The infamous consonant għ, the silent h and the dragged ie are here to stay, with the council for the Maltese language debunking a myth which occasionally arises that these letters are about to disappear from the alphabet.

“The Kunsill tal-Malti has never discussed, is not discussing and does not have the intention to discuss the removal of these letters,” its president Ray Fabri told this newspaper.

Rumours have surfaced from time to time that the council might decide to do away with these letters but there was increased speculation on social media recently owing to discussions taking place within the body. However, the only issue the council is discussing is words borrowed from the English language: do we keep kejk, which has been assimilated within the Maltese language – we even have the plural kejkijiet – or write ‘cake’?

What about words like ‘roundabout’, for which the language has not yet adopted a Maltese version?

In 1984, the Akkademja tal-Malti had decided to write these words phonetically, as in swiċċ. The same rule stated that if you preferred writing ‘switch’, then this had to be written in italics or inverted commas.

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