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Comment by teekert | Hacker News Reader

It says it means "That one" in Google translate? What's up with this?

I remember noticing in China that it seemed very common in Chinese casual chitchat, but to Western ears it sounded inappropriate. In the context of a lecture, I imagine it would come down to whether the delivery seemed genuinely part of the point or an excuse to push boundaries. Hard to gauge without audio/tone.

I can’t think of why you’d report this unless you had a serious issue with the lecturer or they were being purposefully inappropriate.

Someone linked a video above: https://twitter.com/cabot_phillips/status/130151642427657830...

那（nà,that）个（gè,one）。 Also 'umm, uh, like, so'. English has the same thing, for example when you can't think of a word and just start with 'that, those'.

'Eh, what's that.. that, uh, the name of that function?'

It's pretty easy to mishear it, but 99% of the time you can see from the context that they're not just wildly dropping n-bombs..

It basically sounds like "n*gga" when said fast.

The ponounciation of "那个" in Chinese is similar to "nigger", which makes some students unhappy.

One note - there's no hard r in 那个 unless you're speaking a Beijing dialect. In that case there's hard r's (儿) after basically every word.

Edit: TIL there's a Wikipedia article dedicated to the "r after every word" in Beijing dialect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhua

那个 doesn't have a hard r in the Beijing dialect either.

Source: lived in Beijing for 5 years & wife is from Beijing.

can second this. I am a Chinese who lived in Beijing for 10 years. No one would pronounce a hard r after 那个

Black Americans don't pronounce the R either. Donald Glover has a funny bit about learning how to say it right due to his strict upbringing.

It's just a filler word even though it can be literally translated as "that one", as you said.

A while a go there was meme on reddit called "nae nae", a Chinese song repeatedly singing "that one that one" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTkNFnDcPLA

The whole song:

http://baike.baidu.com/l/DQeulhMm

I assume it's because the pronunciation sounds a bit like "nigga", though not really.

Yes. The lecture was on filler words, if I understand correctly, and Chinese use this word as "uhm" in English.

There is of course no issue at all.

It's especially bad that this gets pulled up on a lecture about filter words.

If you listen to any native Mandarin speakers for more than 5 minutes you'll likely hear this word. If anything, being educated of it's existence allows you to recognize it as a legit word used in every Mandarin and not freak out when you hear Chinese people talking and think they're talking smack about black people.

This whole thing is just silly.

If Ne-ga is followed by other nouns, it becomes more like "that.....that...tha..." or "the...the...the"

Romanised it’s “nà ge“. According to the linked article it was deemed too similar to a racial slur.

There's two ways of pronouncing it, both acceptable in Mandarin. In English they would be something like: "naugh guh" and "neigh guh". The latter pronunciation is the one under discussion.

It's pronounced "nega"

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