I have just learned (TMID, 2 September) that the Munxar local council is celebrating the festa for “Gozitan dialects”. This is a dishonour and pure ignorance for Maltese to celebrate such a thing. It is no wonder that Daphne Caruana Galizia is jubilant about it, satisfying her hatred of the Maltese language.

In Malta and Gozo we don’t have “dialects”. We just have “voeul variations” as the English people also have, and I can recognise where a particular English person came from. And when I tell them so, they would ask: “How do you know?” And I would reply: “From the way you talk”. This is known by the English people themselves. When an Englishman asked his wife about me, he did not ask her if I was an Englishman. He asked her if I was a Londoner as I spoke that way.

So this difference in the way of speech exists also with the English people. But Daphne can’t even pronounce proper English. She hates the Maltese language so much that she is jubilant about Maltese celebrating their dialect which does not exist. In my life I mixed with all the different people of Malta, both in secondary school, in the army, as a teacher with teachers even from Gozo, and we used to speak in our local lingo for fun, enjoying our difference in sounds. But no dialects, as Ms Caruana Galizia thinks. If I am talking the town lingo and somebody speaks to me in country lingo, without knowing, I would shift my speech to my country lingo, automatically.

I have been all over Malta and Gozo and speaking to local persons from eastern Malta to western Gozo, I never found any difficulty in people understanding each other. So where is the dialect mentioned by the Munxar council and by jubilant Daphne?

Joseph S. Ellul

Zurrieq