nichts besonders (13. 363)

Having also covered the etymology and evolution of the semi-fantastical coinage of the term invented by the author of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, we thoroughly enjoyed this examination of the trademarking and corporatisation of the made-up word sonder, a sort of trendy afterlife and meta-reading of the linguistic lacuna defined as the “realisation that each random passerby is the main character of their own story—living a life just as vivid and complex as your own, while you are just an extra in the background,” an important lesson to be sure and a check on ego-centrism but also with a bit of sinister connotations both historical and possibly hijacked, as with these other startup ventures with the pedigree of another made-up thing in the unicorn, as the spotlight syndrome and non-playable characters. The emergent brandscape includes Sonder breweries as well as job-placement services and a capital investment fund, and any number of accommodations, cafes and restaurants all in varying states of solvency. The title is from the German phrase for “nothing special”—a response to what’s going on—and with sonderbar as an adjective conveying strange or remarkable, there is an endless amount of taverns and clubs in the Sprachraum that have taken advantage of that code-switching, though not subject to copyright as a vocabulary item. Maybe one should have added diacriticals with heavy metal ümlauts to register it as IP.