This has been an extraordinary year for the Akkademja tal-Malti. It has managed to achieve what nobody this time last year would have thought possible.

Perhaps the most visible achievements were the drafting and approval of a new Statute by the members, the publication of two excellent issues of the journal Il-Malti, with academic and literary works by 30 different writers representing the rich diversity that exists within the Akkademja today, and the launching of a useful and elegant website.

The Council of the Akkademja held some 33 meetings in the past 12 months, and that doesn’t include meetings with individual members and other institutions, meetings of the editorial board of Il-Malti, meetings to set up the website, and so on. An extraordinary achievement indeed.

This year has shown that the negative attitude well represented by your unusually misguided and misinformed article, “Bubble, bubble, is the Akkademja in trouble?” (TMIS, 18 September) can really be a thing of the past.

None of this would have been possible had the focused and hard-working provisional council not been able to breathe new life and enthusiasm into the Akkademja and create an atmosphere that has encouraged many people to take an active, voluntary role in its renaissance. Dr Bernard Micallef and the council he presided over deserve special mention.

Much of what appeared in your bubble article had already been circulated among the members of the Akkademja in an unsigned letter last year. The bubbles blown in that letter were burst, one by one, in a signed letter by Prof. Manwel Mifsud.

With the setting up of the National Council for the Maltese Language, a project Prof. Mifsud had worked hard on with others for years, and with his open criticism of what he, and many of us, including myself, argued had to change in the Akkademja. Prof. Manwel Mifsud has played a key role in the regeneration that has taken place this year. What has been achieved throughout this last year would not have been possible without him.

I have worked closely with him in the past months on the National Council for the Maltese Language. He has created the kind of positive atmosphere that allows people to come up with ideas and develop them. He has been inclusive and he has asked us to be inclusive too, to allow as many people as possible to participate actively and creatively.

By the time you publish this letter the general meeting of the Akkademja will have been held and we will have a new Council. Unlike your article, my signed letter will not influence the general meeting in any way.

Like many other volunteers, I truly hope that the new Council will not take us back to the empty bubbles of the recent past but will continue to give a new lease of life to the Maltese language. That, indeed, would deserve an article in your Sunday paper.

Adrian Grima

PEMBROKE