Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Ich bin ein Berliner Day

You know, the funny thing is, I read some place that 'Ich bin ein Berliner' means something like 'I'm a donut' in German. (Is that correct, all you German-speaking FoLCs out there?)

Well, in any case, the people in West Berlin loved John F. Kennedy for what he said.

Here\'s a YouTube version of what he said on that day forty-five years ago.

Ann

You're right Berliner also means donut

Wikipedia has an article about "Berliner (pastry)"

Well, I wouldn't say that Berliner means donut. It might be a translation, but I don't think that it actually fits.

A "Berliner" looks like this...



The dough is made with yeast and baked in fat. It's filled with jam.

The name "Berliner" for a pastry is not used in all parts of Germany. In Berlin for example it's called "Berliner Pfannkuchen" which you could translate with "Berlin Pancakes".

Yep, that's a jam doughnut For years, that was the only type of doughnut I knew; I'd never seen the traditional American-style ring doughnut. Never knew it was called a Berliner, though!


Wendy

That's a traditional Hannukah food, in the Jewish tradition.

I've also seen them filled with chocolate or buttermilk, but jam is traditional (and I've never tried the others).

I don't think donuts are all that popular in Israel otherwise, because the only other kinds I ever saw before moving away (when I was 12) was on tv.

Also, they're very good!

Julie

We here in the States call them "jelly doughnuts," even though the filling usually isn't really jelly and the spelling of "doughnuts" is archaic.

Here's another piece of pastry trivia for you. Back in the late 1800's, a cook in the Old West (between California and the Mississippi River) who could make donuts for a trail crew was worth his weight in bacon grease. A popular slang term for them was "bear sign," because they were supposedly shaped like the evidence that a bear had recently passed through while something was passing through the bear.

And yes, many Americans still laugh at Jack Kennedy's telling the world that he was a jelly doughnut. That's not what he meant, of course, but direct translations are often funny things. When Jimmy Carter was president, he told a crowd of listeners in Poland that he wanted to get to know them better. The interpreter wasn't fluent in modern English - he apparently knew Victorian English very well - and he told the crowd that the President of the United States wanted to be intimate with everyone there.

(The verb "to know" in English once also meant sexual intimacy.)

The news report I read said that no one laughed until much later, assuming they laughed at all.

Gosh... this translation thing reminds me of a press conference that was shown on TV some years ago.

Goerge Lucas was giving some presentation on one of his Star Wars movies (you can probably tell that I have no clue about the Saga) and finished the speech with his famous "May the Force be with you".

What the interpreter understood and translated was "On May 4, we'll be with you"...

About the Berliners: Yup, it really depends on where you live... Where I grew up (North of Germany, close to the Baltic sea), they were indeed called Berliner. In many other regions, like most of Germany's South, they're called different names, though - and people there might not even know of the different name would thus not understand the (ex post) double meaning.

I've often heard that Kennedy had said, "I am a jelly donut," too. Everyone knows what he was trying to say. From those who speak German, how should he have said it? I've always been very curious about this, but I don't speak a word of German.

I believe that he should have said "Ich bin Berliner", leaving out ein.

Kathy

I don't care what they're called - that picture is making me want one. I prefer the ones with custard filling.

LabRat

Well, leaving out "ein" which means "a" would indeed have killed the double meaning. But the way I read and heard this, "Ich bin ein Berliner" sounds a bit more emotional and puts more emphasize on the fact that he considered himself as being one of them. Even though there is this double meaning, I like the original version better.

Too me, "Ich bin Berliner" sounds more generally speaking. Because "ein" is not necessarily part of the sentence, its presence somehow highlightens the "Berliner" part.

I agree with bakasi here.
And, although I know the jelly doughnuts as Berliners, too, I never really considered that 'other' meaning.

About strange translations: There was this very popular games show where someone said 'You look a little bit like Eminem.' - the translation stated that said person looked 'a little bit like M&M's', though.