Late last month, Greg Patton, the professor, was teaching a lesson on “filler words” in other languages -- think “err,” “um” or “like” in English -- in his master’s-level course on communication for management.
“Taking a break between ideas can help bring the audience in,” Patton said, according to a recording of one of the Zoom course sections and a transcription that appeared next to him on screen. “In China,” for instance, he continued, “the common pause word is ‘that that that.’ So in China it might be ne ga, ne ga, ne ga.”
Patton, who has worked in China but is not a scholar of Chinese, did not warn students that 那个, or ne ga, (alternatively spelled nà ge and nèige) sounds something like the N-word -- which it does. And some or all of the Black students across three sections of the course were offended by what they’d heard.
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