Prof. Henry Frendo asked about the future of the Maltese language (The Sunday Times of Malta, July 12). The simple answer should be that the Maltese language is set towards healthy expansion to keep up with modern times and to be able to tackle contemporary and complex concepts.

We have to be prepared for further change – a change no one can stop. Being conservative in one’s attitudes does not help the future of Maltese; it may rather hinder development. A quick look at the past thousand years shows us Maltese being influenced by Arabic, Sicilian, Italian, and English. So what is happening today (a foreign language influencing the native language) has been occurring for centuries on these shores.

Some changes are unpalatable to some language users, but it should be emphasised that accepting new forms does not necessitate supplanting older ones. It rather entails the co-existence of alternative forms that enrich the language and provide several occasions for stylistic and semantic variety – ħobża, panina, sandwiċ – all carry their own connotations.

This is the perspective we need today: to look at the assimilation of new forms as part of the process of language expansion – in fact, many new forms have been given lexicographic dignity. The respected old forms can still be kept alongside the new and may still be used with full potential as I have tried to suggest in my recent publication Temenos, which is a 250-page story mostly in Semitic Maltese. And even if native alternative forms are coined as equivalents for borrowed terms, in our neck of the woods loan terms contribute to a range of expressiveness.

So if we want to say Ħadt shower f’dis-sħana kollha instead of doċċa (incidentally, I always said doxxa instead of shower in Maltese), or when on a boat with waves splashing on its bow we want to say Dil-mewġa tatna shower u ħaslitna, or when referring to a person who spatters saliva on his listeners when he talks we want to say of him Tana shower hu u jitkellem, we should feel free to do so.

What David Crystal calls (on the subject of language borrowing) “an unyielding, condemnatory purism” is detrimental to our linguistic progress. And the Wittgenstein’s reference at the end of Frendo’s article, that language is “a form of life” is quite significant in this connection, because a living language must grow.

The continued recognition of Maltese as a literary genre is quite evident from the numerous works and studies being published every year. With these I’d like to add the significant academic efforts of the postgraduate translation students who choose to write their dissertations in Maltese. However, alongside these we’re having some young writers whose literature is reflecting the living language of informal usage, and as such we have to accept linguistically such literature even if we find unpalatable their moral implications. This means that today we have written Maltese for all occasions – with these we have to include also the written internet Maltese (e.g. Facebook, Twitter).

In my research, teaching, publications, and broadcasting programmes I have for the past decades sought to show the beauty, flexibility, resilience and power of the Maltese language. And there are many others like me. This beauty continues to ripen if the language is allowed to grow freely and naturally. A regulatory authority is beneficial on matters relating to the orthography of the language. But it may be dangerous if it dictates spoken or written usage.