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Claiming that it means "I am a Jelly Donut" is not false, just claiming that it doesn't also mean "I am from Berlin". It has both meanings.
by phreeza 13y ago
Claiming that it means "I am a Jelly Donut" is not false, just claiming that it doesn't also mean "I am from Berlin". It has both meanings.
- lukifer 13y agoEddie Izzard made the best comparison to help it click: if a resident of Frankfurt were to hear "I am a Frankfurter", it still makes perfect sense, even if it also means "I am a hot dog".
- mikeash 13y agoFunny how it works perfectly fine for "I am a Frankfurter," but I can't see it working for "I am a Wiener."
- comrade_ogilvy 13y agoA Wiener might be a person from Wien, Osterreich (which translates to Vienna, Austria in English).
- mikeash 13y agoI know, but at least when rendered in English, "I am a Wiener" does not work to indicate a city.
- dublinben 13y agoThe correct English transliteration would be more like "vienner" which pretty closely follows the common English practice of adding an -er suffix to denote someone's place of origin. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/er_4 http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/er_4
- dublinben 13y agoUnsurprisingly, wieners are called frankfurters in Wien (Vienna). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiener_W%C3%BCrstchen https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiener_W%C3%BCrstchen
- nextstep 13y agoThe false claim is that anyone in attendance mistook Kennedy's statement to mean anything other than "I am a person from Berlin." It is equally false to claim that Kennedy misspoke or made a gaffe in this speech. Only later was this double meaning of the word 'Berliner' pointed out by comedians.
- crbnw00ts 13y agoThe sad part is that there are people who insist that one can hear audience members laughing at that moment in recordings of the speech. Nope, just cheering. People hear what they want to hear.
- PavlovsCat 13y agoIt's still somewhat false though, from that wikipedia link: > Here is where President Kennedy announced, Ich bin ein Berliner, and thereby amused the city's populace because in the local parlance a Berliner is a doughnut. and > What they did not know, but could easily have found out, was that such citizens never refer to themselves as 'Berliners.' In Berlin itself, a Berliner is actually called "Pfannkuchen", so while it might have amused other Germans, that wouldn't apply to citizens of Berlin themselves, which do in fact call themselves "Berliner". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berliner_(doughnut) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berliner_(doughnut) > While called Berliner (Ballen) in Northern and Western Germany as well as in Switzerland, the Berliners themselves and residents of Brandenburg, Western Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony know them as Pfannkuchen, which in the rest of Germany generally means pancakes; pancakes are known there as Eierkuchen ("egg cakes").
- Dylan16807 13y ago>Claiming that it means "I am a Jelly Donut" is not false In the context it's presented, I think it would have to actually mean jelly donut, not be a nickname. And such a thing is in fact false.