Thursday, November 13, 2008

Willkommen in the Der Rathskeller, continued

Just last week Mr. Verb wrote about "Willkommen in Der Rathskeller," mentioning that it is perhaps seen as an invariant phrase. Right on, Mr. Verb! So invariant that it's perfectly OK to give the invariant phrase an article (in English; it doesn't matter if you don't know what Der means). The Badger Herald, one of the student newspapers at the UW, has an article on the band We the Living today. The caption under the picture:
We the Living returns to the city of Madison Friday for a concert at the Der Rathskeller.
Very odd indeed.

5 comments:

Joe said...

Wow, almost like "the La Brea Tar Pits".

Mr. Verb said...

Thanks, this does confirm what I thought.

But shouldn't the University of Wisconsin – Madison student papers have people reading copy who know a tad of German?

The Ridger, FCD said...

Well, if you're not going to say "im Rathskeller" you might as well treat the name as a fixed phrase. It's not as annoying as "Morton's The Steakhouse", if you ask me. (I know some people try to fix that one by adding a comma, but their own signs are proudly comma-free.)

Murfyn said...

Today's soup du jour is . . .

Anonymous said...

And I'd like that with the au jus sauce, please.