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Remember that politics move quickly, and people and their opinions evolve.
❊ Should Lebanon Unify its English?
March 6, 2012 · Mustapha Hamoui
— Spot the Quirk —
The good news: A spanking new glittering mall is coming to Beirut. It will employ hundreds of Lebanese and will have all the fancy amenities the Lebanese and visiting shoppers will be looking for.
The weird news: The name of the mall will be: “Beirut City Centre”, using the British spelling of the word center, which looks similar to the french word centre. Blame the ad agency in the UAE who designed the logo and probably had its spell-checker set on British-english, the official version of English in the UAE, but is it wrong?
Does it matter that we mix our English in the same way that we mix our languages? Should we mind that in Lebanon colors are never colours but that centers can be centres? Should we care that some people will mix-pronounce “Beirut City Centre”, saying “Beirut City” in English but Centre in french, adding an unintended Lebanese je-ne-sais-quoi and fanciness to the mall’s name?
Who knows? And frankly, who cares? In Lebanon, with languages, it’s laissez-faire all the way..
Related: Let’s Face it, the French language in Lebanon is dying