A recent issue of the Government Gazette has only a few items of the usual sort (appointment of an acting prime minister, amendments of laws carried in a supplement, etc.) while the bulk of it is about spelling. Your main philosophic publication, Peopled Silence, is about language and has a specific section on language policy. Besides, you are known to have been closely associated, especially at the end, with the lexicographic work of Erin Serracino-Inglott, your uncle. Do you sympathise with those who reacted to the diktats of the Council for the Maltese Language with indignation, amusement or indifference?

First of all, I was, alas, reminded of what had been to my mind the most dismally absurd piece of legislation of the Mintoff days: the law "regulating the use of words". It made a special government licence necessary for any public use of words like 'Maltese' or 'national'. Actually, it exposed the Mintoff government to the only weapon to which, it has been said, even totalitarian governments succumb: ridicule.

In Peopled Silence I illustrated why it is a defining characteristic of all authoritarian governments that they seek to regulate language severely. Victor Klemperer has published a really fascinating book, The Language of the Third Reich (Continuum, 2002), in which he analyses how the Nazis did it. Many years before George Orwell had presented Newspeak as indeed the main weapon with which the Big Brother of 1984 sought to control the minds of the people.

So I whinnied in dismay at the style of presentation of the Maltese Language Council's "decisions", as they are officially labelled. My fellow Rhodes Scholar and contemporary at Oxford, John Searle, the author of Speech Acts, would undoubtedly classify them as prescriptive. They are couched in legalese jargon.

The "decisions" are taken by virtue of the power vested in the Council by a principal law (Article 5(2) ). So what is the difference in juridical status and enforceability between 'decisions' and 'regulations'? Are the 'decisions' of the council analogous to those of a tribunal?

For instance, it is specified when the "orthographic forms ruled out by" the council "will remain valid temporarily for a period of three years... up to July 25, 2011". What does this mean? Presumably that students taking Matsec will be penalised for writing, say, skond (according to) and not skont, as the Council decided we should write it, neither this year, nor the next, but the following?

Now let us suppose that there is a teacher of Maltese who might even, for all I know, have the stature of an Aquilina and that he feels it would violate his or her scholarly conscience to depart from spelling adopted by Aquilina in his dictionary. Will Education Minister Dolores Cristina take disciplinary action against him or her?

And, on the other side, can a responsible publisher who passionately disagrees with the council defy its 'decisions' with impunity? Surely this is an area in which even 'soft law' is inappropriate...

Do you then not think it necessary for a language to have all its usages, even in spelling, if it is to maintain at least a semblance of dignity?

It certainly is. As David Crystal has written: "When English spelling did standardise (between the 16th and the 18th centuries), it did so 'bottom-up', with a consensus of usage gradually favouring some traditional spellings at the expense of others."

So I roared with relief when I read that the council has not begrudged us, ordinary mortals, happy with the breadcrumbs dropped from its sumptuous table, the possibility on a few occasions of making our own choice between available options.

The council has refrained from deciding on our behalf (who knows at what expense in terms of self mortification) whether to write koperattiva or ko-operattiva. Such generosity in the exercise of power has indeed become rare.

In this respect Maltese language writers are at par with their English counterparts. Different spellings may continue to co-exist for some words, according to individual judgment. This word is a case in point: I could equally correctly have spelt it 'judgement', with that extra 'e', despite the computer's spell check.

Likewise, it would not have been a mistake had Crystal spelt 'standardise' with an 's' instead of a 'z', and there are different equally acceptable practices concerning hyphenation (washing-machine or washing machine) and capitalisation (Moon or moon).

So, you think the council has exorbitant powers but has on the whole, used them discreetly?

Atrocious spelling is not promoted by the council's current decisions, but by those who want us to write blekbord and flett and the like. These spellings are not justified by phonetics any more than by the principle of fidelity to the word's etymology that the council enunciates in article 5.3 of its 'decisions'.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Alessandra Fiott.