There has recently been a call in these pages to regularise the Maltese language. The French tried to do this years ago, banning ‘hamburgers’ and ‘night club’ and all the rest from their vocabulary.

Fortunately, in the UK we embraced terms like ‘cul de sac’. We adhered to a view that the English language is evolving vigorously and never allowed any learned body to impose its own interpretations on us.

Geoffrey Chaucer, chancellor to six English kings whose court language was French, leant from his bed one night and could not understand the cacophony of sounds he heard from the street below: Gaelic, French, Scandinavian... He used his Pilgrims’ Tales to create a unified English language.

The preface to his Canterbury Tales refers to April: “In Aprille with its showres sote”, which means “in April with its sweet showers”. So one could argue we were wrong to call Aprille, April and make it masculine. We would now say April’s sweet showers – making April neuter.

Are we saying Chaucer was wrong? Simply because we have chosen to evolve and adapt his language? Of course not. He created the template which has become, through historical accident, the language of the internet, the universal language of multicultural communication.

So we should all be wary of dictating how language should evolve. It is the servant of its constituency. Not the master. Rather than impose arbitrary rules which will likely be ignored, embrace the humanity of the language and how it is spoken, and be very tolerant of the spelling. If the meaning is totally clear then no harm can ever have been done.

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