From Prof. M. Brincat

I wish to thank Marie Benoit for her kind comments regarding the brilliant Diwali dinner that my wife and myself had the privilege to be invited to last week. She too was an excellent dinner companion.

At the risk of sounding pedantic, I would like to say that I was fascinated by the root of Diwali (The Hindu Festival of Light) when compared to our dawl (light) because Diwali is a Sanskrit word (not Arabic) and our dawl is presumably transmitted to us via Arabic.

So we have evidence of Sanskrit, the ancient root Indo-European language in present day Maltese.

I am sure there are other such words but I am certainly no expert of Sanskrit or languages for that matter. I am sure that some scholar in Linguistics can comment.

Mark Brincat

Faculty of Medicine

University of Malta