It's from a book Uncle Tom's Cabin[1] by Harriet Beecher Stowe who was staunchly antislavery. In Europe it was very popular, and there was even an U-Bahn station in Berlin called "Onkel Tom's Hütte"[2]. Also, the story of the Chevy Nova in Spanish has been debunked many times[3], but for whatever reason it's a nice story and keeps getting retold. I suppose it's like JFK allegedly proclaiming himself a donut, coincidentally also in Berlin.
I do agree with you though that it's probably not a great choice for a name, if only because people in the US will be hypersensitive and might completely misconstrue the meaning.
(That's irrelevant. However, it's also an urban legend. Be rest assured that no one in Kennedy's German audience was even for a second confused and didn't understand exactly what he meant. He was perfectly clear. Even if you argue that his choice of words is grammatically questionable – something I disagree with and I think it works quite well as an emphasis and makes it clear that he is speaking figuratively and not simply declaring that he is from Berlin or was born in Berlin – the context of his speech and the preceding sentence as well as the sentence itself make it crystal clear what he is talking about and also insures that no one is thinking of baked things.)
And when Kennedy said "Ich bin ein Berliner", he was certainly not referring to the pastry (a jam-filled doughnut, though spheroidal instead of toroidal) known in most of Germany as "Berliner" but known in Berlin as "Pfannkuchen", which in the rest of Germany just refers to a pancake.
There’s a real background to “ich verstehe nur Bahnhof” though. It’s not nonsense, it reportedly has its origins at the end of the First World War when german soldiers wanted to travel home. All they were interested in was getting to the train station. https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/3248/meaning-and-...
> There is a widespread misconception that Kennedy accidentally said a malapropism that he was a Berliner, a German doughnut specialty. 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.[2]
It exactly confirms how that expression became popular there. A direct false association with "improving" "the look of the vehicles." (das Fahrrad == a bicycle)
Also, very funny, from the Wikipedia page of the show:
"Viacom, the owner of the Pimp My Ride franchise, has made legal threats against a number of small business owners over the use of the words Pimp My... in business names. Businesses using the names Pimp My Pet and Pimp My Snack have been threatened with legal action for an alleged breach of a trademark owned by Viacom. The website Pimp My Snack is now known as Pimp That Snack."
>However, the normal convention when stating a nationality or, for instance, saying one is from Berlin, would be to leave out the indefinite article "ein." Though JFK's intention would have been, and was, understood by Berliners, he should have said, Ich bin Berliner.
Funny how in an article about common misconceptions a myth like that gets to live on (by being replaced with a new one).. I can't speak for Berlinerisch, as I've never lived in Berlin myself, but in standard German both versions - with and without the indefinite article - are 100% correct.
The version suggested in the article might be slightly more common ("Ich bin Berliner"), but for JFK's speech I'd even go as far and say his version was better, simply because it stresses that he's "ein Berliner", just like all the other people listening to his speech.
As I said, though, both versions are correct, and neither of them sounds better/worse.
(Sorry, no source, but I know a bit of German.)
> ... popularised by German exiles outside the country, but not in Germany.
Here are ~18k uses 1929-1933; the top hits do seem mainly to come from lefty publications, but it'd be news to me that places like Bad Godesberg, Detmold and Witten are not "in Germany":
After 1933 there is a distinct drop in published use of the term, and those who continue to use it seem to be in exile, so I guess the Nazis (like their modern descendants?) didn't care for the pejorative?
Some years ago I had a native German explain to me that what JFK said really did mean "I'm a jelly donut," and he should have said "Ich bin Berliner." So YMMV.
Interesting. I have heard about this famous speech many times but I have never made the connection to the pastry "Berliner" (or heard anyone mention this association).
Also, as a native German speaker, saying "Ich bin ein Berliner" is not unusual if you are talking about being a citizen of Berlin.
I don't think that was a common association at the time as well. Especially since (pastry) "Berliners" are not called "Berliners" in Berlin but "Pfannkuchen" instead.
>but I'd rather write Kaliningrad because those people are so damn thin-skinned, bordering on paranoia
In Kaliningrad, the locals colloquially call their city Koenig (short for Koenigsberg), they're totally fine with it. Although, the context matters, of course.
Hard to say, but a good point. As someone from Germany this phrase is not really connected to either of these two special regimes. It's more a general phrase, rarely still in use (for example for completely different scenarios, since the literal translation is harmless). I think of police and an annoyance if I read that.
Hey, for me this is probably closer to Orwell than to historical reference. I do have to admit that the picture is provocative and stupid though.
I interpreted it as an artistic choice, since the outreach Twitter account is all German. It's different from the article's actual title though - which I thought was an anti-pattern for HN.
> it's been appropriated differently by English-speakers
I'm an English speaker from the American midwest and I still think of it as an (I always assumed ironic) reference to Nazi supremacism when I see it. I'm not offended by it but it always struck me as a strange joke. "This thing is so great it's Nazi great!" Fantastic.
It's interesting to me that that's not the intent. It's a reference to the phrase "Deutschland Over Everything Else," which is either a Nazi thing or a merely German nationalist thing, depending on the context and intent. I can see why a German person might want to "take it back" and make it not mean something fascist, but why would anyone outside of that context even bother?
> Censoring people
Konstruktor was pointing out a flaw, rightly or wrongly, but not censoring. He doesn't have that power here.
I do agree with you though that it's probably not a great choice for a name, if only because people in the US will be hypersensitive and might completely misconstrue the meaning.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom%27s_Cabin [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkel_Toms_H%C3%BCtte_%28Berlin... [3]: http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp
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