Those who, like myself, are against using Maltese phonetic spelling for English loanwords should think twice before claiming Professor Ġużè Aquilina as their guide or mentor in the context of the present debate.

The orthographic principle adopted by Aquilina for all loanwords, including those from English, was entirely phonetic. In his dictionaries one finds words like bejżbol (for baseball), krikit (cricket), baġit (budget), lekċerer (lecturer), xażi (chassis), torpidow (torpedo), trakter (tractor), trejler (trailer), xipxander (ship-chandler), ġazz (jazz), kejbil tat-televixin (for television cable), and others.

Even though Aquilina admits, in the introduction to his Maltese-English dictionary (1987), that “there is still some reluctance, and in some cases strong objection, to the phonetic reading of English loanwords”, he still goes on to use the phonetic criterion throughout.

The Akkademja tal-Malti had introduced the phonetic rule in a document called Żieda mat-Tagħrif way back in 1984; and the National Council for the Maltese Language followed suit after its foundation in 2005.

As honorary member of the Akkademja and former member of the council, I feel the rule should be repealed or radically revised. It has created huge problems for authors, publishers, journalists, teachers and especially students and schoolchildren, who are being forced to write the same word in two different ways, depending on whether they are using English or Maltese.

I therefore strongly urge those responsible to issue a new set of guidelines to remedy the situation.

English words are constantly being imported into Maltese, and at a faster rate than they were in the past. Many of them do not have a Maltese equivalent, and it would be absurd to try and find a Semitic or Italian word to replace them.

In such cases common sense should prevail, and the English spelling should be retained.