DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
Even Greener Pastures
HTML https://evengreener.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Questions about the Use of Language
*****************************************************
#Post#: 16886--------------------------------------------------
Re: JFK: "Ich bin ein Berliner" SPLIT FROM Vegetarian,
Vegan, Gay
By: Irena Date: June 14, 2019, 4:53 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Oops. :-[
Anyway, no ill intent. I'm just bad at slang. Ask Jerry. ;)
#Post#: 16889--------------------------------------------------
Re: JFK: "Ich bin ein Berliner" SPLIT FROM Vegetarian,
Vegan, Gay
By: Nikola Date: June 14, 2019, 5:34 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=The Artist formerly known as Truman Overby
link=topic=1153.msg16879#msg16879 date=1560546999]
[quote author=SHL link=topic=1153.msg16876#msg16876
date=1560545079]
Nikola, where you hiding out?
[/quote]
She might be playing soccer.
[/quote]
I was at a "soccer" game, actually. They just wouldn't let me
play for some reason ;D What did I miss?
#Post#: 16891--------------------------------------------------
Re: JFK: "Ich bin ein Berliner" SPLIT FROM Vegetarian,
Vegan, Gay
By: SHL Date: June 14, 2019, 5:55 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Nikola link=topic=1153.msg16889#msg16889
date=1560551693]
[quote author=The Artist formerly known as Truman Overby
link=topic=1153.msg16879#msg16879 date=1560546999]
[quote author=SHL link=topic=1153.msg16876#msg16876
date=1560545079]
Nikola, where you hiding out?
[/quote]
She might be playing soccer.
[/quote]
I was at a "soccer" game, actually. They just wouldn't let me
play for some reason ;D What did I miss?
[/quote]
Oh Nikola, Neal was saying you might have been the culprit who
deleted one of my posts ???...
Sometimes I write these long-winded posts and then when I look
for them later (they are usually my finest work) and then I see
they are not here. And, I’m like, “what??” But, you are too nice
to do that. Neal, I’m not so sure of.... :'(
Maybe I had forgotten to hit the post button. I told Neal he
must be selectively censoring me and he said it must be you.
But, I don’t believe that, so instead I’ll just have to blame it
on my 6 or 7 pills I have to take every morning. They give me
enough to knock out a horse, so, again, I might be forgetting to
hit the post button. Sorry. ???
By the way, don’t you just love that word “soccer”? US English.
Like you are slugging it out with someone. It’s football because
you play it with your feet. It’s just US kookiness. Like our
Fahrenheit, miles, yards, feet, inches, half inches, quarter
inches, 1/8, 1/16 of an inch. Americans go to Europe and don’t
know what a centimeter is. No idea. Or, they think a nice cool
day is when the temperature is a pleasant 70.
We got all this weird stuff from the British, who promptly
dropped it themselves.
#Post#: 16892--------------------------------------------------
Re: JFK: "Ich bin ein Berliner" SPLIT FROM Vegetarian,
Vegan, Gay
By: SHL Date: June 14, 2019, 7:46 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Alharacas link=topic=1153.msg16880#msg16880
date=1560547278]
[quote author=SHL link=topic=1153.msg16870#msg16870
date=1560535972]
NEAL! What is happening to my posts? I posted a detailed reply
to this earlier and poof! It’s no where to be found!
Are you sure you really posted it, Steven? Don't get me wrong,
I'm just trying to make sure, because this is potentially quite
worrying, you know.
Duden might say that the indefinite article is “often” omitted
with certain nouns, but that was not what I was taught in the
70s and 80s. I was taught it was always omitted with certain
nouns and it is not optional to omit it. And, I’ve never heard
anyone use an indefinite article not followed by an adjective
before those certain sorts of nouns, either in writing or in
speech. Not once. The rule is if the noun is not preceded by an
adjective, the indefinite article ein or eine is omitted as long
as the noun refers to origin, profession, an official position,
a worldview, a religion, or a social status. Then examples are
given. That’s what I learned and all I’ve ever heard when native
speakers speak and I’ve never seen it written otherwise, ever.
[/quote]
You won't get any argument from me, Steven. I definitely agree
with you more than with Mr. Duden's heirs in this instance - if
anybody said something like "Ich bin ein Professor" to me, I'd
conclude they either weren't a German native speaker or quite
urgently needed their head examined.
But as it was, everybody just appreciated the sentiment, I think
- it wouldn't have occurred to anybody to start quibbling about
whether or not the indefinite article was surplus to
requirements.
:D
On the other hand, you know, after I'd posted my - perhaps
unnecessarily flippant - comment, it did cross my mind that it
was probably quite fortunate Khrushchev hadn't decided to wall
off Vienna instead. ;)
[/quote]
Thank you Alharacas,
Yes, this is what I always thought. Obviously no one would have
been confused about what JFK meant with his “Ich bin ein
Berliner” comment because the sense that he was expressing
solidarity was clear. But, that doesn’t make it especially good
grammar.
I enjoyed Jerry’s Huffington Post article wherein the German
linguistics professor in Berlin is cited saying that the
language JFK used was “grammatically absolutely acceptable.” Ah,
it’s hard to argue with someone credentialed like that, but that
is certainly NOT what I was taught, and it is not what I
experienced. Quite the contrary. I had it drilled into my head
40 years ago that you never use the indefinite article ein/eine
with certain nouns that designate, a fundamental characteristic
of a person, specifically those having to do with ethnicity,
citizenship, profession, religion, social status, place of
origin, sort of the group a person might belong to, unless an
adjective is placed between the indefinite article and the noun.
On the contrary, you have to use the indefinite article with
some nouns describing people. When you are talking in
generalities about a person that don’t go to fundamental
characteristics, then it’s different, like saying “Er ist ein
Idiot.” That’s where German can be tricky and knowing these
small nuances really matters.
This is why when I heard JFK say “Ich bin ein Berliner” an alarm
bell went off in my head with a flashing red light, saying
WRONG!! But, in this case perhaps it was the translator just
taking a sort of poetic license of sorts. He couldn’t obviously
have had JFK say “Ich bin Berliner” because JFK wasn’t a
resident of Berlin or from there, so that would never have
worked. The alternative of using ein to communicate a sense of
solidarity, although being an outsider is interesting, but I’ve
never heard anything like that before, and I would suspect the
vast majority of native German speakers haven’t either. And, how
many would really use this very rare nuanced use of ein in this
way ? Probably no one.
I have that 2009 version of Duden Grammatik, 8.Auflage, pps.
331-332 where they say the indefinite article is “often”
omitted. My experience is that it is always omitted with certain
nouns.
But, then Duden Grammatik really gets into some advanced detail
that most people just aren’t going to learn in most language
schools.
#Post#: 16893--------------------------------------------------
Re: JFK: "Ich bin ein Berliner" SPLIT FROM Vegetarian,
Vegan, Gay
By: Nikola Date: June 15, 2019, 4:34 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=SHL link=topic=1153.msg16891#msg16891
date=1560552941]
Oh Nikola, Neal was saying you might have been the culprit who
deleted one of my posts ???...
Sometimes I write these long-winded posts and then when I look
for them later (they are usually my finest work) and then I see
they are not here. And, I’m like, “what??” But, you are too nice
to do that. Neal, I’m not so sure of.... :'(
Maybe I had forgotten to hit the post button. I told Neal he
must be selectively censoring me and he said it must be you.
But, I don’t believe that, so instead I’ll just have to blame it
on my 6 or 7 pills I have to take every morning. They give me
enough to knock out a horse, so, again, I might be forgetting to
hit the post button. Sorry. ???
By the way, don’t you just love that word “soccer”? US English.
Like you are slugging it out with someone. It’s football because
you play it with your feet. It’s just US kookiness. Like our
Fahrenheit, miles, yards, feet, inches, half inches, quarter
inches, 1/8, 1/16 of an inch. Americans go to Europe and don’t
know what a centimeter is. No idea. Or, they think a nice cool
day is when the temperature is a pleasant 70.
We got all this weird stuff from the British, who promptly
dropped it themselves.
[/quote]
Oh thanks Neal :) Steve, I can assure you I didn't delete your
comment. Soccer... I don't like that word but I use it around
Americans because I don't want them to think that I like
American football.
#Post#: 16898--------------------------------------------------
Re: JFK: "Ich bin ein Berliner" SPLIT FROM Vegetarian,
Vegan, Gay
By: NealC Date: June 15, 2019, 7:16 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Steve you might want to type your message on word or something
and then copy it over, just as added insurance nothing is lost.
I have certainly had instances on here where I wrote something
out that took a while, pressed the wrong button, and boom it is
gone.
Steve, you are adamant it is bad German, but you also cannot
seem to find a way to say it. If you think about it, Kennedy
was making a hard to express point, an abstract idea, not
something in regular discourse. Perhaps it is just hard to make
that point in German?
Remember when the French Magazine Charlie Hebdo was attacked by
terrorists? Everyone was expressing solidarity with them by the
French phrase "Je suis Charlie". Perhaps the sentiment is
easier to express in 'romantic' French than the more 'logical'
German?
#Post#: 16907--------------------------------------------------
Re: JFK: "Ich bin ein Berliner" SPLIT FROM Vegetarian,
Vegan, Gay
By: SHL Date: June 15, 2019, 1:31 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Oh, JFK could have just said he supported the people, “Ich
unterstütze euch” or “Mit Rat und Tat stehen wir euch zur
Seite”, or many other possibilities. What would someone say in
English?
If a head of State came to New York, he surely wouldn’t say,
“I’m a New Yorker” to express solidarity with New Yorkers, which
is precisely why JFK couldn’t have said “ Ich bin Berliner.”
Like I said before, I think the translator was just taking a bit
of artistic license, (ein bißchen künstlerische Freiheit war im
Spiel), knowing everyone would understand what was intended,
even if it was not grammatically correct. People play around
with language all the time like that. It’s not wrong to do, but
it doesn’t make it right grammatically. It’s just like what
Alharacas said, if someone said to her “Ich bin ein Professor”
she’d conclude the person was not a native speaker or needed his
head examined. You say “Ich bin Professor.” No one would put an
“ein” in there like that. This is super-basic 1st year German
stuff. We talk like that in English, but never in German.
#Post#: 16909--------------------------------------------------
Re: JFK: "Ich bin ein Berliner" SPLIT FROM Vegetarian,
Vegan, Gay
By: SHL Date: June 15, 2019, 2:59 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Alharacas link=topic=1153.msg16884#msg16884
date=1560549123]
[quote author=Irena link=topic=1153.msg16883#msg16883
date=1560548600]
[quote author=Alharacas link=topic=1153.msg16882#msg16882
date=1560548270]
Sorry. Bad joke, Irena.
Citizen/s of Berlin = Berliner
Citizen/s of Vienna (Wien) = Wiener
[/quote]
Oh! So you meant something like whiner? Funny. I thought you
were referring to some type of food or drink or something.
[/quote]
Irena, you aren't by any chance trying to get me to drop myself
in it again, are you? (Not that you'd tried to do that the last
time, I know that! Managed to do that all on my own. Still...)
HTML https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/wiener
[/quote]
That MacMillian dictionary is a good example of why, just
because something is in a dictionary, doesn’t mean it’s 100%
correct all the time.
Wiener=Frankfurter: At least where I live (and I always preface
what I say with this because this may not be true in other parts
of the country, so I’m not saying this is some kind of rule),
but this only appears on packages in supermarkets. Yes, the
package will say “wieners” or “frankfurters”, but people don’t
really call them that normally. For someone to call them that
would sound unusual to me. Maybe once in a while, but usually
they’d just refer to them as “Hot Dogs.” I personally never use
the word wiener or frankfurter ever, to refer to anything. I
know what it means, but it’s just not part of my active English
vocabulary. Maybe it’s because I know Wiener and Frankfurter as
German words and I think they don’t make good English loan words
(Lehnwörter).
To say a “wiener” is a pejorative word for a weak person? That’s
maybe true in some places, but that’s not what I heard as a kid
growing up. We said, “You wienie.” Not “wiener.” And, as far as
it being a slang word for p e n i s, yeah, maybe once. Like in
the 1960s, but not now. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone use it
as such in so long I can't even say when. There’s too many other
more modern slang words to pick from.
#Post#: 16910--------------------------------------------------
Re: JFK: "Ich bin ein Berliner" SPLIT FROM Vegetarian,
Vegan, Gay
By: NealC Date: June 15, 2019, 3:17 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
There doesn't seem to be a better way to say it, and the answer
isn't 'well he should have said something else'.
After 911 there were leaders in the world and the US that showed
their solidarity with New York by saying things like "Today, I
am a New Yorker, today we are all New Yorkers". It is poor
English. Obviously they are not all from NY. If you want to
make fun you can say, 'What are they saying - They are a
Chrysler luxury car? They are a popular magazine?". But no one
does that because language, and may I say especially English,
has more flexibility than that.
It is an odd construction because it is very abstract idea. But
it worked.
#Post#: 16911--------------------------------------------------
Re: JFK: "Ich bin ein Berliner" SPLIT FROM Vegetarian,
Vegan, Gay
By: SHL Date: June 15, 2019, 3:55 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Oh I totally get that Neal. But, notice the qualification
“today” I am a New Yorker?
Of course no one is going to mistake that as meaning the person
is saying he’s a Chrysler of some sort today. And, of course no
one thought JFK was calling himself a jelly donut back when he
made his speech. The meaning was clear. I think, after really
looking into it (and honestly I really paid little attention to
it before) it was a figurative play on words. Like I said,
people play around with language all the time, which is why
languages change with time.
The number of American/English words in German today is
appalling. Hi, sorry, Airport- now part of the German lexicon?
They are, but there is no way I’m using those words. Sometimes
languages have to change due to new technology (the internet age
is the big reason for this now), but sometimes they change for
unknown reasons (my old German professor would be turning over
in his grave if he heard “hi”, “sorry” or “Airport” pawned off
as German words today). He didn’t even like the word
“Charterflug”, charter-flight back in the late 70s and told us
to say “Pachtflug” instead. (That’s HIS word, not a real German
word to my knowledge. I think I told someone that once in German
and they laughed....But, he wasn’t too far off in inventing a
new word since “Pachten” is the German noun for leasing and
“pachten” is the verb to lease, rent out. And, of course “Flug”
is flight).
I will say this thread taught me a lot because I heard the old
joke, which originated in the early 80s, among teachers and
students of German at Universities, that JFK made a fool of
himself saying “Ich bin ein Berliner”, and named himself a
Berliner (the donut in the picture). I never believed the people
understood this as such, of course. I assumed they just assumed
it was his Americanized German is all. I never understood why he
said this, with all his advisors and translators around, but I
just ignored it. To me it just wasn’t important.
Like someone coming to New York and saying, “I am New Yorker.”
Not a big deal, so I pretty much forgot about it and I really
don’t care if non-natives make mistakes like that.
*****************************************************
DIR Previous Page
DIR Next Page