Daphne’s recurrent tantrums on the Maltese language are becoming frankly pathetic. She protests that those of her ilk speak Maltese badly or not at all because their language is, after all, English, and that those who are mangling the native language are those who speak only Maltese (TMIS, 24 August). The reason she gives is incredibly condescending: those who speak only Maltese do it so badly because they are necessarily “poorly educated, which generally means they use unsound grammar, contorted syntax and make a slipshod use of vocabulary”. The underlying line in her argument, (that being able to speak only one language means you are necessarily ill-educated) should therefore make the tal-pepe, by her own admission, as ill educated as the hamalli!! You can’t escape the syllogism can you?

This means that an Englishman from England who doesn’t know a word of Italian (and there are many of them from all walks of life) are, according to her, the dregs, while her own tal-pepe, who pretend not to know the language of their mother country but flaunt the language of foreigners, should be looked up to as paragons of education.

The supreme irony is that your typical tal-pepe sometimes mangles the English language out of recognition more than I have ever heard the Maltese do theirs, and they do it repeatedly and evidently without knowing it. Listen to these two examples I happened to overhear lately: (1) a tal-pepe mother in a queue at a stationer’s on the Sliema front. Her son is making a nuisance of himself touching things and disturbing customers, some of them tourists. His father is outside on the pavement, waiting. At one point, she tells her son, evidently in baby talk: “Listen Matthew, stop being naughty, go outside and make love to Daddy!! In Maltese we tell children: mur hobb lil papa that translates into go hug daddy. Needless to say the foreigners looked shocked!! I blushed and burst out laughing. (2) Another tal-pepe mother, another naughty son. They are in an adjacent bathroom. He is making a mess and I hear another pearl of idiomatic English (this must be the pits): “Stop it Marc, don’t stay flying with everywhere!!!” In idiomatic Maltese this translates word by word into toqghodx ittajjar ma’ kullimkien. Of course it is completely incomprehensible in English. Get my point? What she should have told him was “stop splashing water all over the place”.

It is certainly not true that people from Sliema speak only the English language. I know many elderly Slimizi who speak Maltese all the time. After all many of them can trace their origins to the Three Cities (Bormla, Isla and Birgu) and environs. English is a very recently acquired language for them, but the second and third generations are now using it, or rather mangling it, all the time. I bet most of you have heard a Slimiza saying: “OK dear but let’s go by walk!” (should be “on foot”), or “you see, issa taf how hard it is”.

As for people who speak the native language all the time, I cannot help laughing at the thought of Oliver Friggieri, who makes it a point of always speaking a beautifully articulated Maltese (if he can help it of course), being considered a hamallu by the likes of Daphne.

I do not understand all the fuss being made about scholars who would like to see Maltese written in a coherent way. Every language in the world has had to handle imported vocabulary, even whole turns of phrases, from other languages. Correct orthography in these cases is not based on some whimsical decision by language pundits, as Daphne would have us believe, but on a phonetic assessment of the language itself. We should be spelling the English word goal as gowl not because someone up there said so but because that is the way Maltese transliterates the sounds involved. It has happened already with hundreds of words imported from Sicilian and Italian: processione has become purcissjoni, pulpito has become pulptu. The English themselves have borrowed truckloads of words from the French, who in turn had borrowed them from Italian or Latin. However, with every step the words are adapted to the receiving language and not the other way round. Thus the Latin name for the seventh month iulius (named after Julius Caesar), became Luglio in Italian, Juillet in French and July in English.

The difference between writing skond and skont is not even phonetic but a question of derivation. In Italian, the word secondo means according to, therefore skond with a “d” while sconto means a price reduction, therefore skont with a “t”. Simple, isn’t it? But it continues to escape Daphne.

I sincerely think that Maltese is to be valued for what it is: a unique language spoken by a unique mix of people with a unique history. Once, when I was on a skiing holiday, I sat down to dinner with a group of French skiers who wanted to know what language is spoken in such a tiny place like Malta. When I started giving a description of how the language is made up, the Maltese who were on the same table told me not to mention the words Semitic or Arabic, saying that it would degrade them in front of foreigners. I was dumbfounded. According to them I had to slice off the very foundation itself. Anyway, I ignored such protests and gave the French a true picture. They were simply delighted and I felt proud.

Hands off Ryanair!!

It might not be the glitziest airline around but for sheer economical prices I have yet to find one to beat it. Most of us had been waiting for low cost airlines like the Jews waited for manna from heaven. Some have now used it frequently to their satisfaction, yet we still hear and read those who would like to wipe it off the Luqa airport timetable.

But what is it with these people? Since the airline started operations to and from Malta I have used it at least four times and always saved hundreds of euros compared to standard carriers, even compared to other self-styled low cost carriers. All right, if you have a fixed date for a departure then you cannot be sure the price will be necessarily cheap but if you can plan your departure and return dates around a conveniently cheap offer, then it is wonderfully handy.

Ryanair is just filling in where other carriers have not bothered to be present at all. It’s as simple as that and, given the right go-ahead from the powers that be, it will fill in other less well-served destinations. I myself can’t wait to hop over to Bari come November and visit the glorious Apulian landscape with its fine beaches and coves, its trulli, its masserie, its white villages and sample its stupendous cuisine. From Pisa, a couple of months ago, I visited the awesome Cinque Terre, a 16 km stretch of Ligurian cliffs dotted with picturesque villages that seem to come tumbling down to the sea. American and German trekkers pour into the Cinque Terre like ants: now even Maltese enthusiasts can join in as I did and it will only cost them around €60 (return flight, all taxes included!) to Pisa, a one-hour train ride to Riomaggiore and a short stay at a pensione or in rooms provided by local families. A trip to glorious Venice is also suddenly available: a last-minute decision last January to see the world-famous Venice Carnival only set me back €50 (return flight, taxes included). From Treviso one can even do the off-the-beaten track thing and go on a riverboat or a bicycle to visit the famous Palladian Villas on the Brenta Canal and around the Trevigian countryside.

Need I say more?

La bella stagione

So summer has come and it is now nearly over. But, as usual, it comes with a vengeance: suddenly many people seem to get the urge to build or excavate something or other and, in the bat of an eyelid, the air is filled with the ennoyingdrone of jiggers and chasers, until fine dust starts to rain from the sky and bury everything. Sweet summer turns slowly into a nightmare. As if this were not enough, people also start getting the urge to let off explosives and hiding behind that other obsessive urge to celebrate this or that saint – sometimes quite dubious characters – every year till kingdom come. The pyromaniacs take command of our well-earned rest with explosions at every hour of the day and, at the height of their frenzy, even at night.

When will someone tell these people that there is a limit to human endurance? When will the Commissioner of Police draw up a simple, schedule of noise thresholds to be strictly complied with? All he needs to do is hire an acoustic engineer and establish in decibels what sort of noise level is acceptable at a minimum distance from the nearest habitation, which in Malta, I believe, is a hundred metres. Is it such an impossibly hard chore? If it is, can’t he borrow a manual from the European Commission? Will the bullies have it their way another summer?

The Italians call summer la bella stagione. La bella stagione my foot!!

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