Recently, there was a bit of a storm in a teacup about loan words from English and their spelling in Maltese. I like that saying: storm in a teacup. Say it once, twice, three times and it leaves dregs of meaning at the bottom. There’s a hint of Shakespearean comedy from The Tempest and the Victorian tinkling of china. And all within the ceremonial jollity of that wonderful introduction to The Portrait of a Lady, in which Henry James writes how: “There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”

But I digress. And wrongly so because language can never be a storm in a teacup: it is our greatest invention and a precious cabinet of memories, hopes and dreams.

Everyone with a public platform unleashed an argument. Some argued that spelling is just a means to an end and, as long as we can understand what others are saying, then whether you write “football” or “futbol” is just a minor detail. Others countered with the judgement that the Maltese language shouldn’t be weakened with inconsistent spelling. At some point, technology was pushed into the fray and accused of encouraging easy yet incorrect spelling.

I’ve never been one to take sides. Rather, I tend to go to extremes: it’s either black or white, and none of your 50 shades of grey. So on one hand, I would take the “football” or “futbol” question beyond spelling and argue about the quality of language being written. My personal bugbear, for instance, is the exclamation mark. Not the punctuation mark itself but rather, its overuse and abuse.

And yet, the exclamation mark was once a rare thing. And it was this rarity that gave it its power. “O inhumane Dogge!” cries Iago in Othello, but only because he has just been stabbed. Were Iago’s injury a mere scratch, Shakespeare wouldn’t have dressed it with an exclamation mark. Nowadays, however, the exclamation mark holds poor company with emoticons. Its essence has been diluted, so much so that in order to exclaim louder, we fire a staccato of exclamation marks, one next to the other, like dead leaves. And the more we use it, the weaker the exclamation mark grows. Lexicographer Henry Watson Fowler was prophetic when he wrote, back in 1926, that, “excessive use of exclamation marks is a certain indication of an unpractised writer”.

My other extreme is to ignore the argument entirely. After all, it’s been almost half a century since literary theorist Roland Barthes proclaimed that the author is dead. Indeed, while the author lays the foundation of a text, it’s the reader who gives it life through meaning, interpretation and the act of reading itself. So the author may opt to write “futbol” instead of “football”, but as a reader, it’s your choice whether to read it or not. May the best word win.

techeditor@timesofmalta.com