Thousands of parents, pupils and students, writers and authors, translators and interpreters, journalists, broadcasters and publishers, teachers, tutors and proof-readers must be grateful to the Minister of Education for his wise decision to initiate a public consultation on the future of the Maltese language, particularly in the light of so many twists and turns to which it has been and is being subjected ‘from above’, as well as from below, lately.

For such a small people with a syncretic vernacular language which did not have a standard orthography before the 1930s, the preservation of Maltese as a recognised literary genre is of the utmost importance, nationally and internationally. Its descent into a pidgin by equating the spoken with the written should not be allowed, the more so when internalised and accepted Maltese words, expressions and forms of writing already exist.

Maltese for shower has long been doċċa; it is not xawer. Last week a sign at the Marsaxlokk market was advertising sordfixx but the Maltese word has long been pixxispad.

The obsession with ‘phoneticisation’, in an anglicised direction, must be moderated. English is a relatively recent influence on Maltese, albeit a major one because of ‘globalised’ American technology.

However, there is no place for a deterministic absolutism, when a modest flexibility to avoid disruption would be more appropriate (switch or swicc, skond or skont, etc).

An advisory ‘regulator’, if at all required, should be broadly representative of proven, well-established and recognised scholarship and credentials in related disciplines – socio-linguistic, literary, historical and philosophical.

Any grammatical or orthographical changes to so sensitive a medium as language need a slow, mature and careful elaboration, especially if and when they are quite uncalled for.

Sadly, as numerous correspondents have noted, we have had a number of such impositions or influences, with a presumed and probably misplaced touch of officialdom, mainly by a so-called Council for the Maltese Language, which was set up in 2005 to offer ‘guidelines’ rather than brandish decrees.

The latest howlers facing our people are henceforth to say and write Netherlandiż instead of Olandiż, and San Mariniż instead of minn San Marino, and so on ad nauseam. God help us if we become clowns in a circus, which others may insist they are not.

The preservation of Maltese as a recognised literary genre is of the utmost importance, nationally and internationally

There is no doubt that it is time urgently to take stock of this degenerating and confusing situation and to seek to address its unilaterally pretentious arrogance, if only in response to growing public criticism and frustration.

Of course, no language is static; it responds to change if and as necessary; the late Prof. Ġużè Aquilina, who gave us a priceless six-volume dictionary in a life work, once compared it to a river.

But a people’s language tradition with its etymology and semantics is not the monopoly of a handful of all-knowing dirigisme-bloated latter day ‘linguists’ from exactly the same stable bent on re-inventing it, for purposes best known to themselves.

Our language has a valuable corpus of literary expression moulded over time by some of our greatest writers and thinkers – poets, litterateurs, historians, philosophers – deserving of every respect, not subjected to an uncalled for inter-generational rupture.

Over-regulation, with the presumed wand of an officially designated power, perverts the beauty of writing in any language. It disincentivises and insults the author. It makes parents, teachers and children wonder why all these changes are being made to the language we have known and used successfully for a century, and with what specific authority from on high.

For the first time in my life, I am feeling uncomfortable writing in Maltese. I have stopped the fourth volume of Storja ta’ Malta (Is-Seklu Għoxrin) half-way because of that; this is a school textbook for the upper forms of secondary.

I recently was with a learned lady from a culturally-driven council in Valletta who has children at school and I said casually that Maltese sometimes risked becoming “an object of ridicule”. No, she corrected me, “an object of mockery”.

All those who truly cherish Maltese as proud native speakers and writers, without undue pretensions (or designated institutionalised positions) certainly would not want that to happen. As a graduate in Maltese, a one-time journalist and the author of books in the language, I am one of them.

By all means, let us open the discussion further and see how the situation may best be resolved.

I just hope that laziness or indifference will not keep anyone from responding meaningfully to this very timely and very sincere call from the highest quarters for consultation on this vital matter.

Ludwig Wittgenstein once described language as “a form of life”. It is not a fiddle.

Henry Frendo is Professor of History and Director of the Institute of Maltese Studies.