Touched a nerve at THE Wigmore Hall

[kernelbogey]

The Royal Opera House is a tad fanatical (or cetainly used to be) about the capitalisation of the definite pronoun in The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet etc. (A bit of grist for this discussion.)

There is a magesterial footnote, which I once read, in the famous 11th edition of Brittanica, about the redundancy of referring to The Tyrol/Tirol. Our Home Secretary was told off last year for talking about 'The Ukraine'. In both cases the definite article is no more necessary than it would be with Yorkshire, Aquitaine or Tuscany.

[smittims]

Yes, there's even a political connotation. Maybe 'The Ukraine' , and I remember its frequent use, was shorthand for 'the Ukraine region of Russia'.

[Bryn]

The Royal Opera House is a tad fanatical (or cetainly used to be) about the capitalisation of the definite pronoun in The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet etc. (A bit of grist for this discussion.)

There is a magesterial footnote, which I once read, in the famous 11th edition of Brittanica, about the redundancy of referring to The Tyrol/Tirol. Our Home Secretary was told off last year for talking about 'The Ukraine'. In both cases the definite article is no more necessary than it would be with Yorkshire, Aquitaine or Tuscany.

Complicated further in the cases of Ukraine and Russia, in that neither has a definite article in their respective national language.

[smittims]

'If the first element of the title is a place name there's no definite article'.

As in 'The Canterbury Tales' , perhaps?

[french frank]

'If the first element of the title is a place name there's no definite article'.

As in 'The Canterbury Tales' , perhaps?

No, because the example had to have a building as the second element, as Canterbury Cathedral, Canterbury East Signal Box.