The national language

David Buttigieg of Rabat has neglected to make a net distinction between the terms "official language" and "mother tongue". The mother tongue, otherwise called natural or even national language, is the lingua franca of a country, which one expects it to be understood and spoken fluently by the totality of the population. In this case the mother tongue of Malta is Maltese and nothing but Maltese.

There can be cases in which the official language of a country is not the mother tongue. This was the situation in Malta prior to 1936 in which the official languages were English and Italian but neither of these is natural to Maltese citizens.

There was never a time in which the people of Malta talked another language but Maltese. This means that Maltese is natural to Malta while any other language, be it as official or as important as English, is foreign. Any other language is not ours.

The 1964 Constitution does not only recognise Maltese to be the "national" (ie natural) language of Malta but it gives the language the status of "first official language" while English is only a "second official language". This means that, in case of legal conflict, it is the code written in Maltese that, is taken into consideration. Apart from all this, everyone knows that last year the EU adopted Maltese as one of its official languages together with the so-called "big" ones.

So let Mr Buttigieg consider English to be his mother tongue as much as he likes; the facts are otherwise. I conclude using the correspondent's own words but with an apology: "When are these ridiculous arguments against our national language going to end?"