Joe Felice Pace (TMID, 25 August), although quoting a lot of high-sounding words on linguistics, does not, I repeat, not know that the Maltese language really exists.

He says, and I quote, “that Maltese is made up of Arabic, Italian, Sicilian and English elements”. This proves that in his mentality, Mr Felice Pace believes that there is no such thing as a Maltese language. This mentality crops up from the idea that Italian is the language of Malta. This shows that he hates the Maltese language, so much so that he even ignores it.

The Maltese language is so strong that it has withstood the domination of the greatest nations of the world for several centuries including all those mentioned by him and adding French, with bongu and bonswa. Yet it kept its original trend of forming nouns by adding the “M” in the beginning, as midra, mithna, muftieh, Mgarr, misqa, Mdina, mizien and hundreds others.

But Mr Felice Pace only believes in dialects, as all those he mentioned are dialects, they are not languages. If he has any idea of linguistics he would know what I am saying. They are all, I repeat all, dialects. And he hates the Maltese language, a pure Semitic language from Syria, Phoenicia, where there are still people who speak Maltese in Hacit.

But for Mr Felice Pace, the Maltese language does not even exist. It is a conglomeration of dialects which he adores.

Joseph Ellul

Zurrieq