Mr Navarro of the United States of America (TMID, 1 September) does not know what he is saying. I am an octogenarian more than he is. So I know that what he is saying about the Maltese language in Malta is not true.

I never learned the Maltese language in primary or secondary schools. In primary, I learned English and Italian and never learned Maltese in the secondary school.

So all he is saying is all propaganda of the Italian Umberto Primo which he remembers well and perhaps even attended.

When I graduated from secondary school I had to learn Maltese on my own.

So all he is saying is a pack of lies from the Umberto Primo Italian school.

I only said facts which he could not contradict the least.

And all he said is a pack of Italian propaganda lies. Even in the United States of America he speaks a twisted English dialect and not a language.

Yet, as I explained before, Maltese is a very strong language that has withstood the test of several dominations, while all the other tongues he mentions are just dialects, while his is a dialect of a dialect taken from the Norman dialect of France, which was already a dialect of the Latin language.

This is no bragging as the Americans call it.

These are facts. Facts which nobody, including himself, can deny. Why doesn’t he learn what he is writing about?

Maltese cannot be destroyed because it is the language of Christ which the Jews did not understand and the language of St Paul who was Syrian from Damascus.

And facts show that God punishes those who persecute the lovers of the Maltese language.

Joseph S. Ellul

Zurrieq