Mr Alfred Brincat seems to have missed the gist of my letter (The Sunday Times, November 20) on promoting Maltese to foreigners.

Nowhere in my letter did I try to minimise the importance of English to the people of these islands. I fully agree that English is an international language and is one of our official (and not as Mr Brincat put it, national) languages along with Maltese.

On the other hand, if we take Mr Brincat's suggestion seriously, that we just study and speak Maltese among ourselves, I'm afraid that by doing so, we would be closing our language in a cupboard and leaving it there to die a natural death as has happened to Latin and classical Greek.

It seems that, according to Mr Brincat, we have striven in vain to obtain the privilege of having Maltese as one of the official languages of the EU! Maybe he also thinks that the EU was wrong to coalesce with the Maltese negotiators on this issue.

When I was attending a course in Italy with students from different countries, many were amazed to know that we have a language of our own and they really appreciated some sentences I pronounced in Maltese.

I confess that I am really disappointed to come across compatriots who regard our native tongue as a second-class language. If we have two official languages, we only have one national language - Maltese.

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