I refer to Daphne Caruana Galizia’s Seksi artikil (TMIS, 15 January).

I suggest that Ms Caruana Galizia follows a thorough course in linguistics before writing articles on languages and in particular the Maltese language. Knowing her sheer snobbish attitude and language orientation, I find it very difficult to appreciate her competence when writing about our official national language. Through her ridiculous article, she has shown how poor her knowledge on language semantics and development is.

Using her same exposition, English should do away with so many words that have been adopted from Greek, Latin, French, German, and other languages. Ironically, this has made for a richer English lexicon. I am here giving some examples, though anyone who would like to find much more, can just scan through a good English dictionary where one will find a multitude of examples. So one would find: Algebra from Arabic al-jabr (il-habra), fountain from the Latin fontana, formidable from Latin formido, dynamic from Greek dunamis, bray from French braire, baggage from French bagage, biology from Greek bios logos and countless other words, which the British rightly adopted in their language and no Galizia ever thought of complaining about it.

Every living language goes through this development and I see no reason why our Maltese language should not do the same. New words are introduced through technological development. Prior to the introduction of the typewriter, nobody would have thought of introducing the verb tittajpja; now that the computer is introduced no one should complain about using new registers such as in the IT sector, like: nissejvja, nikklikjaw, and many others, where the stem (iz-zokk morfemiku) takes a prefix and a suffix, a mechanism we use with Romance and Anglo-Saxon words. Even the Italians have developed their own way of conjugating verbs in this sector namely: cliccare from click, and nobody complained then.

Caruana Galizia also complained about the use of Furjana and not Floriana, denfil and not delfin, I wonder how she did not mention the verb in the second Semitic form fajjar from fire, or acjomu from Ecce Uomo. Incoming words are morphologically transformed and in certain cases they also change meaning, which is either broadened or narrowed. All this is Semantics, which all living languages experience. This does not only happen in Maltese. A case in point is the English word, used in the board game of chess, Check-mate. This is derived from the Semitic phrase "Ix-xih miet", (check... Persian = king).

The Maltese language has developed from an Arabic dialect into a proper language because it gained words from Romance and Anglo-Saxon languages and adopted them in the Semitic framework. No one argues that irwiegel from the Italian regole, which is given the Semitic plural (Miksur), is not a correct Maltese word, or serrep from serpente, which is given the second Semitic form, should not be used, or kcejjen from kitchen, which is given again the Semitic plural (Miksur), and countless other words, which helped Maltese develop as a language in its own right. Neither the Arabic nor the Italian and English, have the words “serrep, irwiegel, kcejjen”, only Maltese has.

It is a regular way to follow Maltese rules when we come to the use of words or verbs. Some examples should suffice: we write: Xutt and not shoot, because when we conjugate this verb we cannot write nishootya but rightly so: nixxuttja, the same with niskorja, nikkowcja, nillowdja, nistudja, nircievu, nostakulaw, nordnaw and thousand others, which would take up more than your available space if I were to list them. A rule has to be consistent otherwise it is no rule at all and it will then become irregular. After all, Maltese is a phonetic language and does not have the burden the English language has with quite a few letters, where the same letter has more than one sound, namely: (a) in “all” = sounds (oll), in “at” = sounds (et), in “after” = sounds (a). This also applies to letters like c, e, i and various others.

Caruana Galizia also tried to ridicule our numbers due to the fact they are mostly in two syllables. I could find no logical reason to discourage the use of Maltese numbers for this reason. Based on the same argument, the Italians should also use English numbers because theirs have two, three, four and even five syllables, ex: u-no, du-e, quat-tro, cin-que, set-te, ot-to, no-ve, die-ci, un-di-ci, do-di-ci, quat-tor-di-ci and cin-quan-ta-cin-que, you can go on. Shamefully, all this is sheer proof of her prejudice against the Maltese language.

Meanwhile, I find no reason why we should argue about using the word ewro, written in Maltese on the new currency, which we shall be adopting. Wasn’t it so when we went decimal back in 1972? Nobody complained that we wrote Lira Maltija instead of Pound, no one ever thought of using the word Pound instead of Lira. All these arguments are trivial and illogical, the result of ignorance on this matter. Let us leave the linguistic experts do their job in the right way. Everyone can express an opinion, but in the end the experts should decide. After all, it would be contradictor if the authorities were to ignore the suggestions made by the “Kunsill tal-Lingwa Maltija”, which was established by the same government. One has to bear in mind that the same council has erudite persons and professors of language.

There is one last thing I would like to share with readers. The correct use of both Maltese and English should complement each other rather than clash. Maltese is the biggest archive we have, as each word has a history that gives us our identity and help us to communicate with each other and in European institutions, while English is a very important tool for us to communicate with the entire world and serves as a vehicle for economic growth. So let us remain bilingual while conserving both languages in the right way. Unfortunately, there are some Maltese who prefer to remain foreigners in their own land and claim that they cannot speak their native tongue. We should be proud of our language because of the fact that even though we inhabit such a tiny island, we have our developed language together with its literature, behind which is one thousand years of history. One would be insane to discard all this.

Thus prior to writing on this matter, Ms Caruana Galizia should first acquire some knowledge about the development of languages and understand how rich Maltese is in its morphological aspects.

Meanwhile she should reflect and comment on these matters without prejudice; otherwise she will be rightly considered as another charlatan.

Reno Saliba

ATTARD