Share and share alike is merely a rewording of the quote from Measure for Measure, "What's mine is yours, and what is yours is mine". But it all depends upon what is being shared, and who is doing the sharing.

Take, for instance, the programmes from the archives of Campus FM being broadcast on Radju Malta; the stone that is killing the two birds called 'Spending' and 'Repeat' would otherwise be dropping guano all over the studio floors.

Last Saturday afternoon for instance, we were listening to a very interesting programme from the archives of Campus FM. In one part, the speaker was talking about an unnamed freshwater fish, sourced from fish-farms on the Vietnam shores of the Mekong - which he called "the most polluted river in the world", that has practically no nutritional value.

The Pangasius has already been referred to several times by Ivan Portanier in Lilian Maistre's Familja Wahda. It was obvious that this is the fish to which the former speaker was referring. I have no doubt that we will be hearing more, and soon, from a spokesperson for the Health Department, in this programme.

However, my beef is that the programme was cut off, willy-nilly. Even more annoyingly, this abrupt termination was followed by one of those annoying sets of music used to fill in what would otherwise have been dead air.

What's more, these are still extant in the mornings on Radju Malta, when the BBC news is cut off and there is a handful of seconds to spare before the start of the programming proper.

Another thing that is being shared - for the umpteenth time - is the series Simpatici. Now that Buttons the dog had gone to the great bone-burying garden in the sky, there is precious little to mitigate its repetitive posturing - and much to decry.

I find the frequent jibes against all things religious especially irritating. This week we had two of Jason's friends - missionary priests - visit his home. Nanna breaks out the biscuits and the tea, and settles for a long chat until her favourite grandchild returns home.

Suddenly, the clerics begin describing their daily life abroad. At one point, there is mention of the dearth of food, and how the inhabitants of the village solve the problem. Nanna's stance alters abruptly, and she literally shoos them out of the house. Not nice.

Last Monday, Gordon Caruana's guest on Tifkiriet (Radju Malta, 2 p.m.) was Miriam Cassar - the mind and the heart behind the NGO Vers Aghtini Il-Kelma Maltija. Together with the Fondazzjoni Ager, this NGO will be responsible for organising the Festa Tad-Djaletti to be held next Sunday in the main courtyard of the Gharb Museum of Folklore. For more information go to the Facebook page of Il-Festa tad-Djaletti.

It would be interesting to learn exactly how many radio and television stations will air this festival live, or at least provide live links, or broadcast a recording later on. My guess is that most of them will treat it as a non-event, and others will plead chock-full schedules, the contents of which cannot be nudged for such a unique one-off experience.

Mrs Cassar had several salient points to make. She spoke about the pathetic way actors think that substituting 'a' with another vowel in their speech will persuade us they are speaking "bit-tuf" or any other dialect; she mentioned how incongruous it is that some of us have to study Maltese through English; she gave a good drubbing to those of us in the audio, visual, or print media who make up words as we go along, because we cannot be bothered to learn the vernacular.

She is so right. This week, in a fashion-related TV programme, we were shown a "libsa bil-feathers u bl-off-shoulder", and in a first aid demonstration we were told what to do "once li l-patient huwa stable". Of course, everyone understands the thrust of these sentences, which are but random examples of language misuse - but that is not the point at all.

Mrs Cassar also decried the habit of adapting a foreign word, in preference over one that has served us well for ages.

Incidentally, there has lately been a lot of discussion about how to translate words that have an 'e-' in front of them. Not altogether in jest, I suggested that everyone would know the difference between mejl, mail and posta. There is some kind of movement to have ittra-e, or even ittr'-e, assimilated into the language as the equivalent of 'e-mail'.

I notice that television and radio personalities who make an effort to use this peculiar-looking word once or twice during their programmes, find that it does not roll easily off their tongues - and revert to good old e-mail for the rest of the programme's duration.

It would appear that this type of language rot is also extant in Italy, so much so that the Istituto di Pedagogia Sperimentale has actually set up a programme to teach Italian teenagers their own language. Whereas we tend to blame the media for the corrupting influence on language, one particular Italian television journalist has been pointing his finger squarely at the politicians, whose predilection for inventing verbs and terminology, he says, is being emulated by children who want to appear similarly hip. I question this.

television@timesofmalta.com