Even Greener Pastures

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.