WORD OF THE DAY: ALEX

Everybody knows Alex - or how most people refer to Berlin’s best-known plaza.

In 1805, to honour Prussia’s big ally in the war against Napoleon, Tsar Alexander I, the plaza - until then known as Ochsenmarkt (Ox Market) and Paradeplatz was christened “Alexanderplatz”. The Russian Tsar had just visited Berlin and King Friedrich Wilhelm III, Alexander’s lifelong friend, welcomed him with a lavish military parade organised there. A couple of days after the event, the plaza changed its name.

So far so good.

But few non-Berliners realise that they potentially betray themselves as newcomers and reveal their outsider status when pronouncing the name. Not „Ah-lex“ but the elongated „Allex“. To sound truly Berlinerisch you can even go one up and triple the l to „Alllex“.

And a little Berlin public-service announcement: Alexanderplatz, looking from the east, ends at the S-Bahn viaduct. Beyond, west of Bahnhof „Alexanderplatz“ and around Berlin TV Tower, you find yourself in Park am Fernsehturm. It‘s a small but fine difference that might not be groundbreaking but is fun to know. And it can win you the next pub quiz😉

Image: the oldest known photo of Berlin’s Alexanderplatz dated at 1860 and discovered by a passionate Berlin photo collector, Marcellinus Prien. Image in public domain.