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Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

501–510 of 540 posts

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#501
post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO - you would be wrong. It is a perfectly good word. This horse-shit has to stop.

I don't know, you can tell that some people definitely like to play a verbal version of the "I'm not touching you" game, or get off on telling people "actually, it's not a slur". Obviously I'm not referring to what happened to this professor, though

> Obviously I'm not referring to what happened to this professor, though

Why not? He mispronounced a word, and seems to have deliberately chosen it in order to be provocative. There are a million different pause words he could have used instead.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#502
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the need to judge and condemn here? If it’s such a common word in Chinese speech, have you considered that it may be a common word for him?

He's a white communications professor from USA, so no not really

From his CV[1]:

- "Professor Patton primarily teaches in USC’s Full-Time MBA Program and its Executive MBA Programs in the U.S. and China"

- "He has served as a key advisor to the Center for Asian-Pacific Leadership, a faculty member at the US-China Institute and a leader of MBA learning programs in China and Korea."

[1]: https://www.marshall.usc.edu/sites/default/files/gpatton/pci...

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#503
post #307
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…

It's a completely clickbait headline (like most things you'll find on sensationalist outlets like CNN). If you read the full article, there's not anything like a claim that "math is racist".

My only takeaway from this is just another point to deduct from CNN's credibility, rather than that this author is saying "math is racist".

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#504

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…

"You" and "me" are pronunced "nee-gah" and "ne-gah"? Those sound very similar, does that ever lead to misunderstandings?

Do you ever misunderstand dean and den?

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#506
post #40

> "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…

To have Prof. Patton suspend for this, I'd argue this has cause great pain to Chinese speaker to see a legitimate phrase, correctly used and taught (by a foreigner no less), be deemed racially inflammatory, with the Prof. suspended.

I'm not gonna lie, my blood boiled over this one.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#507
post #87

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.

> 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. I'm Dutch and play AoE2 with some friends. The in game chat is basically useless for us. Just about every Dutch sentence will be blocked. We tried switching to English, but every color (!) is now also banned. Asking "who is j…

You're reminding me of the Swedish word for terminus station: https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto...

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most racial justice activists don't agree - they believe that there's significant ongoing racism in addition to the legacy of slavery.

They may well be right about that, and yet there's still an obvious difference there. Also, keep in mind that immigrants tend nowadays to come from the better-off strata of their home societies. There was a study about this making the rounds just recently, but I've unfortunately forgotten what it was called.

Additionally, it's important to note that modern day racism is more damaging to already marginalized groups or those that have historically suffered from it.

In other words, a well educated Nigerian immigrant may not be damaged as much by the same level of racism as a Black person decended from slaves.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#509
post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may well be right about that, and yet there's still an obvious difference there. Also, keep in mind that immigrants tend nowadays to come from the better-off strata of their home societies. There was a study about this making the rounds just recently, but I've unfortunately forgotten what it was called.

Additionally, it's important to note that modern day racism is more damaging to already marginalized groups or those that have historically suffered from it. In other words, a well educated Nigerian immigrant may not be damaged as much by the same level of racism as a Black person decended from slaves.

There exists an underclass in Ireland who have the same origin as the other Irish - but have many of the issues that exist in the African-American community.

Live to about 50, developed a different dialect, very high crime rate - expected to be underestimated, constant violence, high domestic abuse, high illiteracy, very large families, living in squalor.

Doesn't fit neatly into any faction's magic box of solutions.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#510
post #442
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the basic algorithm, but there are quite a few additional factors- see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html .

That document could use a clarification for the "Ask HN or Show HN" section. I didn't see an option to make an "Ask HN or Show HN" in the UI. Do we just add that text manually? Does the software recognize it as special keywords? If so, is it case-sensitive and does it need spaces or a colon?

Ask HN is just for text posts (submissions with no URLs). That's stated there.

Show HN is explained in the rules that are linked to from the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

... so it seems like all the information is present? Admittedly in a somewhat cryptic form.

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