First attested in 1599. Origin uncertain, but likely borrowed from dialectal Norwegian nigla (“to be stingy, to busy oneself with trifles”), ultimately from Old Norse hnøggr (“stingy; miserly”), related to Old English hnēaw (“stingy; niggardly”). More at niggard.
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Niggard is unrelated to the racial slur we're thinking of but in fairness I can understand how it would raise eyebrows.
That is what I assumed at first, but reading the thread @ctoth linked to and the Wikipedia article with many examples, changed my mind. It’s a good reminder that history has often come to a different conclusion than logic.
Maybe you can also consider where this sort of thinking might lead:
When the news began circulating on social media, many couldn’t believe it was true––that the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California would remove a longtime professor from a class because a Mandarin word he used correctly in a lesson sounded sort of like a racial slur.
There was nearly unanimous agreement that the students crying wolf in that case were sincere but wrong and prof Patton was justified. After investigation, he was cleared. The article’s word “removed” is ambiguous, but Patton was not fired or even suspended, they just used a sub for a couple weeks. He was sorry it happened, but was not punished.
The USC story is quite different from the current thread. The historical use of the word “niggard” has been intentionally used in a racist way (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word...), and if you read the WP article, it has quotes speculating that subtle “sophomoric” usage of the word might increase for racial reasons.
So I don’t buy the slippery slope argument, and it seems like the USC story is actually demonstrating that people can be reasonable about where the line is. It might have caused a stir once, but now there is precedent for settling cases of Mandarin confusion more quickly.
That's great that sanity eventually prevailed, but it's not a compelling example of reasonableness that it was only after "Patton was removed from the class, investigated, and excoriated in a mass email." Now that we have set this important precedent that someone teaching Mandarin in a way that "confused" his students (who are learning Mandarin?) into thinking he was insulting black people, are there any other languages about which we should be concerned?
It's hyperbole to call this a slippery slope when the exact same thinking that finds niggardly offensive leads to the absurd outcome at USC. Instead of pruning the language of any words that a racist might use as a dog whistle, maybe expect, if not everyone, at least college students to have some notion of context.
Oh, sorry, how would you summarize your argument? I thought “consider where this sort of thinking might lead” was called slippery slope, but I’m happy to refer to it some other way.
> it’s not a compelling example of reasonableness
Why not? The outcome was positive, Patton suffered no serious consequences, and the ability to say foreign words without worrying was affirmed publicly. It could have been much worse, but it wasn’t. There was a temporary misunderstanding followed by some conversation that got it sorted out, no need to worry about that further. Again, the precedent that was set is that using Mandarin is not insensitive or racist. Precedent refers to the outcome, not the temporary misunderstanding. The outcome at USC was not absurd, the outcome was reasonable. The accusation might have been out of line, or just a mistake, but that was the cause, not the outcome.
> are there any other languages about which we should be concerned?
Why would there be? (…especially given the outcome of the USC story) If you read the USC response, you’ll even find it addresses that question directly. It affirms that incidental phonetic similarities across all different languages are pure coincidence and should not result in claims of wrongdoing. It even says the same thing you did, and takes responsibility too, it says college students should have some notion of global context, and it’s college’s job to give them that context.
The case that started this thread is not a cross-language mistake, and it came with evidence of historically racist usage, so it’s different by definition. It’s not the exact same thinking, and I posted some evidence of that. There’s no reason to believe the Mandarin incident will lead to more accusations, and due to being publicized and decided in Patton’s favor, there is reason to believe it won’t happen again, or if it does it will be settled quicker and with less publicity.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/niggle
""" Etymology
First attested in 1599. Origin uncertain, but likely borrowed from dialectal Norwegian nigla (“to be stingy, to busy oneself with trifles”), ultimately from Old Norse hnøggr (“stingy; miserly”), related to Old English hnēaw (“stingy; niggardly”). More at niggard. """
Niggard is unrelated to the racial slur we're thinking of but in fairness I can understand how it would raise eyebrows.