Spelling new words

I have followed the recent spate of letters concerning the importance or otherwise of our national language. However, no contributor has raised one important problem that affects the Maltese language. I am referring to the huge amount of new foreign...

I have followed the recent spate of letters concerning the importance or otherwise of our national language.

However, no contributor has raised one important problem that affects the Maltese language.

I am referring to the huge amount of new foreign words that are being assimilated. Unfortunately these words are being bastardised to sound phonetically correct.

As far as I know, other languages keep the new introduced words in their original text.

The Italians today have words like week-end, single, club, ticket etc. Also the English accept words like pizza, pasta, paparazzi, plateaux, etc.

So why can't we accept these foreign words as such! I can't stomach such words like ners (nurse) (actually I believe it features in one of the Maltese readers), tenisxuz (tennis-shoes), and erkraftkerjer (aircraft carrier). The list is endless.

We have a beautiful language. It is excessively rich in onomatopoeia (I wonder if anyone has made a scientific study of this phenomenon). The Maltese proverbs are something special. So please let us keep our language on a sane and sound basis.

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