Re: Shutting up the Table Coach
[ QUOTE ]
Actually, Internet wonkitude notwithstanding, the correct German sentence for JFK would have been "Ich bin Berliner" ("I am a Berliner"). It was no different from what Gerhard Shröder said on 9/11/2001: "Today, we are all Americans."
"Ich bin ein Berliner" does not mean "I am one with the people of Berlin." It was a misstatement. That's fine. JFK wasn't a German-speaker, and he was relying on what speechwriters and language coaches had told him. Everyone knew what he meant by it, and they heard what he meant and not what he said.
Don't believe everything you read on urban legend websites. Some of what you read there is every bit as much "urban legend" as the urban legends they purport to debunk.
[/ QUOTE ]
Do you speak German or just pretend to on the internet?
This moronicism has been treated in a scholarly journal: J. Eichhoff, "'Ich bin ein Berliner': A History and a linguistic Clarification," _Monatshefte_, Vol. 85, No. 1, 1993, pp. 71-80. It's fraudulent roots are apparently from a _Newsweek_ article, January 18, 1988, p. 15.
Your argument is a gone-wrong counterfactual based on ignorance. "Ich bin Berliner," literally means, "I am from Berlin." "I am a Berliner, too" -- would capture the spirit hoped for in English, but German works differently, and in German "Ich bin ein Berliner" is appropriate. Does the phrase mean, "I am a jelly donut?" -- Well, only to those willfully misinterpreting it -- a group that boasts you as victim and apologist. For presumably cheap political points, people worked backward from a willful misrepresentation, and found a linguistic explanation for a non-existent confusion.
So I have a scholarly source. You have a misguided analogy to the English language, amusing on many levels.
To the posters that question my antagonism I can only say: it seems appropriate when dealing with someone so adamantly and persistently foolish.
PS In Berlin, the pasty in question is "Pfannkuchen."
(BTW, I'm not a fan of JFK. I'm just tired of this specific slice of stupidity.)
|