I agree.This is an urban legend which emerged several decades after the speech, and it is not true that residents of Berlin in 1963 would have mainly understood the word "Berliner" to refer to a jelly doughnut or that the audience laughed at Kennedy's use of this expression.
Ich bin ein Berliner - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
I agree.
That is just an urban legend.
A donut may be called "a Berliner" elsewhere, but NOT in the city of Berlin.
That would start another theory!All this talk about donuts is making be hungry. Unfortunately, I don't have any donuts, but I do have a Little Debbie Bar. I wonder if Kennedy said anything about Little Debbie Bars.
Kennedy's famous line was penned by someone who was raised within Berlin itself and was an accomplished and highly regarded translator in his own right. In proclaiming "Ich bin ein Berliner," therefore, JFK was no more referring to himself as a pastry than someone calling himself a "New Yorker" would have been understood by Americans as styling himself to be a magazine or a town car. Just as "I'm American" and "I'm an American" are both correct, so are "Ich bin ein Berliner" and "Ich bin Berliner." (In fact, some German speakers would regard the former to be the more correct for someone who was speaking figuratively, as Kennedy was.)
More facts:
Did John F. Kennedy Proclaim Himself to Be a Jelly Doughnut?
Did President John F. Kennedy call himself a jelly donut in his famous 1963 speech in Berlin, Germany?www.snopes.com
President Kennedy did not misspeak, which explains why the myth developed only outside of Germany; see the serious image from German media at left where JFK’s words were reprinted. But even if Kennedy had misspoken, Professor Eichhoff adds, native speakers of German would have understood precisely what he meant. And in an ironic twist, the dialect word Berliner, referring to a pastry, is not even used in the city of Berlin, but farther west. Interestingly, it was introduced by nineteenth-century immigrants into the English of the Upper Midwest ....
And again:
Ich bin ein Berliner
According to a widespread legend, President John F. Kennedy proudly declared himself to be a jelly doughnut before thousands of Berliners in June 1963. This story is a familiar one to students of German in US classrooms, but it is unfounded. One of the many differences between the grammars of...language.mki.wisc.edu
Well, it is used in parts of Germany, but not in Berlin itself.How about that! The term "Berliner" isn't even used in Germany! Who would've thunk it?
There is a sequel:
Kennedy in Berlin: "Ich bin ein Berliner!"
Kennedy in Paris: "Ich bin ein Pariser!"
Did you know these meanings:
Pariser - English translation in English - Langenscheidt dictionary German-English
Translation for 'Pariser' using the free German-English dictionary by LANGENSCHEIDT -– with examples, synonyms and pronunciation.en.langenscheidt.com
Holy cow, Rumpel! And the hits just keep on coming!
We could go on with Frankfurter, Lyoner, Wiener, Krakauer, Schwarzwälder etc etc ...
Many things are named after towns and regions.
Vienna sausage (German: Wiener Würstchen, Wiener; Viennese/Austrian German: Frankfurter Würstel or Würstl; Swiss German: Wienerli; Swabian: Wienerle or Saitenwurst) is a thin parboiled sausage traditionally made of pork and beef in a casing of sheep's intestine, then given a low temperature smoking.[1][2] The word Wiener is German for Viennese.[3] In Austria, the term "Wiener" is uncommon for this food item, which instead is usually called Frankfurter Würstl.[4]
Fun fact:
In Frankfurt this sausage is a Wiener - in Vienna it is a Frankfurter.
We could go on with Frankfurter, Lyoner, Wiener, Krakauer, Schwarzwälder etc etc ...
Many things are named after towns and regions.
Really good.This is really fascinating--and funny.
When Nixon said, "I am not a crook," did he mean he wasn't one of those shepherd cane things?
.
I've often wondered what Germans actually call a "jelly donut".And again:
Ich bin ein Berliner
According to a widespread legend, President John F. Kennedy proudly declared himself to be a jelly doughnut before thousands of Berliners in June 1963. This story is a familiar one to students of German in US classrooms, but it is unfounded. One of the many differences between the grammars of...language.mki.wisc.edu
Kinda. His statement could be humorously interpreted that way, as "berliner" can mean either a person from Berlin or a doughnut supposedly invented there.Did John F. Kennedy ever say: "I am a doughnut!" ?
I thought he said he was the walrus??