Maltese in court

I refer to Mark Anthony Sammut's reply (November 1). I can honestly say that I never confute accepted facts, unlike others, but only far-fetched opinions, especially those that denigrate our Maltese identity.

Evidently, Mr Sammut tried hard to wriggle out of his tactless mistakes in denigrating our identity, which is mainly based on our language and not on tawdry hybrid jargon, as he contends.

While Mr Sammut made every effort to explain his initial blunder when he wrote that our law courts' jargon was "the quintessence of the Maltese identity" by means of an extravagance in inconsequential verbiage, the hallmark of a paternalistic arrogance that some of our law practitioners shamelessly exhibit to show off their spurious superiority, he manifestly declined to comment, even fleetingly, on his second faux pas when he stated that our law courts' jargon was the "epitome of our identity", which is very far from the truth.

Such incautious verbosity does not prove that our law courts' hybrid jargon, defined as barbarous and debased language, can ever convey "more sophisticated precise concepts" than our own everyday Maltese language; on the contrary, those coarse bastardised words are doing violence to our national identity.

As the wise Bard sensibly asserted "words are like leaves and, where they most abound, much fruit of wisdom is rarely found".

Mr Sammut apparently refuses to understand that the word "legalese" is merely a colloquial term which means "the technical language of legal documents" and nothing else. "Legalese" is only attributed to documents (deeds, etc) but not to law courts proceedings where the hybrid jargon or debased language is unfortunately used with such aplomb. Maltese "legalese'" in our law courts, on which Mr Sammut bases his quintessential concept, does not exist.

Regarding my definition of the word "jargon", I would invite Mr Sammut to look it up on page 638 of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, Fourth Edition, where his additional words are not to be found, but only mine.

For the sake of his Systems of Knowledge, I trust Mr Sammut will continue to read my balanced letters with the hope that he might, one day, agree to an introduction of the common Maltese language in our Courts of Justice. For example, the barbarous word "patwit" could easily be replaced by the common Maltese word "miftiehem", which is obviously more intelligible.