stuart@rochester.UUCP (Stuart Friedberg) (07/27/85)
> {ihnp4,allegra,ut-sally,seismo}!harvard!prime!pj writes: > This falls in the believe it or not category. In this month's Reader's > Digest, there is a paragraph describing John Kennedy's "Ich bin ein > Berliner" statement. Apparently, he *should* have said "Ich bin > Berliner". In fact, the article claims that "Ich bin ein Berliner" > translates to "I am a jelly doughnut". This is one of the few pieces of German idiom I can tell you about. This sounds silly, but I am not making a joke. In Berlin they put rasberries in everything. In donuts, in pastries, in ice cream and in beer. Yes, when you put rasberry syrup in a wheat beer it's called a Berliner Weisse and you can ask for it that way. Anyway, "Ein Berliner" is just an idiom for a (rasberry) donut or pastry because of this (widely known (among Germans)) hunger for rasberries. It's also idiomatic to drop the article when describing someone as a member of a city. That is, where in English one would say "A New Yorker", in German it would be (more or less) just "Neu Yorker". Now, neither of these constructions is cast in concrete. It was not *incorrect* for JFK to say "Ich bin ein Berliner". It was certainly understood by all the German-speakers who heard him. However, it certainly *sounded funny* because of it went against two idiomatic constructions. Stu Friedberg {seismo, allegra}!rochester!stuart stuart@rochester