Taking issue with Prof. Joe Friggieri and somewhat misinterpreting his argument, Andrew Saliba says that “English loanwords should be spelt in Maltese”.

They should not be written in italics or in inverted commas. Unbelievably, he then concludes “for the sake of maintaining some semblance of coherence and consistency”, by saying that: “Otherwise, the pleasant hotchpotch that is the Maltese language will instead transform itself into a strange mongrelized travesty.”

As a graduate in Maltese (Prof. Guze’ Aquilina’s Maltese, to be sure) and the author of several books in Maltese, I do not take kindly to my mother tongue being described as a “hotchpotch”.

That is precisely what so many people in this country wish to avoid – a pidgin –and that is why there are so many, probably 80 per cent or more of our people, taking issue with certain uncalled for changes through decrees and penalties being imposed from on high.

Check out the innumerable blogs on the various articles, newspaper and magazine editorials and TV programmes about this intensely sensitive subject in recent weeks.

This rumbling has been going on for some years now (see for example the strong objections voiced by writers Alfred Palma and Alfred Massa in this newspaper (November 27, December 18, 2011), among others; and ‘The rise of Maltenglish’ by John A. Mizzi (January 25, 2012), and my repartee ‘Caring for our language’ (January 28, 2012).

Mr Saliba may be forgiven for thinking that an exception is being made for English loan words, given that Italian (and its Maltese history) is no longer well known.

The main rule concerning loanwords is not provenance but internalisation or not over time. Kitla, from kettle, is an English loanword, dating back to the origin of imported kettles.

This today is Maltese, so much so that it even takes a broken plural: ktieli.

More recent imports such as the noun xutt from ‘shoot’ and the verb ixxuttja are also Maltese, league football having been introduced in Malta from Britain at the end of the 19th century. But telefown is much less so because in Maltese we say għamilt telefonata (not telefownata).

The Italians created a sensible word for a mobile: telefonino, a small telephone, one that could serve us well without the ‘o’; their word for a university don is docent, unless everybody is called professur.

In French it is maitre de conference. I have not heard illekċerjani so much; more likely, and more sensibly, kien jgħallimni.

So for the time being, in the absence of a better term, to avoid confusion, ‘lecturer’ could be spelt as it is, in English; the same for ‘tutorial’ (not tutorjal), unless we simply have recourse to lezzjoni.

The same for air conditioner, which could be simply spelt as it is, we all know what it means – or just possibly kondizzjonatur ta’ l-arja.

Incidentally, if we truly respect phonetics, Maltese pauses before a noun starting with a vowel, hence ta’ l-inbid as opposed to tal-ħobz or taż-żibel. To abolish that norm is self-evidently a contradiction in terms; just as it is completely uncalled for to join together a term such as per eżempju.

By the same token, it is reductionist and impoverishing to roll words traditionally having different meanings into one by attempting to abolish from Maltese such a commonly used word as skond (skond iz-zokk il-fergħa). No language can survive as a literary genre with an idiom if its etymology and semantics are discarded.

This mania to have recourse to English loan words and supposedly to phoneticise them is simply the destruction of language as a literary genre

To suggest that we might say cucina instead of kċina is ridiculous: kċina is an internalised word in Maltese, which even takes the broken plural ‘kcejjen’. That slow adaptation in the absence of a better word or term has been the genius of language in history.

Not so, however, tiffrajja (hotchpotch) for taqli (Maltese); tibbejkja (hotchpoch) for taħmi (Maltese); tirrowstja (hotchpotch) for tixwi (Maltese); tiffollowja (hotchpotch) for issegwi (Maltese); tikkaxxja (hotchpotch) for issarraf (Maltese); tiċċettja (hotchpotch) for tpaċpaċ (Maltese); or qisu bejbi instead of qisu vavu (hence vavati), when the key Maltese word is obviously tarbija, as in tredda t-tarbija (not tibbrestfijdja); and so on ad infinitum.

This mania to have recourse to English loan words and supposedly to phoneticise them, which is being encouraged by some misguided all-knowing zealots, is simply the destruction of language as a literary genre, i.e. as a standard means of generally acceptable, intelligible writing. Moreover, as Mizzi had noted, art. 3, Act V, chapter 470 (2004) on ‘principles and duties’ laid down that any proposals made by the newly created ‘kunsill ta’ l-ilsien Malti’ ‘shall not be enforceable in a court of law.’

As for Saliba’s niffriġġja – never heard it – you may mean to say inkessaħ fil-friżza or inqiegħed fil-fridge. Is that not readily intelligible, given that ultimately the purpose of language is communication?

Spoken and written codes differ, in every language worthy of the name, i.e. not in pidgin or hotchpotch variants. But we cannot mix everything up in a kawlata, if only for the sake of future generations who may wish not to become de facto illiterate.

To promote another inter-generational rupture by all too readily re-inventing the wheel and badly denting the generally accepted ‘Malti tal-Għaqda’ grammatical forms, norms and idioms, for whatever motive, renders a disservice to the language and to the welcome writing of it by its users.

Well may the road to hell be paved with good intentions, but Maltese has already been through hell (see my volume Europe and Empire, 2012).

As Prof. Lydia Sciriha, a leading socio-linguist, has shown in her books, code switching here is rampant; let us try to control this not encourage it, especially where home-grown words and terms exist and have been practised for decades by our leading writers.

As Prof. Mark Anthony Falzon wrote in his column, English had no council dictating to people how they should write and yet it did not seem to be in a mess. Similar sentiments were expressed by Andrew Azzopardi, Tony Cutajar and scores of other commentators.

In his introduction to a forthcoming book on the Maltese-Algerian novelist Laurent Ropa, one noted Maltese-Australian author quotes Iris Murdoch, the acclaimed novelist-philosopher, who wrote: “It is up to the artist to decide how s/he is to use words.”

When a former education minister had set up a so-called ‘kunsill għall-ilsien Malti’ by an act of Parliament, what seem to have been primarily in the mind of the legislator were ‘guidelines’ (linji ta’ gwida).

That indeed may be recommendable; but then the imposition of ‘new’ orthographic decrees, dictates and penalties could well be ultra vires. Vassalli, who must be turning in his grave, would have called many such intrusions barbarismi.

Henry Frendo is director of the Institute for Maltese Studies.