You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

James_Miller comments on False Friends and Tone Policing - Less Wrong Discussion

45 Post author: palladias 18 June 2014 06:20PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (49)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: James_Miller 18 June 2014 06:40:47PM 14 points [-]

Are Chinese visitors to the United States repeatedly warned against saying (那个 - nèige)?

Comment author: leplen 19 June 2014 12:15:16AM 15 points [-]

In general no. And as someone working with a bunch of Chinese people in the Southern U.S., it's sort of hilarious. They typically only use neige as a verbal pause when actually speaking Chinese. When speaking English they don't have a verbal pause, they typically just sort of stand there with their mouth open trying to think of the English word, so you really only hear them saying, "neige, neige, neige" when you have several Chinese people all talking to each other, but the way it's used it gets repeated rapid-fire while they think of the next thing to say, and it's certainly something people's ears pick out of the conversation.