.

That seems like an unreasonable statement when meeting a culture that's not your own. Let's say you're offended by the word "blank" because of cultural transgressions that have happened throughout the last 100 years of history in your country. You then emigrate to a different culture that hasn't experienced the context of these transgressions. The word "blank" is in their language used in a purely descriptive sense.…

There is obviously nuance, but if the word sounds like a slur, and is used generally to describe people of a certain race, then the offended can certainly express their offense, and the culture should consider the offended person's position.

In this case I am pretty sure the word is "neger", and yeah, I don't think we should mourn or handwring over any sort of great loss of Norweigian culture/heritage that has occurred due to them being more sensitive to using that word to describe black people. Cultures evolve.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#325

Post by galimaufry »

whiddershins wrote: post #294
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…

It would never be accidental. In China, English language students are taught to break that habit for fear of it being misinterpreted by a native English speaker. It could be opportunistically malicious though, to feign outrage. That’s not beyond the realm of possibility at all. Edit: people are asking how I ‘know’ this. —— It is anecdotal, so I should have phrased it more carefully. When I was in mainland China about…

> In China, English language students are taught to break that habit for fear of it being misinterpreted by a native English speaker.

Based on my Chinese colleagues this is not true, or at least is not universal, or it changed within the last 3 years.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#326

Post by wildrhythms »

throwaway9221 wrote: post #300
anonu wrote: post #255

The comment at the end is spot on: Please know that there are many people that support you and are sick of this hyper-sensitive, McCarthyism-like environment that is being fostered across the country." My view on this is it's the culmination of years of anti free speech trends on campus. It's a sad day when universities which should be bastions of tolerance, exploration and ideas have their culture consistently chipp…

It's not confined to universities, either. This growing list of "forbidden words" is making its way into the corporate world, too. Coupled with spineless HR who don't know how to constructively deal with people who claim to be offended. My current company is undertaking a massive, probably thousand man-year (sorry, person-year), effort to scrub all its internal and external documentation and even source code of any f…

Can you kindly provide an example of the type of behavior you might engage in at work in absence of the 'woke patrol' (as you described it)?

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#327

Post by OminousWeapons »

throwaway9221 wrote: post #300
anonu wrote: post #255

The comment at the end is spot on: Please know that there are many people that support you and are sick of this hyper-sensitive, McCarthyism-like environment that is being fostered across the country." My view on this is it's the culmination of years of anti free speech trends on campus. It's a sad day when universities which should be bastions of tolerance, exploration and ideas have their culture consistently chipp…

It's not confined to universities, either. This growing list of "forbidden words" is making its way into the corporate world, too. Coupled with spineless HR who don't know how to constructively deal with people who claim to be offended. My current company is undertaking a massive, probably thousand man-year (sorry, person-year), effort to scrub all its internal and external documentation and even source code of any f…

That's honestly just poor leadership from scared management. Management should be clearly articulating the mission, goals, and "culture" (for lack of a better word) of the company. This gives management and other employees grounds to challenge well meaning but unnecessary social action by forcing proponents to explain how those social actions would align with / further the goals, mission, and culture of the org. Usually proponents of these woke policies are not capable of doing this.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#328

Post by shajznnckfke »

least wrote: post #295
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.

Why is the onus on the speaker to change their behavior to accommodate a person who's taken offense to a a word that is completely innocuous?

If the speakers knows they are causing offense by using a word that was used to subjugate slaves, it starts to look like an extension of that racial subjugation. The word was used by speakers of a different language, and didn’t historically have the same meaning in Norway. But given the increased cultural and economic integration present in modern society, we all have to become a little bit aware of issues that are affecting people we interact with, in order to be decent citizens. At the same time, if somebody doesn’t know the pain they are causing, we should inform them with kindness and forgiveness.

After the Holocaust, some terms historically used to describe Jewish people became verboten, essentially out of respect for the serious nature of the consequences of anti-Semitism. Do you think it’s unjust that this cultural prohibition extends to nations that didn’t participate in the Holocaust? Might it be appropriate to treat the international calamity that is slavery with the same seriousness?

To answer your question more directly: The onus is mostly on the people who were subjugated to continue suffering the lasting effects of that. The burden on the people who find out that a word they use causes harm seems quite small in comparison (a good example of a “first world problem”). Whether that burden is too harsh to bear is up to each individual.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#329

Post by jasonjei »

Nbox9 wrote: post #301
tgv wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's apparently a common word, a demonstrative pronoun, similar to "that". Pretty hard to avoid without language acrobatics.

Did you watch the video of him using it? While it’s a very common phrase while speaking Mandarin, and while I do not think this is a fireable offense, the professor could have chosen one of dozens of other examples in his lecture very easily.

Are you an expert in Chinese? What, in your opinion, is a suitable alternative example in Mandarin Chinese, then, that is commonly used by speakers of Mandarin Chinese?

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#330

Post by xucheng »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #274

Anyone who is taught to look for racism everywhere - no matter how minor - will find it everywhere. The false-positive rate must be astronomical.

Ironically, the whole over-reaction can be seen as a form of culture imperialism. Punishing people for using other language is itself racism, in this case, to the Chinese minorities. Last time I check, there is no official language in US.
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