From Mr F. Sammut

Laughable. Simply laughable. Daphne Caruana Galizia wants to teach me English (TMIS, 29 June)! I wonder what I will hear from her next. Referring to a comment I made in a Times blog, she spotted two typing errors: “blund” instead of “blunt” (which any primary school kid would detect with equal alacrity) and “by” standing instead of “to” as the right preposition following the verb “to behold” in the sense of “being under obligation “ another typing error that can be spotted by any student sitting for the Matsec, the equivalent of which I had successfully sat for years before Mrs Caruana Galizia was born into this world for our sins (needless to say, by way of punishing, not redeeming, us thereof).

If Mrs Caruana Galizia is so finicky about knowing how those typing errors occurred in the blog she refers to, the truth of the matter is that after including other phrases, which I eventually omitted for brevity’s sake, I failed to realize that “by” came to stand instead of the correct “to”. For Mrs Caruana Galizia to go to town on such obvious “typing” errors in a blog (not in an article, let alone a book or other forms of writing where one is more careful to omit typing errors) rather than on the message in my comment simply goes to show the intellectual insufficiency of this presumptuous commentator on life in Malta.

But of course, the typing errors did not really provoke the wrath of this columnist, beholden to the grouping that pushed the candidate who did not make it to the PN General Secretary’s post. The obvious reason behind her uncontrollable frustration was that I dared congratulate the successful candidate. You see, this self-appointed inspector of newspaper articles, blogs, anything that appears in print on this island, will not tolerate any opinions that differ from her own or from those of the grouping to which she is beholden.

I would not have bothered your readers with the opinion I expressed in the said blog but now that your correspondent brought it up, albeit obliquely, also in this paper, I have no qualms to repeat it here too. I confirm that I congratulated Dr Paul Borg Olivier on his election to the post of PN General Secretary because, endowed as he is with gentlemanly conduct and probity, I believe he can usher in a more civilized way of doing politics which discards the savage treatment meted out to political opponents, as amply demonstrated in the columns of your correspondent and other writings inspired by the grouping to which Mrs Caruana Galizia is beholden.

I would have stopped there had your correspondent not elected to bring in my novel-writing as well. This would-be literary critic, in her usual flippant manner, chose to call my novels “turgid”. Apart from the fact that thousands of readers obviously do not share her opinion, (otherwise why would my novels run into third and fourth editions over successive decades?) how would she know whether they are “turgid” (for which, read “difficult to understand”) or not, when she cannot even understand everyday Maltese, let alone the literary kind? Does she infer that I should write in the sloppy neither-here-nor-there pidgin Maltese she has been exposed to during her linguistically defective upbringing? Given the silly attitude she regularly assumes that makes her denigrate any thing she cannot comprehend, I would only suggest she first learn Maltese before presuming to comment on its literary manifestations, and leave the matter at that. Why should I waste my time, or your readers’, trying to explain the intricacies of Maltese literary jargon simply to avoid having a blockhead persistently air ridiculous opinions on national literature?

On the other hand, your readers’ curiosity may have been piqued by your correspondent’s remark that I was an adviser to Dr Alfred Sant. I must put their mind at rest that, having practically no knowledge of economics or business administration, I never presumed to give any advice in those areas commonly associated with the term “adviser”. I only proffered suggestions and recommendations where the national language and related promotional activities were concerned. Only recently, Dr Sant, being the gentleman he is, stated in It-Torca that he found out I was right in recommending that Professor Alexander Borg be invited to organize an important unit at university, relinquishing his commitments with the University of Jerusalem and other important posts with prestigious universities in the Middle East. Unfortunately, Dr Sant did not have the time needed to consider my recommendation, which, I insist, would have been highly beneficial to the welfare of the national language. Fortunately there were other recommendations Dr Sant had the time to consider and to implement. For that I am quite grateful. Such satisfying instances outweigh the nuisance and darned nonsense occasionally coming my way from semi-illiterates like Mrs Caruana Galizia.

If, on the other hand, your correspondent meant to infer that I sought to advise the Prime Minister in fields where I have not a clue, the joke is on her. If, trying to mislead people may be considered as a joke... as, in, say, the case when someone presents oneself as “bilingual” although one actually is not, knowing enough of one of the implied languages only to get along at the supermarket where three quarters of the vocabulary one uses are made up of foreign words anyway!

Frans Sammut

ZEBBUG