It was quite a sight to see the whole of Wembley singing The Marseillaise on Tuesday night. Coincidently a few days before the tragic events of the well named Friday 13th I was researching the spell of Marseilles. Indeed, there are a lot of cases and French and English when the same words are spelt differently. This could be understandable for common words, but names shouldn’t be spelt differently if they sound exactly the same. Hong Kong is written with a hyphen in between the two words in French. That’s also the case for Marseilles: in French it’s spelt without “s” at the end unlike the English. The name George follows the opposite principle with an “s” at the end in French. Enough to drive you mad like poor King George III.
The Marseillaise
Updated: Oct 22, 2020