Professor on Leave After Using Chinese Word That Sounded Like Black Slur
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A California professor has been replaced for uttering a Chinese word that sounds—in English—like a racist slur, the LA Times reports. Seriously?
Greg Patton was teaching an online communications course for the University of Southern California students when he discussed the importance of pausing and using “er” and “um” as filler words. “Like in China the common word is ‘that’ —’that, that, that, that,'” he said in August (see video here). “So in China it might be ‘nèi ge’—‘nèi ge, nèi ge, nèi ge.’
So there are different words that you’ll hear in different countries, but they’re vocal disfluencies.” Nèi ge can be pronounced NAH-guh or NAY-guh in Mandarin, and Patton used the latter pronunciation. Some students said it sounded too much like the N-word. Good grief. What’s next? Don’t say ‘trigger’ or ‘figure.’ You’re liable to lose your jobs.
There are over 10,000 characters in the Chinese written language and to use this phrase … is hurtful and unacceptable to our USC Marshall community,” Black master’s candidates wrote in a letter to Marshall School of Business Dean Geoffrey Garrett—who responded by telling MBA students that Patton’s use of the word “understandably … caused great pain.”
Patton was soon on temporary leave from the course and issued a letter that both apologized and defended his use of nèi ge. In a twist, roughly 100 USC alumni—most of them Chinese—wrote the school defending Patton’s use of the word and condemning the “spurious charge.”
USC Annenberg Media quotes an MBA student of Korean descent who calls the incident “overdramatized” and says he doubts “the professor meant any harm.”
Of course, he meant no harm. This craziness needs to stop before it does irreparable damage not only to the use of language but to our society in general, and yes, I know, slavery and all that.
As part of a sweeping reassessment of all things either favorable to the police or upsetting to the black community, the latest target is “Paw Patrol.” What?
That’s right. No less an authority than the New York Times informs us that the Nick Jr. cartoon–featuring a squad of canines running around helping other creatures–is too positive toward the cops. I can’t make this up.
Thanks to Newser, and FOX NEWS for contributions.
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Because Spanish has gendered nouns, one has to choose a gender when using english to describe such a person who speaks Spanish. It won’t do in English, so we make up pseudospanish where gender doesn’t apply. Hence no Latino or Latina, but a LatinX. I suspect this might come to apply to other nationalities like filipineX. So far it’s just newsreaders and reporters. Spanish speakers don’t seem to have any problem with speaking Spanish. As I’ve said too many times, gender in language does not relate to the treatment of people in countries speaking those languages, but who listens. It’s getting crazy out there.
Read an article about the wildfires in california and the “reporter” mentioned that one was set off by a “gender reveal” party setting off fireworks. Most of the article was about “forcing” people into binary gender roles which of course is more important than billions of dollars of property damage and ruined lives. There is no hope for sanity in our time
Thanks, and you are right—there is no hope for sanity in our time.
I don’t know acceptable “negro” is so please don’t be offended if I use it for purposes of illustration. Years ago when I was studying Portuguese (the word is the same in Spanish) I was told to avoid it, but fortunately it never came up.
But yes Jay-guh and Nay-guh — this and that – are common words. That’s the only pronunciation I’ve heard, but as you know, dialects abound. I have embarrassing stories of mispronounced words, ( did you know the common word for pig is almost indistinguishable to the western ear from a word for “God?” but that’s for another day.
This one that one. You’ll learn it on day one if you take Chinese 101. You might say “Jay shr shummuh” or maybe “Jay-guh shr shumma” to ask “what’s that?” But in this day of presumptive racism best to keep one’s mouth shut.
You can’t win. I remember in the 90s a big commotion on some campus because someone shouted at a black student from a window calling him/her what the newspapers said meant Water Buffalo in Yiddish. Of course the word, pronounced “bahayma” was really Behemoth – one of the mythical beasts from the book of Job. I’m not sure there is a name for the Water Buffalo in Hebrew but it’s “Vasser Buflicks in Yiddish, or something close to that” Nothing more ridiculous than the young, ignorant and self-righteous.
And once again last night I heard “Latinx” used on MSNBC, I get nothing but laughs from Spanish speakers.
When a culture fails, the language is the first thing to go.
Glenn, precisely what is “Latinx” supposed to mean? Is it the plural of Latin, or perhaps a Latin person who is married to an Aardvark? It’s all so confusing these days…
I remember years ago a black principle talking to me and saying how strange it was that people could easily say “hero and Nero but just could not manage to say the word negro, which is still and acceptable word.”
Time to think about leaving the country, especially if Trump is reelected. This pendulum has swung too far left to ‘intolerable.’
Is this really “left?” Not in any sense of the word I’m aware of. It’s just another cult in my opinion. I just read a long bit about how western classical music is based on racism. That’s not liberal, just the revenge of the minorities. New criteria for winning an oscar now include mandatory numbers of black people involved in every aspect so you can expect fewer movies from places that don’t have many of those.
Welcome to the politically correct world of the offended generation
It just gets crazier and crazier out there. One has to wonder where this will end?