Charles Briffa (July 18) turns what I said on its head. For example, he asks: “Why do ‘inverted commas and italics’ particularly complicate matters further?”

What I wrote was the opposite: “Spelling loan words phonetically as a norm further complicates matters, particularly as inverted commas and italics also exist, if one need have recourse to them.”

What this means is that we do not need to spell loan words phonetically (unless these have become clearly internalised over time), loan words could also very well be placed within inverted commas, or in italics. What complicates matters is the obsession with spelling loan words phonetically ‘as a norm’.

As for the correspondent’s elusivity, that has been the subject of critical comment by others besides myself.

I quoted chapter and verse from his own writings, approvingly, to the effect that new forms need not supplant older ones. So why does he venture to take issue with ‘sapitutti’ (‘know-alls’) or ‘alliev’ (pupil)?

His sardonic remark as to whether it was historians who created language invited a pointed response from Albert Agius (‘Who creates language?’, July 5). He asked him if it was not ‘translators’ who did?

With all due respect to sub-editors, is it not profoundly enlightening for Briffa to point out ‘errors’, such as that ‘denaturaliżżazzjoni’ does not mean ‘naturalisation’ but ‘denaturalisation’? Surely any reader would have been able to tell a misprint or a typo from ‘an error’ without the need for ‘scholarly’ rectification.

There was nothing ad hominem in my article whereas his is replete with vituperation. I have no vested interest in this correspondence, be it commercial, broadcasting, translation, editing or lexicographic. Much less do I harbour any desire to make a career of it.

Briffa can blow his own trumpet to his heart’s content. He has written 84 books on language, has he? And edited 82 (by his preferred standards) from just one series for Pin? Good on him!

Like many others who certainly are no less qualified, and out of respect for our greatest authors over the past decades, I just would not like to see Maltese degenerate from a literary genre into a pidgin, with uncalled for changes, such as de rigeur phoneticisation usually from English, confusing parents, teachers, writers, schoolchildren and even (by Briffa’s own admission) translators.

This is a very widely shared concern which cries out for proven tolerance and remedial action.

As I have neither the time nor the inclination to get entangled in unbecoming discourse, this is my last contribution on the subject.

Enough said. Scripta manent.

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