I heard a comedy routine recently where the comedian claimed that JFK made a blunder when he tried to speak in German at the Berlin wall. He tried to say that he was citizen of Berlin (in the metaphorical sense I’m sure), but he wound up saying like “I am a donut” because was a local pastry named after the city ( a “Berliner” I think).
Did this really happen?
I am not aware of a pastry, but from my limited knowledge of german, Ich bin ein Berliner sounds perfectly fine and makes sense to me.
Technically, yes, he did say “I am a pastry.” But, it’s the same as someone coming to New York City and declaring “I am a New Yorker.” Technically, that person declared themself to be an issue of a popular literary magazine. But you know what they mean, and it’s a perfectly legitimate, everyday expression.
He wasn’t just any old pastry, he was a jelly donut!
German does not use an article when you declare your nationality. Thus the correct phrase would be:
Ich bin Berliner.
“ein Berliner” would describe something called a “berliner” (a type of jelly donut), not a resident of Berlin.
That said, it’s doubtful anyone in the audience thought “jelly donut” when Kennedy used the phrase. They knew what he meant, even if the grammar wasn’t correct.
The -er ending in German is adjectival, a lot like “ish” in English. Using it with an article is what raises the question - “Ich bin EIN Berliner” instead of “Ich bin Berliner”. A better analog in English might be “I am Danish” as opposed to “I am a Danish”, which would make you sound like you were to be served with coffee. As already stated, everybody knew what he meant.
This is more or less correct. In fact, the only people likely to misinterpret Kennedy’s statement (which was not even one he made about himself; in the context of the speech it was a reference to how the people of Berlin should be proud to say that they are Berliners) would be non-native German speakers. In textbook High German articles are not used in declarations of nationality, but they are used that way in other German dialects. Many native speakers would have chosen the exact same phrasing.
What’s more, I think that particular kind of donut is only called a Berliner outside Berlin, although I couldn’t swear to this.
[Homer]
Ooh, forbidden donut!
[/Homer]
Did JFK goof? Yes, in the technical sense. Was it a serious error? Not really, as everyone knew what he REALLY meant.
Still, you have to wonder- if Dan Quayle had made a similar minor gaffe, would he ever have lived it down? I doubt it. Kennedy was perceived (wrongly) as an intellectual, so people tended to ignore or shrug off his goofs.
Or, since Germany had (briefly)had a head of state named Donitz, maybe he thought that was the naming system.
That is 100% correct. We learned this in German class. Yes, a Berliner is like a jelly donut, but isn’t quite. It’s a little different.
And accounts I’ve read (in the distant past - no cites) said this was a moment of huge applause, indicating that the audience understood his meaning (or, donuts got hands).
astorian said
[/quote]
if Dan Quayle had made a similar minor gaffe, would he ever have lived it down? I doubt it. Kennedy was perceived (wrongly) as an intellectual
[/quote]
Or maybe Kennedy was perceived only as someone who could speak English. 
More Simpsons fun…
Kennedy: Ich bein ein Berliner.
Sailor: He’s a nazi! Get him!
Interestingly, this particular story about Kennedy seems to have originated with a journalist who had just this in mind. Snopes used to have a page on this (it seems to be gone now), and it said that the fuss over “Ich bin ein Berliner” did not begin until the 1980s and was first brought up by those attempting to make Quayle look better by making Kennedy look worse.
In the course of trying to dig up the missing Snopes page on this issue, I discovered that “Ich bin ein Berliner” may not have been even a “minor gaffe” but rather the most correct phrasing Kennedy could have used in the circumstances. See here:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/weekly/aa021700b.htm?once=true&
I found this confirmed by native German speakers elsewhere on the Web.
Good thing he wasn’t in Hamburg.
…was Eddie Izzard. Just FYI. From “Dress to Kill” available on video.
Or on HBO, a couple of times every few months or so.
Only a rabid Kennedy hater would say that Kennedy was not an intellectual (implying he is not educated, not that he isn’t Harold Bloom, as controasted to the one of two or three dozen real intellectuals in this country).
Kennedy was extraordinarily well read, and rumor has it he was even a pretty good writer, having won a Pulitzer Prize for authoring “Profiles in Courage”. The fascist charge is that Kennedy merely took credit for writing this book, which they claim was written by Ted Sorensen, but this is more fascist propaganda, Kennedy wrote it.