Italian-Maltese language links

I have followed the correspondence on a third official language for Malta. I am lucky enough to speak and write Italian very well and I appreciate its beauty.

Having two official languages is enough for our purposes. This does not mean that I am not in favour of the teaching of Italian to as many students as possible. All the benefits of a knowledge of Italian mentioned by Phyllisienne Gauci (The Sunday Times, July 1) can still accrue without introducing it as a third official language with all the practical difficulties this would imply, such as publication of laws and official notices in three languages. It is not by amending the Constitution to include three official languages that we will make Italian better known in Malta, but by encouraging more people to learn it.

One great benefit of a knowledge of Italian which, it seems, has not been mentioned by correspondents, is that a sound knowledge of Dante's language would help Maltese speak and write their own native language better. Historically, once the linguistic connection with the Arab-speaking world was severed in the late Middle Ages, the Maltese/Arabic language survived by means of gradually incorporating words, idioms, phonemes and morphological structures from Sicilian and later Italian.

These new accretions adapted very well to Maltese and are now an integral part of it. The process continued till the last century and goes on, perhaps to a lesser extent, today. However, in more recent years, due to a lesser number of Maltese who speak Italian well and to a higher dominance of English, the tendency is to incorporate words of English origin, despite English phonetics being less adaptable to Maltese than Italian phonetics.

Adapting words from Italian is, in my view, more elegant: doesn't tivvaluta sound much better than tevalwa, tizvaluta better than tiddevalwa, taccedi better than taccessa? Furthermore, Italian words are often used not in their Italian meaning but in the English meaning of words having the same Latin stem, sometimes with hilarious results - adverts for foodstuffs have sometimes stated that a particular food contained no preservattivi - a word in Italian (preservativi) meaning condoms and not preservatives.

One should have used konservanti which already exists in Maltese (kunserva tat-tadam). Another Italian word wrongly used is kontabilità, directly derived from Italian contabilità, which means accounting and not accountability, which is the sense in which it is often used by some Maltese speakers. In Italian there is probably no equivalent word to 'accountability' and the meaning of 'accountability' could be paraphrased by wiehed jaghti kont ta' ghemilu or else one can use the English word unchanged.

There is then a lack of distinction between oggettiv and objettiv (in English both expressed by 'objective') and tipprogetta and tipprojetta (both verbs expressed in English by 'to project'). Countless similar examples could be mentioned.

If Maltese speakers spoke good Italian and chose words in a more disciplined manner, these mistakes would be avoided.