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So, last week Netherlandiż vs Nederlandiż vs Olandiż happened.

In case you’ve been occupied with such trivia as Isis or the Greek default and missed the real biggie that is the war of the languages that would make a Tolkien battle scene blush, here’s the Cliff Notes version:

The National Council for the Maltese Language released a list of country names and derivatives, for use primarily in technical and legal document translations.

We had the easy l-Italja and Taljan, but hackles were raised with the various Guernseyan (a person from Guernsey), Seychelljan (a person from the Seychelles) and, of course, the immediately-iconic Netherlandiż, for their mingling of English and Maltese spelling in the same word.

Within hours of the release of this list, we all became laptop linguists – all 425,000 of us – and took to social media decrying these perceived inconsistencies. Why did some words adopt Maltese spelling (Slovakk, ) while others were just imported tale quale from English with a Maltese suffix hooked onto them?

The council, of course, had its reasons. These were partly to do with names that have long been accepted and adopted into daily Maltese use, hence morphing into Maltese spelling, while others remained alien.

The reasons were explained in a couple of hastily-issued reparatory statements and explanatory notes. But the harm had been done and, once again, the pro-Maltese army found itself on its back foot defending against a barrage of negative publicity.

The pro-English (or is it anti-Maltese?) army, sometimes referred to as tal-pepe or worse, found the double-standard rich, especially when it – together, truth be told, with roughly 98 per cent of the population – had long been arguing for retaining English spelling for English-origin words when used in Maltese writing.

Let’s keep in mind that virtually everyone objects to writing erkondixiner (air conditioner) or ajsingxuger (icing sugar). Yet, the council and existing rules would still have us write them that way.

The battle must be for the heart of the reader

So the sudden popping up of Netherlandiż, with its use of the English ‘th’, as against Nederlandiż, irked quite a few.

The council had its linguistic arguments for the ‘th’ but, as in everything else, perception is king. And the council has been losing quite a few rounds of the perception wars lately.

A respected linguist, who informally calls himself a professional word taster and sentence sommelier, had this to say about the constant bickering on the state of the national language:

“Attempting to spell is like playing one of those computer games where, no matter what, you will lose eventually.” And, to the question: “How did we get here?” he replied: “It’s a story of invasions, thefts, sloth, caprice, mistakes, pride and the inexorable juggernaut of change. In its broadest strokes, these problems come down to people... being greedy, lazy and snobbish.”

And again: “When we borrow words, they often come from other Latin-alphabet spelling systems, but have sounds different from the sounds we make. For some words, we have adopted the pronunciation, but modified the spelling. For others, we didn’t change the spelling, but we did change the pronunciation. Or we kept the spelling and the pronunciation too.”

Surely, these words are an indictment of the mess that the Maltese language has become.

A validation of the argument that all this borrowing and irregular application of spelling rules when incorporating foreign words has brought the Maltese language to ridicule and made it the laughing stock of world languages.

Perhaps. Were it not for the fact that the above linguist, and the above-quoted-from article, were referring to the English language. The article How the English language became such a mess was written by James Harbeck for BBC series BBC Britain.

Harbeck argues that laziness and snobbishness have made English spelling a nightmare.

He gives examples of how the English language has retained the original spelling for ‘ratio’ from Latin, ‘sauna’ from Finnish, or ‘ski’ from Norse. And, again, ‘corps’, ballet’, ‘pizza’, ‘tortilla’. But then, English modified the spelling for ‘galosh’ (from the French galoche), and ‘strange’ (from the French estrange).

It’s all very ironic, if you ask me. We complain – I certainly do – about the mess that’s being made of the Maltese language and use English as the pinnacle of good linguistic practice. Meanwhile, here are the Brits themselves, complaining about the exact same thing about their own language.

So all’s well that ends well and we should all shut up and let the Council for the Maltese Language set its diktats?

Erm… not quite. The English language is in no danger of dying out, nor do the majority of its native users – let’s face it – have any alternative language to be tempted to switch to.

Harbeck, for all his ire on the mess being made of English, is hardly advocating that the nation should switch en masse to speaking French or Norwegian.

The Maltese language, on the other hand, is in a slightly more precarious position. Its users almost all have a good command of an alternative language that just happens to be one of the most widespread world languages. So, whereas the English will grumble but still use their language, many of us grumble and simply switch to English for our daily conversation and writing.

And this, I think, is what the council and others should be concerned about.

I don’t lose much sleep over whether people write Netherlandiż or Nederlandiż, or even skont or skond. But I do worry that people find all these regulations so incomprehensible, and cannot keep up with all the changes and inconsistencies, that they simply abandon Maltese and use English.

As a publisher, I do care that people feel comfortable enough with their native language to read in Maltese. And, most importantly, to enjoy reading in Maltese.

The battle must be for the heart of the reader. And, dear council and friends, we are losing that battle big time.