I can imagine Roderick Bovingdon's feelings (The Sunday Times, June 6) when, like many others, he realises what the Maltese language is going through; how it is being butchered and tortured.

He blames the Kunsill Nazzjonali tal-Malti; but I am sure that is not all. How about the local media, for example? Isn't the Maltese public being influenced by the nonsense - to put it mildly - of these people?

Listen to a few people who ought to know much better, like lawyers, doctors, MPs, judges and others and see how they use the same banal language used in broadcasting.

It is a known fact that students take what their teachers say - at young ages at least - as bible. Parents can try hard to dissuade them from accepting something a teacher would have told them in class, but it simply doesn't work. And it is the same with the media. Try to argue about something broadcast on air with some gullible person and they tell you that's how they say it on TV; that is bible too.

How mistaken these poor people are; how pitiful! We can hear it every day, broken Maltese - and English for that matter - stupidities and more. Try convince some self-appointed media person not to use ġewwa (as in mort għal btala ġewwa Londra), l-ewwel nies, intant, and many more misused words blatantly and ad nauseam and see if you get anywhere with them.

Now the difference between a teacher and a person on radio or TV is that the former only influences a handful of students in a class whereas the latter influences thousands. And here lies the glitch.

Whereas a teacher has to attend a four-year university course to teach a class of students, a media person may come from nowhere and, as we can see, many of them do not even need to be well-spoken to influence most of us. To confirm this, all one has to do is to tune in to some local stations and listen to the blabbering and gibberish of many broadcasters and others. The howlers and stupidities uttered are unbelievable.

Only the other Saturday a so-called disc jockey on RTK was giving some (mis)information about a singer, namely that she (the singer) "is making her divorce" - 'qed tagħmel id-divorzju tagħha'. Incredible but true.

Another one informed his listeners that they could call him at the station from noon "backwards" instead of onwards, 'min-nofsinhar lura'! but what can one do about all this, let alone those funny, unbearable and peculiar voices we listen to?

What worries me is what those students, especially the younger ones, who hear things like tletin ktieb from some and tletin kotba from others, will write in an exam? They are at the mercy of whoever corrects their paper. And this is just one small example; there is much more to it than that.

To quote Mr Bovingdon, "reluctance to speak out for fear of retribution and/or falling out with long-time friendships must never be allowed to overrule our national sentiments." I think he hit the nail on the head here too.

It is high time the Broadcasting Authority and the government did something about this; it simply cannot go on. I suppose the authority's duty is not limited to monitoring political balance and advertising.

I do not recall a single case of a station being fined for misuse and mistreatment, to put it very mildly, of our national language and of using unsuitable and inept broadcasters.