USC Professor suspended for saying Chinese word that starts with N

From my own experiences in the PRC yes "那个" is used sometimes as a filler.

Reading the LA Times article about it I do find it disturbing. As I said it seems very odd to me that at USC that term wouldn't have been heard many times before. Also that the students felt their mental health was damaged? Seriously this goes to what Obama said in 2015 when he criticized the idea of "safe spaces" on colleges. There he was taking on the idea of not tolerating disagreement but this isn't even about disagreement but about misinterpretation.

If these students felt their mental health was harmed they will have a very hard dealing with the PRC or Taiwan or even Singapore where Mandarin is widely spoken.

 

replace students w snowflakes.

fwiw, Mandarin is also spoken in some parts of Viet Nam.

the immigrant parents of Zuckerberg's wife had immigrated from Viet Nam.
they're of Chinese ethnicity, and speak Mandarin at home​

 

To be honest what it sounds like or not and if its similar to the n word is also depending on the ear of the beholder.

As an indoeuropean language speaker not only I am TOTALLY tonal deaf but since my language only has 5 vowels even all the english language vowels fly over my head even with many years of learning and practising.

So even if for a mandarin speaker the two words may sound night and day for me it sounds the same.

However even if they were indeed exactly meant to be the same sound it is ignorant and egotistical to be offended by a foreign word with totally different meaning.

 

I agree. This is about intention and I haven't seen anything that would indicated it would indicate there was any intention here other than to point out cultural differences.

 

It's a weak and quintessentially American controversy.

We don't feel the need to learn foreign cultures but raise hell and high water for differences within our cultures.

I suspect the mental distress part is selling to the refs. Too pathetic to believe that they're future captains of industry but enough to draw attention in the court of opinion

 

Bad news: saying "B" means "pu$$y" in Mandarin.
If you teach English to Chinese, don't say the ABC's out loud: you might get fired

Oh yeah, and my first Chinese boss was named Mr. Cao.
If you say that with a rising tone, that's his name; if you say that with a falling tone, that means "Mr. Fukc." Thank God he was not American.

 

I agree this is a quintessentially American controversy. It is a different form of American Exceptionalism.

 

I just remembered a similar story. When I was at the National University of Singapore one of my professors was "Professor Lu." When he studied in England he was made fun of because "Loo" is English slang for toilet and he was mocked as "Mr. Toilet."

 

Just had a Zoom class with my Chinese students (yeah, it's 5AM in China).
Showed them this video. They were aware of it. Thought it was completely idiotic that the guy got fired. Wished me luck with my American students.

 

I remember the time i had to create an email account for an employee

His name was Oliver Fock

Our standard email name process was...First initial. Last name@xyz.com

So the email account was o.fock@xyz.com.

I got a warning from my supervisor. I knew I should of asked my coworker to create this email account regardless of company procedures.

 

This language policing, whether based in extreme dumbness or not, is the same thing Communist China does. It's how China became what it is today. Communists hate hurtful language. They like helpful language. They require it, in fact. "Progressive" impulses can suck too. . . .

 

Honestly I've heard it as a filler in the US. I even heard it when kids were speaking Mandarin to each other in the hallways in high school. It initially caught me off guard when I heard it but it was common enough to where anyone with common sense could figure out what was going on.

 

Yes that's true and "proper language" is a big deal in the PRC and during the Cultural Revolution many were sentenced to reeducation or worse for using "improper language". I don't think that the CCP would extend that to foreign languages. I can't think of off hand what English words have offensive sounding homonyms in Mandarin but I'm sure there are and I have a hard time seeing people getting offending over an English word with a totally different meaning.

 

You should've told coworker, for emails you had no Focks to give, but that supervisor, she gave Oliver Focks...

 

"dill" for Cantonese speakers

 

Saying "B" means "pu$$y" in Mandarin!
Literally when Chinese kids start learning "ABC," the "B" sounds exactly like "pu$$y." Chinese are not so dumb as Americans though, in this way.

 

Thots and prayers for @sirbaihu not to get suspended in this harrowing time...

 

"That's your happiness and my hap-penis."