USC Professor suspended for saying Chinese word that starts with N

Yao almost got his ass kicked by Mobley for saying that N word to Colin Pine when they speak Chinese.

 

Patton "agreed to take a short term pause while we are reviewing to better understand the situation and to take any appropriate next steps."

Some people have not yet learned how highlighting works.

 

Whitey needs to learn to read the room. Sounded more like "*****" than "nuga" or "neiga", but who cares amirite...I'm blaming our Ugly American culture that takes pride in one-language guud.

 

A guy got in trouble for using English before too: "*****rdly."
America pays the price of being idiotic.

P.S. The Chinese is transliterated "na ge"
那个

 

Better than when the French pres' wife said in English "Everyone wants a penis" [happiness]

 

Guys a thing that have bugged me over the years, why is that African americans are ready to go to war over the use of the n word even in instances like this one where people know it’s not on purpose or with racist intent. Even to the extent of counseling. but will use it themselves proudly, to the point where whole songs use the n word at the end of every verse.

As a Chinese growing up in nz, I hated people calling me “chink”, got into a lot of fights over it (nz can be quiet racist). I would not use the word, or accept other Chinese using it knowing that it’s a derogatory term.

Guys, I am by no means trying to find an excuse for using the n word. I ****en hate racists, no matter the skin color. I know all too well the hardships of being on the receiving end of racism. I am sincerely asking here. So if I did offend u, I apologize up front

 

That pronunciation might be what got him in trouble. The right way of saying it is either with Na, or Nay, instead of ni

But a second language is hard so will reserve judgement.

 

It could also be different way to pronounce the same word, which is pretty common in all languages.

What if there is a foreign word that sounds exactly like the n or other off limit words?

 

Point was that the proper way of saying that word is Na which is what one would've learned studying a second language. Using Nay is instead of Na is common in China though so that can be fair. But going full N word is not done, and the bad pronunciation can be intentional.

That said, when learning a second language, one tends to link it to sound like words in their native vocabulary so that might be what happened here.

 

Understood. I hope it’s not intentional.

As for my other comment on the what if scenario - if there is a word that sounds exactly the same, then it’s unfortunate but I hope people would not go as far as saying you can’t use it.

When I first read about this, I thought that’s what happen - that you can’t even use foreign word that sounds like the n word. I very much disagree with that.

 

"Nai Ga" is the Chinese word he was pronouncing.

"Nig ger" is the derrogatory N word.

 

I don’t think a Black person got offended by this. A Chinese person reported the professor.

 

you know this, because of what ?

 

Cat now works for Fox Radio in the LA/SD area, AM 570. he and the sports talk show host, Steve Hartman, were talking about this fake controversy at USC,
w specific references to his interactions w Yao and Pine. in their communication, Yao and Pine used "Nai Ga" frequently; Kat thought he heard "nig ga"

Cat has come to understand that it is a communication filler, meaningless, indigenous to the Chinese culture,

a la new yorkers saying "forget about it"


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fwiw, "nai ga" is a Mandarin pronounciation,

i am from a Cantonese speaking Chinese family,
in Cantonese, a dialect spoken by some Southerners, it is pronounced "nee Gor"
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I heard it wrong. The black students consulted with a Chinese classmate, who told them that the pronunciation is different from how the professor said it.

 

In this case, it's more like dumb person rocking a foreign language tattoo not knowing what it really means or having proper context. He used it to sound worldly and none of his Chinese colleagues bothered to correct him.

I'm not sure how rap music pronunciation of the n word became so traumatizing to Black students inside classes but something's gotta give.

False entitlement or victimization isn't going to feed any mouths. It will set people back though

 

I'm guessing there is more to this story. USC has had a lot of Chinese students and also ethnically Chinese and other faculty who speak Mandarin not to mention the whole LA area has tons of Mandarin speakers. Much of the staff, leadership and student body of USC likely would've heard those words used quite a bit with a variety of pronunciations.

I speak with more of a Taiwanese accent and the way I learned to pronounce it would be with different inflections such as asking "That one?' it would sound like "Na Ge?" Stating "This one" it would be more like "Ne Ge" which would be closer in sound to the N-word. My guess has always been that since Colin Pine lived in Taiwan for awhile his pronunciation was probably more Taiwanese like so when he said it probably sounded more jarring to Mobley especially coming from a white guy.

Fun story. I used the the story of Mobley getting offended about Yao and Mobley saying "那个" in a lecture to a business group on cross cultural misunderstanding a few years ago.

 

Yeah... I wonder how Russell Peters would be treated today with that joke...