We're all Keynesians now -- ("Ich bin ein Berliner")

[Jonathan Lighter]

Suppose it had been in English.

"I am Berliner" = I live in/ am from Berlin.

"I am a Berliner" = I'm a jelly doughnut.

Now: JFK was an American, speaking English up to that moment, to a
crowd that knew he was neither a Berliner nor a jelly doughnut nor a
native speaker of German.

Regardless of the dialectal variation that (IIRC) Rey Aman said is
possible, would anyone in the crowd (other than Von Beavis and Von
Butthead) have understood JFK to have said, hilariously, "I am a jelly
doughnut!"? And not made proper allowance?

JL

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 11:11 AM, Alice Faber <faber at haskins.yale.edu> wrote:
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> Poster:       Alice Faber <faber at HASKINS.YALE.EDU>
> Organization: Haskins Laboratories
> Subject:      Re: We're all Keynesians now -- ("Ich bin ein Berliner")
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On 12/1/11 8:10 AM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>> Neiither of the first two links contradict the claim that JFK said "I
>> am a jelly doughnut".
>>
>> The first states that the audience understood what he meant.
>>
>> The second states that it would have sounded silly to say it correctly
>> because of JFK's accent, so saying it incorrectly was preferred.
>>
>> The third link seems broken.
>
>
> TAKFAC is no more as a site. If it matters, I can ask the former
> maintainer if the archive has been ported anywhere else. Meanwhile, see
> also:
>
> http://www.snopes.com/language/misxlate/berliner.asp
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 1:34 AM, Ben Zimmer
>> <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu>  wrote:
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>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Ben Zimmer<bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
>>> Subject:      Re: We're all Keynesians now -- ("Ich bin ein Berliner")
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> For debunkings, see:
>>>
>>> http://www.watzmann.net/scg/faq-25.html
>>> http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/jfk_berliner.htm
>>> http://tafkac.org/language/kennedy_berliner_quote.html
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 11:10 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Please do. My 13 years in Germany lead me to the jelly doughnut interpretation.
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 6:51 PM, Cohen, Gerald Leonard wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I assume this is a joke.  If not, I'll dig out Reinhold Aman's article in which he (in his inimitable Reinhold Aman style)
>>>>> rebuts the jelly-doughnut-myth.
>>>>>
>>>>> Message from James A. Landau (JJJRLandau at netscape.com), Wed 11/30/2011 9:22 AM:
>>>>>
>>>>> And who can forget President Kennedy's immortal line in a speech he gave in West Berlin:
>>>>>
>>>>> "I am a jelly doughnut"
>>>
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