Tudej, aj em rajting maj kolimm in Multiz. Ez e gajdlajn, aj em juzink njuspejpers ritten in di (sori, der iz no ekwivelent to di ‘th’ sawnd) Multiz lengwigg, end also di buks det ar bijink juzd to tic cildren et skul. Oh, end aj also uzd verjis Multiz dikxineris wicc ar bijink markitid ez otorititiv teksts.

Don’t be concerned. I’m going to stop there with this nonsense. I have exaggerated what is now passing for official Maltese to give you some idea of where we are heading. If you don’t have children at school, and never read the Maltese-language newspapers, you cannot possibly have any idea what is going on. English nouns and even verbs, very often incorrectly used, are being spelt according to the rules of the Maltese language and in line with the way they are mispronounced – senpejper (sandpaper) is but one example. These cannibalisms have been given the official status of Maltese words and are included in dictionaries and school-lessons.

This method of spelling English words according to Maltese linguistic rules, and then calling them Maltese words, is not only the case with loan words that have entered the language out of necessity because there is no Maltese equivalent. It is also being used where there is a perfectly good true Maltese word, as with ticer and blejd, which are both in the dictionary and defined, respectively, as ghalliem and xafra.

When I first started to read Maltese-language newspapers on a daily basis, in 1990, words like ‘team’ were written as they are supposed to be, and either put into italics or inverted commas, or else avoided altogether. Now, we have tim, and it is officially a Maltese word. When I sat for my Maltese O-level in 1980, the explicit instructions that were drummed into us were these: avoid loan words, but if you can’t, then put them in inverted commas; remember though, that marks will be knocked off if you do this, because it means that you haven’t made the effort to find a way of expressing yourself in correct Maltese. Anybody writing about brawnpejper – which has since gone into the dictionary – would have been seriously penalised, and rightly so.

* * *

A close relative called me to complain that her five-year-old daughter is being taught that the Maltese word for blackboard is blakbord, that a jumper is a gerzi rather than a flokk – even though jersey is no longer used in English, having been superseded by jumper and pullover – that mummy shops at the supermarket using a troli, that at MacDonald’s she can eat a berger, at home she can play with her bloks while daddy potters about in the garaxx and a helikopter flies overhead, that she can eat kejk while building a rokit, and that boys like to play with a trakk and a vann while wearing xorz in the summer. “I’m waiting for the day she comes home to tell me that the Maltese word for her school-bag is secil,” my relative said. “Oh, and I forgot to tell you that the introductory word to her reading-book is helow.”

This represents a dilemma. The child, at five, is too young to have explained to her the value of pragmatism in matters such as this. The best course of action, as I had explained to my sons who rebelled against being taught what they rightly perceived to be a form of pidgin, is to humour those who wish them to understand that the Maltese word for black-eye is blekaj, rather than ghajn mbengla, and then, once the O-level pass that secures university entrance is obtained, to write like an educated person. That can’t be explained to a five-year-old, though.

“Look on the bright side,” I told the child’s mother. “At least it isn’t blekbort, and you don’t have to correct the pronunciation as well as the spelling.” “You must be joking,” she said. “That’s exactly how she is being taught to pronounce it, as blekbort.”

I went to my dictionaries, in search of solace, but there was none – rather the opposite. Aquilina gives it as blekbord, marking the ignorance of mispronunciation with the stamp of officialdom. Serracino Inglott at least gets the pronunciation right but still gives it as blakbord. Or perhaps the pronunciation isn’t correct, after all, because the ‘r’ is not rolled in proper English (black-bawd), but it is rolled in the Maltese mispronunciation of the word.

Other words caught my eye in Serracino Inglott’s dictionary: blekmejl, blajnd, blakaw – why blekmejl but then blakawt? – blakk (black shoe polish; perhaps we should be grateful it wasn’t given as naggit), blakmarkit, blaws, and blaxer (blusher – a cosmetic), brajzmejd, brakitt (defined as a marka fil-kitba hekk (), brigg (bridge), brawzer (browser), majkrofown, majn (mine, as in coal-mine), najlon, koksin (coxswain), bozin (bo’sun), rokit, seksi (yes, really – hence the title of this piece), sejftipinn, swicc, swejd, kuxxin (cushion; real Maltese word – mhadda), raff (rough), olokawst, olja (apparently the verb ‘to oil’, used instead of dilek), probejxin, sanpejper, sapport, skrin, tobi (corruption of ‘tubby’, used to describe a rotund person), tofi, tojlit, towster, and of course, towst, instead of hobz mixwi.

I looked up that old favourite for a car’s spare wheel, stepney, which doesn’t exist in the English language, and found it in Aquilina’s dictionary as stepni, with the explanation that the tyres originally came to Malta from Stepney. Serracino Inglott, mysteriously for somebody who gives us senpejper, omits stepni, but delights us with sper. The newspapers have taken this further, and are writing about something called a sperwil. Is this Maltese? No, it is clearly pidgin.

Aquilina’s dictionary attributes the origin of these words, which are thick on the pages, to the English language: bleklist, blejzer, blic, blubukk, blubejbi, blufilm, blumer, blupejper, blupiter, bolbering, bnit, and my favourite, borrejs for ball-race. There’s stick for sticking-plaster, and stjuwett for steward. Serracino Inglott’s does not. He gives no indication in his dictionary that these are English words spelt according to Maltese rules. They are presented to those who know no English as Maltese words, undermining the very concept of education.

English retains the French spelling of the loan words garage, brassiere, and blancmange, but when we in turn took them on as loan words into Maltese, we saw the need to spell them as garaxx, brasjer and blamang.

Serracino Inglott’s dictionary – but then I have the 2000 edition – does not give us mobajl, a word now commonly used in newspapers and conversation to denote a mobile telephone. The other day, I was searching for my mobile telephone in the presence of somebody who speaks only Maltese. “Ma’ nistax insib it-telephone,” I told her. She looked at me in great alarm. “Hemmhekk, fejn dejjem kien,” she told me, indicating the land-line telephone on the windowsill. At that moment, I found my mobile telephone. “Eh, mela dak tghidlu telephone,” she said. “Jien mobile insibu.” Such is the way language develops.

* * *

Nobody will convince me that these forms of spelling are anything other than barbaric, and that the obsessive adherence to the rules without exception, when every other language I know of makes exceptions to the rules, is worse than puerile. The reason English is so rich is because it easily accommodates loan words and even whole expressions, without cannibalising the original spelling. Even the Italians, whose knowledge of English is truly abysmal, spell English loan words in English: smoking, weekend, shabby, shopping, snack (in Maltese, the dictionary gives it as snakk, pronounced snekk). That’s the sign of maturity in a language and culture and we should be the same. So, to hell with shocking rubbish like timplejer and trejdunonista, let’s stick to magna tal-hasil instead of teaching children that it’s called a waxin-mexin, which is how one of my sons once found it written in a text-book, leading to further and fully justified rebellion.

* * *

We are making the mistake of granting official status to common errors that are a symptom of poor education. Many of us watch Eastenders (I love it), but we know that the English they speak is not the kind that will get you through O-levels. Yet in Malta, the language of the poorly educated is rapidly becoming the official language. Words like pirmli (pilloli) petlor, lamienu (almenu), Furjana, denfil, irkotta(ricotta), ircevuta (ricevuta) are not valid Maltese words, but mispronunciations of them – the result of an inability to keep liquid consonants in their proper place. One of these errors, denfil, was horrendously given as the title of a textbook used by schoolchildren for around 30 years. Yet in every language where the name of this mammal is built around the consonants d-l-f-n, they follow that order of pronunciation: in Arabic, Italian, Spanish, French, Greek and English. It is a dolphin and not a ‘donphil’; a delfino and not a ‘denfilo’, and in Arabic, it is pronounced delfin and not denfil. Only we have given official status to this mistake, which has its roots in ignorance. Calling a textbook Id-denfil was the equivalent of teaching children that fuel stations sold petlor.

* * *

This is like our insistence, through lack of cultural depth, that radju is masculine because it ends with ‘u’ and that problema is feminine because it ends with ‘a’. Yet ‘radio’ is feminine and ‘problem’ is masculine in other languages, including French and Italian, which use these words, because they correctly reflect their Greek origin and gender. In Italian, it’s la radio and il problema, and Maltese children are taught this and why, but in Maltese, they are taught that the origin of words is to be ignored, and that their ending in ‘u’ or ‘a’ takes precedence in deciding their gender.

* * *

It should be euro, of course, and not ewro. We have reached that stage in the development of the Maltese language where exceptions have to be made to the rules if we are not to sacrifice true education on the senpejper altar. All languages allow for exceptions to the rules, and Maltese cannot hope to be different, or we will end up speaking and writing a form of pidgin that will be ridiculous to all but those who know no better.

I have yet to encounter anyone who says ewro, even when speaking Maltese. It’s ‘euro’ to everyone I have come across, even those who speak no English at all, because that is precisely how it entered the language, as ‘euro’ and not as ewro. This does not mean, of course, that we should follow the example of blekbord and blubejbi, and spell it as juro. It only means that the time has come for us to grow up and leave intact the spelling and pronunciation of this loan word, instead of succumbing to the urge to tamper with it. If Serracino Inglott can list stereo in his dictionary without feeling, oddly, the urge to spell it as sterjo¸and ocean without spelling it as ocejan, then we can leave the two vowels ‘eu’ next to each other in euro with a clear conscience and without losing sleep.

People who tell us that the Maltese word for a baby born with a heart defect is blubejbi have absolutely no right to tell us how to spell or pronounce euro. Their good judgement is hardly to be trusted.