A subject called life skills was introduced into the school curriculum some years ago. It covers topics like common sense, decision-making skills, and how to get along with others. Now I see the need for a new topic: the art of conversation and debate – how to talk to people rather than at them or worse, over them.

You see this kind of behaviour all the time on television. It doesn’t happen during discussions on radio because the system discourages it: first one person speaks into the microphone, then another person speaks. This has an inhibiting effect. Also, because it’s radio nobody shouts, and because the audience can’t see the speakers, the speakers don’t feel the urge to behave like circus animals. That’s why radio debates are so much more civilised, with no shouting, screaming and haranguing, and why they make so much more sense.

Some have tried to tell me that debates which generate into shouting matches are a national characteristic. The British queue. We shout and don’t listen. But it isn’t a national characteristic. It’s just plain bad manners. To anyone watching these shows without understanding the language, it looks like the participants are about to rush off and burn a few flags and a couple of buildings. Sometimes I turn the sound off and watch. It can look like a scene from Planet of the Apes. You expected it of the types that Jerry Springer used to host, but it’s not the right kind of behaviour for participants who hold themselves in high standing.

They let themselves down and they’re a bad example to others. There are many thousands of people out here who behave like that all the time. They need to be taught that it’s neither civilised nor acceptable. They shouldn’t have their poor behaviour affirmed by the performance of those on television shows, who shout “Iskot!” and “Ghalaq halqek!” at each other, roll their eyes heavenwards while others are speaking, interrupt, wave their hands in people’s faces while hectoring them, and all in all behave as though they are milling around the guillotine in revolutionary France.

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Here is some heartening news. The linguists have let it be known that the incorporation of common errors into the Maltese language does not amount to its degeneration, but to its rejuvenation. Their confidence is not infectious, and besides that, I see no linguists working themselves into a frenzy of delight at how the Maltese are customising the English language. Errors are now so ingrained that no amount of washing liquid will remove them.

One such is the belief that skop translates as “scope”. There was a time when it did, but that usage is archaic now, and nobody who speaks English as a first language understands “scope” to mean “purpose”. Yet at conferences and large meetings I hear cabinet ministers and CEOs speak about the scope of their project when what they wish to describe is the project’s purpose or aim, rather than its range and breadth.

Grammatical errors and malapropisms are increasing by the day in the English-language newspapers. Meanwhile, in their Maltese-language counterparts, a decision seems to have been taken to use English nouns as often as possible, and to spell them in Maltese. So we have xowrum, timeniger (it took me ages to work this one out: team manager), plejstejxin (a trademark, spelt in Maltese), slegghemer (sledgehammer), and kruzlajner (cruise liner).

I’m not talking typos here. I’m talking mistakes that make nonsense of the meaning of sentences. Sometimes, I cannot even understand what the report is all about, even after I have read it twice. It’s not because I don’t understand English; it’s because this kind of English can only be understood with reference to Maltese.

The debate about the Hotpants Law, which will allow the police to arrest women for being indecently dressed in areas known for prostitution, brought a flood of references to “dishonestly dressed women”. Only those who know the quaint and archaic Maltese expression tilbes b’mod dizonest would know what in hell’s name these people were going on about. Yet those who translate the expression literally into English haven’t a clue why it’s incomprehensible to those who don’t speak Maltese. A pair of shorts can never be dishonest.

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This reminds me of my best friend, more than 20 years ago now, trying to explain to her Italian boyfriend, who was visiting over New Year’s Eve, that he would have to wear a dinner jacket to the party. Giving up on the mimes and descriptions, she rushed to my boyfriend’s wardrobe, pulled out the required item, and waved it at her fidanzato. “Ah!” he said, relief spreading over his face, “Uno smoking!” I still haven’t worked out why the Italians use for a dinner jacket the name of an entirely different piece of men’s clothing: the now defunct smoking-jacket. At least they continue to respect the spelling as “smoking”, while we write about id-dinergeket or worse, id-digej.

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The mistakes are even more disturbing when they are in the headlines. In situations like this, I cannot carry on reading until I have folded the newspaper over so that the offending item can no longer be seen.

Some weeks ago, a newspaper carried this headline on its back page: “Ghallis landfill to serve for seven years”. I shook the thing in irritation. Rubbish dumps don’t serve; people do. Again, to understand how that headline was constructed, you have to know Maltese: isservi ghal seba’ snin ohra, which means “can be used for another seven years”, rather than “serving for another seven years”.

Now, if the headline had read “Ghallis landfill to serve as a rubbish dump for another seven years” (too long for a headline, I know), then this intransitive use of the verb “to serve” is correct. In the original headline, it was used in the transitive form. These are not subtleties at all, they are significant distinctions, which change the meaning of sentences and leave them open to interpretation.

Because some mistakes are so common, appearing frequently in newspapers, readers have accepted them. They have entered the language – or at least, that form of the English language that is spoken and written in Malta. I have noticed that there seem to be few people left on this island who ask friends and the general public whether they are interested in visiting China, rather than whether they are interested to visit China.

There was a mistake like this in a government corporation advertisement last week. Everyone seems to be talking about arriving to Italy and arriving to the cinema, rather than arriving in Italy and at the cinema. Are you interested to study German? Are you interested to buy a car? Every time I read something like this, I yell at the newspaper: “You can’t be interested to something; you can only be interested in it!” I have a sneaking suspicion that the rules of Italian grammar are being applied to English, which is why people think they have to use the infinitive where it is categorically wrong to do so: “Ti interessa visitare la Cina?”; “Are you interested to visit China?” Oh dear, oh dear.

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This is as nothing, though, compared to the rise and rise of the wrongly used conditional tense. Newspaper reports and opinion columns are riddled with the word “would” used instead of “will”, where the sentence clearly calls for use of the future tense and not the conditional. A friend who teaches English to sixth formers mentioned that this phenomenon is on the increase among her students, too.

Everyone is would-crazy. She says that this, too, is the direct influence of Italian grammar. I couldn’t follow her explanation because my Italian is not too hot. At school, the word “coniugare” brought on a trance that was only dispelled by the electric sound of the bell marking the end of lessons. I have a far more straightforward explanation in any case: people use “would” when they should be using “will” because they think it’s some kind of polite form. They don’t realise that it’s a completely different tense with a very different meaning.

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I perceive an ugly predicament that grows worse by the day: that English is mutating here as Arabic once did. Given time, it will become a completely different language with very recognisable origins, in which most of the nouns and verbs are the same, but used differently. Within a couple of centuries, it may even have merged with Maltese. But then, who cares if we’re not around?

After all, the two languages are merging already. Up to fairly recently, the merging was only in the spoken languages; now it is in the written languages too. We use Maltese forms to construct English sentences, and the number of English loan words in Maltese is escalating so rapidly that the Maltese of tomorrow will be as intelligible to English-speakers (in the sense that they will be able to clearly identify nouns and verbs) as the Maltese of today is comprehensible to speakers of Arabic.

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The linguists who claim that it is natural for languages to mutate and develop in this way, and that what is happening to Maltese is normal, are being disingenuous. Because there is no classical form of Maltese, the patois in its various permutations is being taken up as the official standard. This is the equivalent of there being no standard English (or “Queen’s English”), and the language being instead a free-for-all or pick-and-mix ragbag gathering together dialects as disparate as those of East London, the Midlands and Yorkshire. Try sitting for an English O’level using Cockney slang, Scouse or Geordie, and see how far you’ll get with the examiners. Yet the Maltese equivalent of Cockney and Scouse is being integrated into the general language, and even taught to children in schools.

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The terrible questions that have convulsed us in recent days (Should Christ be on our coins? Should we spell it euro or ewro? Is there really a Father Christmas?) have been topped by the Song for Europe show. That should keep us amused for some time. Meanwhile, I luxuriate in ignorant bliss. “What! Didn’t you watch it? Didn’t you watch it?” people ask me.

I have hated song festivals (and circuses) since I was a child. Some people fear reptiles and enclosed spaces. I fear song festivals and heights. I know they happen and that lots of people go crazy for watching them and for endlessly debating the results, but I also know this about football, another competitive sport in which I have no interest at all.

I wouldn’t know the difference if Fabrizio Faniello had played against Manchester United and Juventus had won the Song for Europe contest. A night in with Song for Europe or a football match? I would rather be pegged out and eaten alive by driver ants.