December 20, 2001
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:More Donuts
A colleague, who had been instructed on the "donut" story (see previous post) by his college German professor writes to me:
Perhaps my schooling was overly pedantic about matters of grammar. Now that I've read the the article, I find this nuance (metaphorical vs. literal) rather compelling. It's also worth noting that the Berlin audience cheered rather than snickered. I like the New Yorker comparison. Roz Chast could do a cartoon showing JFK in one frame saying "Ich bin ein Berliner" with a listener envisioning a jelly donut and Willy Brandt in another saying "I am a New Yorker" with a listener picturing him as a magazine.My own story of transnational embarrassment was telling an attractive young German woman I met shortly after my arrival at a summer job in Germany that I had been "präpariert" instead of more correctly "vorbereitet" for something or other. "Präpariert" means castrated as in what they used to do to Viennese choirboys.
Note: The colleague in question has a mellifluous baritone voice and children. Not by the German girl, however....
Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at December 20, 2001 11:09 AM | Technorati inbound links