There were recently two separate, but ultimately related, news reports about the Maltese language. One was on the alarming decline in Maltese fluency among students (June 20) and the other on the long-awaited decisions on how English loanwords should be spelt when writing in Maltese (June 19).

Matsec examiners voiced concerns about plummeting skills in Maltese writing and the widespread lack of familiarity with basic grammar. Some of this is down to laziness and to the excessive informality we have become used to when communicating via mobiles and on social media.

But a good part of the blame, I believe, lies in our misuse of what should be one of our assets as a nation: our bilingualism.

We have recently witnessed a spat in the media about the Cambridge University report that recommended changes in the way English is taught in Maltese schools. The main complaint was that English is an official language of Malta and is absolutely essential for interacting with the world outside our 316 square kilometres.

I hope we can all agree that any proposal to weaken an already wobbly mastering of the English language would be insane.

However, our indiscriminate use of English words when writing in Maltese has led to a generation of adults unable to string together a sentence in mono-lingual Maltese. Should we then be surprised that our children write bla ħesil, kurrenzija, polluzzjoni?

Sometimes English words in a Maltese sentence are unavoidable. Fine. It happens in most languages: Italians picked up “chat”, “network” and countless other modern-world terms. Even the sanctimonious French use le football, le square, un brainstorming and le brunch.

However, the well-meaning Maltese language authorities of 30 years ago, perhaps unwittingly, opened the floodgates when they popularised the spelling of English loanwords phonetically in Maltese.

For years, the uncertainty about the spelling of English loanwords has been bandied about as an excuse to avoid writing or reading in Maltese

What started off as a convenient way of assimilating new words into Maltese, as had happened for centuries, led to a free-for-all where at the first hesitation to find the appropriate Maltese word, we started inserting its English replacement. This has led to such horrors as jirrejsja instead of itellaq or immuvjajna instead of ġarrejna and to Maltese-spelt English words becoming the butt of jokes and ridicule. Erkondixiner or fajerekstingwixer, anyone?

The National Council for the Maltese Language has finally unveiled its proposals for a new set of decisions that will establish what the correct spelling form should be. What is being proposed (not, incidentally, as reported in parts of the media) is that although assimilated words will still have to be written in Maltese, other than that – and beyond some broad direction mostly to do with consistency and practicality – it will be left up to individual users to decide whether they’d rather spell a word one way or another.

The council did indicate its preference, which is for English spelling in the case of compound words or words whose Maltese orthographic format would differ too drastically from the English original. However, it made it amply clear that these are merely recommendations (nissuġġerixxu) and not directives.

For years, the uncertainty about the spelling of English loanwords has been bandied about as an excuse to avoid writing or reading in Maltese. I was among those who vehemently objected to this protracted state of uncertainty and argued for a solution that would take into account the reality that most Maltese readers are against phonetic assimilation of English loanwords.

I think we can finally consider that to be a battle won. Now maybe it’s time to admit that, often, this was a convenient screen behind which to hide a lingering snobbishness about using Maltese.

This month was exam time, and social media were full of parents studying alongside their children. I noticed many were passing dismissive comments such as: “Ajma how ridiculous that you have tapit and then the plural is twapet… How arbitrary is that?”

Really? Do we want to go down the arbitrariness road? What about the English “teach” turning to “taught” in its past tense? I could go on, but you get the gist.

Yes, the media with their constant misuse of Maltese are very much to blame. Some publishers and authors, ditto. But I believe that at the heart of the sorry state of written Maltese among students and adults is our disdainful attitude towards our language and our over-reliance on English as a perceived ‘superior’ language.

Sadly, in doing so, we are raising a generation of children with a language disability when it comes to their own national language. What a pity.

Chris Gruppetta is director of Merlin Publishers.