Re: the can of worms is trully open

[Wolfgang Bechstein bechstein@xxxxxxxx]

flash  wrote:

> As a German citizen, I should like put the matter straight about 'ich
> bin ein Berliner.' It most certainly does mean 'I am a jelly donut,'
> notwithstanding the recent email from Wolfgang Bechstein

You may well be a German citizen for all I know (and I know many
citizens of various countries with a very tenuous grasp of the respective
country's dominant language), but if you're a native German speaker,
I'll eat my virtual hat while standing on my head and screaming a
thousand times "Ich bin ein Idiot".

Look, I really don't mean to argue this any further, on a mailing list
that (occasional appearances notwithstanding) is devoted to things
XyWritian. Here are just two sites that I would cite:

http://www.answers.com/topic/ich-bin-ein-berliner

http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/jfk_berliner.htm

Not mentioned above, but there is a also a dialect-ical aspect to this.
I'm from Southern Germany, where the construction "Ich bin ein [place
name]-er" is totally natural and would raise even fewer eyebrows than it
did in Berlin.

Wolfgang "Ich bin ein Stuttgarter" Bechstein
bechstein@xxxxxxxx