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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

#331

Post by abruzzi »

foepys wrote: post #44
himinlomax wrote: post #33

I've always found the US obsession with taboo words quite baffling. I used to tease Americans of my acquaintance by pretending to be offended when they said "oh my god" (dildo in French) or nick (fuck.) Context matters a lot in linguistic, and the Sapir-Worff hypothesis is not just unproven, it's almost certainly completely wrong.

Also with sexuality. My worry is that with the American cultural imperialism through Hollywood our European liberal approach to sexuality will become more puritanical. E.g. sex only after 18, teenage sex is more or less illegal (19y/o with a 17y/o). Friends of mine already think that American laws around sexuality are valid worldwide and sex with an under-18 is forbidden. Which is absolutely false in the case of Germ…

Age of consent in the US varies from state to state, with the lowest being, I believe 14 years old in some states. The "18 or older" mentality probably has more to do with working in porn, hence all the "barely 18" type labels.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#332

Post by tootie »

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…

That's a vast overstatement. To the point of being ridiculous. This kind of thing happens more than it used to but is still extremely rare. And in this case represents a misunderstanding. McCarthyism was also a government initiative. Private universities can do whatever they want. Someplace like Liberty University actively censors and punishes liberal views, but people are less likely to get upset because it's expected.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#334

Post by TechBro8615 »

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.

I think this is all a huge overreaction. But I also watched the video and honestly it looked like he was saying it because he knew he could get away with it. That's the most likely explanation for why he picked Chinese as an example of another language's "um" word. Just IMO though, no way to know for sure. It was at least tactless. He knew how it would sound.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#335

Post by csomar »

gatvol wrote: post #28

Again, context is everything. What an utterly spineless, pathetic response from a risk averse management type - to throw their colleague under the bus.

I did some Chinese courses last year and "na ge" is something that will get repeated frequently because of how Chinese make their sentences. There is another one "nei ge". They are an important part of the Chinese language.

Edit: just watched the video. He was not teaching a chinese course. A bit of a suspicious example he picked if you ask me.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#336

Post by a1369209993 »

darkerside wrote: post #292
pas wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, just a vocal minority, let's say a plurality is enough.

With Twitter, now all it takes is one person and maybe 100 stars (none of which may actually be real). The "mouthpiece of democracy" is completely broken.

> The "mouthpiece of democracy" is completely broken.

As... I don't remember where put it: You are not the voice of the people; you just happen to be loud, and wearing a microphone.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#337

Post by sudosteph »

Just from watching that lecture - he seems like a genuinely good professor. He provided tons of context before he introduced that example, and it's a real-world example from a language that nearly a billion humans speak. By choosing an example that is from a language that is foreign to most of his students - he's helping his students understand that the actual concept he's teaching is not just an english linguistic feature or a western-centric mannerism - it's a communication pattern that occurs widely.

I feel bad for the future UCS students who will miss out on his class. I also wonder to what degree this decision will have a chilling effect on the content of other lecturers at UCS. Could history professors see this as a reason to exclude primary content that reflects the racist realities of the past? Or maybe music professors will reconsider whether they can teach the work of artists who might be cultural appropriation? It's hard to say.

I hope that another university makes this professor a job offer - or at least speaks out in support of his teaching. This seems so bizarre that I can only reckon with it by imagining it's a west-coast cultural phenomenon. I certainly wouldn't imagine this going down the same way in my home state (North Carolina) - but maybe I'm underestimating how pervasive this extreme sensitivity trend really is. There WAS an incident with a professor who got suspended at NC State recently ( https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article235... ) but in that case - the professor was publicly mocking his students in a way that may or may not have been interpreted as sexist. Even if the suspension for that scenario actually overkill (which I think it was) - it seems crazy pants to put the professor who was thoughtfully teaching a lecture in the same category as one who gets a kick out of insulting students for laughs.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#338

Post by hitekker »

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…

> It would never be accidental.

As someone with a number of friends from the mainland, I can assure you it does happen by accident. None of them were taught to avoid saying “na ge” because it is the English equivalent of "that" or "that one".

Where are you getting your information from?

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#339

Post by valuearb »

I once said in a senior staff meeting that we shouldn’t be niggardly with employee benefits. A disturbing quiet dropped over the room and I realized a half dozen white men and women were staring at me, while uncomfortably not making eye contact with our African American Business Development director.

The CEO rebuked me saying that was not the type of language I should be using. The Director of Business Development then spoke, he was a Stanford graduate who was always the nicest smartest guy in the room. He gently corrected the CEO, saying exactly what I understood, it was an Old English term meaning cheapness that had no connection (other than its sound) to the racial insult and he wasn’t offended at all.

Thank god for Johns erudite knowledge of historic English words and his omnipresent empathy but think it illustrates an important point. Intent should matter. Even if the word I used had a connection to a racial slur, I would have been unaware and in no way would intentionally use such a slur, not alone in a group of white men let alone in front of a valued colleague.

That word can never leave my mental database of descriptive terms and phrases, but I fight against its use even more so today, afraid it might unconsciously slip out.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#340

Post by vianneychevalie »

wildrhythms wrote: post #326
throwaway9221 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)?

In my personal case it would be using the words « master » and « slave » when talking about interfacing databases
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