A funny quirk of English I never noticed until I started learning Spanish:
In Spanish, to say for example, "he is a doctor," you would say "él es médico." Which more literally translates to "he is doctor," which feels unintuitive coming from English. Spanish DOES have an equivalent for "a" - "un/una", so the natural thing for an English speaker to say would be "él es UN médico", but I understand that to be awkward/unnatural.
But then I realized, when you say the same sentence in plural - "they are doctors" - you don't have an article. You don't say "they are some doctors" (I had to Google, apparently "some" isn't an article anyway?)
So Spanish ends up more consistent - Singular: "Él es médico." Plural: "Ellos son medicos."
Unlike English - Singular: "He is a doctor." Plural: "They are doctors."
Interstingly it is the same in german, you would say "Er ist Arzt" not "Er ist ein Arzt". Which makes me wonder why english uses an indefinite article there, since it doesn't seem to be either germanic or romantic in origin.
The thing is that doesn't even sound wrong and I don't think any native speaker would object to the article when used with a place of origin/belonging in a speech.
It emphasizes the statement if you ask me.
Only many years after learning of the speech I read online that it's allegedly "a gaffe".
It's uncommon, but without thinking about it, I wouldn't have noticed that I wouldn't usually add the "ein" here. I think it emphasizes the affiliation to the group of people.
To me, "Ich bin Berliner" sounds relatively neutral, or like a short statement. "Ich bin ein Berliner" sounds a bit less direct or a bit softer to me because you state that you are just one of the citizens of Berlin. But this may be just my feeling.
(In case you put the emphasis on "ein", you would clearly emphasize that you are just one of the many Berlin citizens.)
In this specific case the "ein" emphasizes/expresses that he "is one of us" to the Berliners. Not a gaffe at all, in my opinion.
Is it possible that after the JFK speech and exposure to English this mode of using 'ein' actually became more acceptable? If not I wonder what drove this story.
I think it's much more likely this story was spread by native English speakers who learned German as a second language in school. It has all the hallmarks of a teacher's pedantry to me.
That said, blunders do occasionally happen even at this level. During Bill Clinton's visit in Romania (the first time a US president visited the country after the Revolution), he said in a huge public speech that the American people stands shoulder to shoulder with the Romanians - which the translator for the public broadcast translated as "șold la șold", which sounds similar, but means "hip to hip" (the correct translation, which is also a literal translation as the expression exists in Romanian as well, is "umăr la umăr").
Wikipedia has a lengthy section about this 'gaffe', including the likely origin: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ich_bin_ein_Berliner#Urban_legend" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ich_bin_ein_Berliner#Urban_leg...
hbn · · focus · HN ↗
In Spanish, to say for example, "he is a doctor," you would say "él es médico." Which more literally translates to "he is doctor," which feels unintuitive coming from English. Spanish DOES have an equivalent for "a" - "un/una", so the natural thing for an English speaker to say would be "él es UN médico", but I understand that to be awkward/unnatural.
But then I realized, when you say the same sentence in plural - "they are doctors" - you don't have an article. You don't say "they are some doctors" (I had to Google, apparently "some" isn't an article anyway?)
So Spanish ends up more consistent - Singular: "Él es médico." Plural: "Ellos son medicos."
Unlike English - Singular: "He is a doctor." Plural: "They are doctors."
thayne · · focus · HN ↗
1-more · · focus · HN ↗
arlcode · · focus · HN ↗
It emphasizes the statement if you ask me.
Only many years after learning of the speech I read online that it's allegedly "a gaffe".
ifloop · · focus · HN ↗
hasley · · focus · HN ↗
(In case you put the emphasis on "ein", you would clearly emphasize that you are just one of the many Berlin citizens.)
zelphirkalt · · focus · HN ↗
AdamN · · focus · HN ↗
tsimionescu · · focus · HN ↗
That said, blunders do occasionally happen even at this level. During Bill Clinton's visit in Romania (the first time a US president visited the country after the Revolution), he said in a huge public speech that the American people stands shoulder to shoulder with the Romanians - which the translator for the public broadcast translated as "șold la șold", which sounds similar, but means "hip to hip" (the correct translation, which is also a literal translation as the expression exists in Romanian as well, is "umăr la umăr").
tame3902 · · focus · HN ↗
rpadovani · · focus · HN ↗
"(Lui) è un dottore", "(Io) sono un dottore".
"Un" is the indefinite article.
Subject is usually dropped, thus the brackets
proxyscore · · focus · HN ↗
thayne · · focus · HN ↗