I found Ms Caruana Galizia’s article on the spelling of English words in Maltese rather intriguing. I am inclined to agree that the spelling of English words according to Maltese orthography may create confusion in children and even adults who have to write the same word in English or Maltese differently, depending on which language they are writing in.

I too sometimes find the Maltese orthography spelling of English words somewhat hilarious and I doubt whether I will ever get used to it. Having said that, one must understand that the problem exists and there is no easy solution. We are either going to adhere consistently to our orthography which, unlike the English system, is basically (though imperfectly) a phonetic one, or we are not.

One must not think, however, that it is only in Maltese that English and foreign words are written according to the orthographical system of the language which borrows them.

Some other European languages do the same; in Polish for example, the word “strike” is written “strajk” according to Polish spelling. I imagine the writer of the article would be even more horrified had she to go to Russia and see dozens of English words like “penthouse” and “hypermarket” not only written phonetically as “pentkhaus” (with hard “h”) and “gipermarket” (the “h” replaced by “g”) but also spelt in the Cyrillic script!

I am pretty certain that for us Maltese, who constantly use the English language, the spelling of English words written according to a different orthography look even more shocking than to others who do not use English as much as we do.

As for the spelling of “euro”, the question is not linguistic or orthographic but juridical. If European Union law says it should be spelt “euro”, then there is no room for divergence, in my view.

There are many other points in the article which merit comment. Due to lack of space, suffice it to mention the following:

Concerning words of Greek origin like problema, tema, sistema, poema and so on, which are originally masculine and belong to that gender in Italian and French, in Maltese they are feminine according to the general rule. It would be a mistake to prescribe a rule that we should follow Greek, Italian or other languages and, worse, it would be pedantic. Should one insist that “xarabank” be masculine because “char-a-banc” is masculine in French?

As for foreign words that are “corrupted”, if the corrupted use has become widespread it should become the standard form. Who would think of saying “kettle” in Maltese when “kitla” has become the standard word, or “tire-buchon” instead of “trabixu’”?

The problem is which corrupted words have become standard and which have not. This does not mean that all grammatical mistakes should become standard Maltese e.g. the plural of “klassifika” should be “klassifiki” (feminine) and not (as I sometimes hear it) “klassifici”, I even once heard “repubblici” on the radio.

Mario Costa

MOSCOW