Ah, the obsession with "loan words" - once again! This time it is Lino Bugeja (Obsession With Orthography, May 15).

Mr Bugeja cites the British experiment of temporary spelling that, eventually, needs to be unlearnt. With all due respect, that example does not apply to loan words. Here we are dealing with words that make a transition from one language to a different one. The situation is even more different in our case because our language is phonetic, whereas English is not. Our rules of orthography and pronunciation, too, are not the same. If I am writing in Maltese about my breakfast beverage, I refer to il-kafe', while, when writing in Italian, it becomes il caffe, and in French, le café; different languages, different spelling. So what is wrong with a Maltese kompjuter for an English computer?

Why do we not start from first principles? When a word is assimilated into another language, it is the spoken word that is first to arrive and not the written one. In other words, it is the sound that makes the first transition; how it is reproduced in the accepting language comes after that fact. Writing the "new" word should then follow the orthographic rules of the language of adoption. Letters are assigned, such that the original sound may be reproduced. And therein lies the problem - not all the alphabets assign the same sound to the shape of a letter.

So how, then, should a loan word be written? The test that I apply is simple: how would a "native" person, who only knows his mother language, read it? Clearly, assigning Maltese sounds to the letters would not always produce the correct word-sound. Attempting to pronounce football using Maltese phonetics would give a strange sequence of sounds. On the other hand futbol gives a precise rendition.

We do, however, have to be careful not to assimilate bad pronunciation; I am uneasy with writing telefown because I do not habitually make a telefownata. I would therefore prefer to write telefon. Our "native speaker" would find it difficult to interpret telephone because the letters ph together do not reproduce the sound of "f" in Maltese. Likewise, I refer to xandir televiżiv and so I would prefer the word televiżjoni to the alternative televixin as making more sense.

I still do not understand why some people who ought to know better continue to be reluctant to apply Maltese orthography to loan words - but, selectively, only in the case of English origin. We already do this with other languages. Does anyone here attempt to write Putin, Gaddafi or Indja in the original script? I don't think so. So why should English loan words be different?

In the days when Mr Bugeja used to teach me, some 50 years ago, we either spoke in English or else we spoke in Maltese; two distinct languages, never simultaneously. We have come a long way since then. Nowadays, many people neither speak nor write either one of them properly. But that's another story...

How sad for us all!