BERLIN: Legend has it that US President John F. Kennedy made a whopping grammatical gaffe with his iconic declaration “Ich bin ein Berliner” 50 years ago yesterday, essentially telling his audience — and the world — “I am a jam doughnut.” The historical lore was that JFK, in his first faltering words of German, was wrong to use the indefinite article “ein” and should have said “Ich bin Berliner” to declare his solidarity with the embattled Cold War city.
Not so, says Anatol Stefanowitsch, a Berlin professor of linguistics. “The sentence ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ is grammatically absolutely acceptable,” he told AFP ahead of the commemorations for the stirring June 26, 1963 speech. The phrase came up twice in the speech, delivered in Kennedy’s broad Boston accent.
It was his brainchild and translated into German for him by official interpreters — JFK had written it out phonetically on notecards so he would be understood. Stefanowitsch notes that while “Berliner” is a German word for a filled pastry, the context of Kennedy’s declaration made his sentence abundantly clear to the cheering throngs.
Did JFK tell Berlin he was a jam doughnut?
Did JFK tell Berlin he was a jam doughnut?
