Klarinet Archive - Posting 000050.txt from 2000/02

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: RE: [kl] Jelly doughnuts
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2000 21:47:41 -0500

On Tue, 1 Feb 2000 16:44:25 -0800 (PST), leupold_1@-----.com said:

> --- "Kevin Fay (LCA)" <kevinfay@-----.com> wrote:
>
> > Anyway, he told me that, given the way President Kennedy pronounced
> > the sentence (bad German with a very heavy Massachusetts accent), a
> > better translation would be "I am a jelly doughnut." This is
> > probably not true, but more humorous than most urban legends.
>
> It is, in fact, a true story and a correct translation (one might
> argue that "jelly" is added to increase the humor of the expression.)
> It wasn't Kennedy's pronunciation that was problematic. His use of
> the indefinite article "ein" -- intended to mean "a" -- changed the
> meaning of the sentence. Had he left that word out, the correct
> meaning would have been conveyed. Rien implied that his gaff was
> intentional. That's where my knowledge of the occurrence ends, but
> I've never heard anywhere else that Kennedy intentionally
> misconstructed the sentence for its humor effect. Then again, it's
> hard to imagine that his speech-writers would have allowed something
> like that by mistake. Either way, it's a pretty funny story. :-)

If by 'the story' you mean that Kennedy said, "Ich bin ein Berliner",
then its truth is incontrovertible. I heard the recording of this
speech on the day Kennedy made it, and have heard it several times
since.

On the other hand, the *correct* translation of what Kennedy said is of
course, "I am a Berliner," and the people to whom he was speaking took
him to mean precisely that. If you listen to him, and listen to the
audience reaction, this becomes blatantly obvious.

Kennedy spoke German on this occasion rather badly. But accurate
translation of any particular phrase is always highly dependent on the
context in which it occurs. In this case, the context was not only the
rest of what he said, but where he said it, and who was present. Beyond
that, there was also the political situation -- another sort of context.

I should have thought all of this would be *especially* clear to a group
of people who maintain that the word 'horn' means 'clarinet' on the
Klarinet list but 'horn' on the Horn list, and who would explain that on
occasion, "tell me about it" really means, "*don't* tell me about it."

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN family artist: www.gmn.com
tel/fax 01865 553339

... He's got a magnet!!! Everybody BACKUP!!!!!!!!

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