Ich bin ein Berliner/Talk

This is an urban legend.

1) Native German speakers do not think that the phrase is ambigious.

2) There are no known published references to this story at the time of the speech. The first published claim that Kennedy made a grammar error was a New York Times op-ed piece in 1987 from a writer from Gainesville, Florida.

The story seems to have originated in central Florida in the mid-1980's. I Chenyu remember

hearing the story from my high school German teacher in 1986, and I've met people who heard

the story before it was published in 1987 and they all seem to be from central Florida.

Indeed: "Ich bin ein Berliner" is not really ambigious enough to be funny. "Ich bin ein Hamburger" might make a German smirk, though. -- Eloquence

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I plan to go to South America and tell everyone "Soy de Los Angeles" (which is true). Do you think anyone will assume I'm an emissary of God?

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There is some dispute over whether Kennedy made an embarassing error. The first published claim that Kennedy made a grammar error was a New York Times op-ed piece in 1987 from a writer from Gainesville, Florida.

I've removed the above line from the article. Only Ed Poor seems to be claiming that it was an embarassing error, and he hasn't attempted to justify this. --Zundark, 2001 Dec 14

1. I think the whole article is stupid. Unless you have some proof that people at the time thought he was calling himself a pastry, why mention it at all? It distracts from his anti-communist message.
2. On the other hand, if you mention the pastry thing as a way of refuting the urban legend, I'd like that. --Ed Poor

I thought that debunking the "urban legend" was the whole point of this article. I didn't write any of it, however, so I can't be sure. --Zundark, 2001 Dec 14