Henry Frendo (July 7) again chose to misinterpret my words.
On matters relating to language, I generally describe what occursin some common everyday situations of our contemporary society. I don’t dictate or impose anything. (Who said that we are “obliged to use only jispidja”?) I say “again” because he had already made the same comments in Il-Mument (October 4, 2015) and I answered him with sound arguments in the same paper on October 18 (where I also explained to him some of my projects on the Maltese language).
He never commented on those arguments and he never accepted my invitation to meet and discuss the matter in a gentlemanly manner. Instead, he repeats himself and, again, he veers towards an argumentum ad hominem that verges on insolence. Yet, he talks about tolerance.
A mid 18th-century proverbial saying tells us that half the truth is often a whole lie.
For instance, he criticised me for correcting some elements in his 2003 Maltese book on journalism but he does not tell readers that I was the literary editor of the 82 volumes in the Kullana Kulturali series and that his book was one of them and, therefore, it had to stylistically conform with the rest. Besides, in life there is always a choice: he could have taken his document elsewhere.
Anyhow, I’m not going to repeat what I wrote in October. It seems Frendo is deaf to reason. But what I hate most of all is that tiegħu jagħtih lili (he pegs his shortcomings to me). He says I am “elusive”. I wonder: on which of my 84 books on language related subjects did he base such a judgement?
My ideas on Maltese (clearly expressed in most of my publications and broadcast programmes) are based on sound linguistic principles that Frendo cannot refute.
And I often talked about and showed the richness and resources of contemporary Maltese language. Once again, Frendo uses terms and ideas without explanations and he is at times ambiguous.
What are “perfectly valid Maltese words”?
Why do “inverted commas and italics” particularly complicate matters further?
And what do Dun Karm and Rużar Briffa got to do with the Maltese novel?
His July contribution contains some errors. For instance, he says that naturaliżżazzjoni means “denaturalisation” but it actually means “naturalisation”.
This is followed by a deficient construction (“And that when we write and say programm televiżiv, xandira televiżiva.”) which is nonsensical. He then sends me to “Aquilina (vol.2, p.1651)” for nixxa but, on that page, Aquilina has the distribution of words letter by letter. (Why does he remind me of the Barnacles?)
In his Maltese contribution of October 2015, Frendo had 24 errors, some of which involve fundamental Maltese rules.
Is all this part of his “autonomy of the author”?