The public is being given one last chance to have their say on the writing of English loanwords in Maltese.
A report on this, ‘Towards Decisions 2’, drafted by an ad-hoc committee of the National Council for the Maltese Language, was made available online in March.
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It is primarily aimed at offering guidelines on how to best write loanwords from English in the context of the Maltese language. Current regulations on this issue go back to 1984.
The report was drawn up following two well-attended public consultation seminars - in 2008 and 2016 - and a good number of meetings held over the years by the council with interested stakeholders and entities from various sectors, such as education, translation and proofreading services, publishing, newspaper and broadcast journalism.
During its more recent meetings, the council analysed and discussed all the opinions expressed during the second seminar and took into consideration the reactions received since.
The council is now inviting all those unable to attend the seminars to submit their views on any of the points raised to kunsilltalmalti@gov.mt before the end of December. The process will then start to make the guidelines official.