It has become a habit to write the Maltese language in a very funny way. A proper name that begins with a capital letter is preceded with a small letter, such as ‘l-iStrina’, ‘l-iScouts’, ‘l-iSpirtu Santu and many others. This is a very funny way of writing words which does NOT occur in any other language, and those foreigners who see it exclaim, “How funny!”.

All this happens because of a wrong rule in the Maltese Grammar, with regard to the article. The rule stands as: ‘as the article is ‘l’ and it takes the vocal vowel ‘i’ only before the ‘l’.’

But in Maltese there exists a condition whereby certain words that begin with the consonants s,m,n,r followed by another consonant, as in ‘SKola’, ‘MDina’, ‘NFafet’, ‘RDum’, and many others, have to take the phonetic vowel ‘i’ after the article ‘l’, as is also the case with the Italian ‘lo’. In Maltese we say ‘li-skola’, ‘li-Mdina’, ‘li-nfafet’, ‘li-rdum’. This is exactly how we say it in Maltese.

The grammar rule in Maltese should read: ‘The article is the letter ‘l’ which can take the phonetic vowel ‘i’ both before and after as needed.’

As it stands, the Maltese orthography is being destroyed, and exposed to ridicule.

Joseph S. Ellul

Zurrieq