Jason (jcreed) wrote,
Jason
jcreed
Is there a common korean or chinese basic-grammatical-function word that sounds like the, ahem, n-word? Maybe something that means "and so" or "but" or even "um"? I am not really certain what language it is, but it sounds vaguely east asian (if that really means much of anything) and I think I know enough to rule out japanese. I swear the office next door to me sounds like a gangsta rap video, though. He just said it like seven times in a row.

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Theory, based on dannel's suggestion over IM: what I am hearing is Korean "you" (nominative second person singular pronoun), 네가 "nega", which wikipedia suggests is in the process of shifting to 니가 "niga" for many speakers under the influence of another pair of vowels collapsing.
Tags: language
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