When I was a child, I was in the supermarket with my mother and apparently I was repeating some Polish phrase containing the infinitive “to be”. The Polish equivalent is “być” which sounds like “bitch”. From what I’ve been told, it drew some attention, but the impression I’m left with is that eavesdroppers were more amused than offended. Similarly, my Spanish-speaking classmates in school found it amusing that a common way to refer to one’s aunt is “ciocia” which is pronounced like the Spanish word “chocha”. The same holds for English words like “duper” as in “super duper” which sounds almost like the Polish “dupa” (especially when spoken in non-rhotic English). This extends to brand names (the name of the German lighting manufacturer Osram is a good example: it is the simple future first conjugation of the Polish transitive verb “to shit all over“).

Given how ubiquitous this phenomenon is, and how international UPenn is, I am having trouble comprehending how a professor could be fired for a perfectly banal Chinese expression which many of us have heard many times in American cities with significant Chinese populations.