I agree with Daphne on this issue, I do not like these changes that are being implemented in the Maltese language. It is horrible to read a sentence like the following:

“Il-kowc baght ijmejl lill wiehed mil-futboolers tieghu” I mean … come on!

[Daphne – Errrrmmmm, thanks for the compliment, but Saviour Balzan?]

[Moderator – So much anger, so little time.]

[Daphne – Yes, and Malta Today has revisited its obsession with me, which is always a sign that the news is pretty thin. Nothing for the front or back page? Let’s see what Daphne’s been up to. Oh, Toni Abela’s written a column about her in L-orizzont for a change? Front page stuff….]

Instead, we prefer to treat under 18s as dimwits but then, when they turn 18, they are suddenly considered fully as adults. Hardly makes sense as the growing process towards adulthood is a continuous one, and not triggered by an 18th birthday!

[Daphne – I agree with you that the written version of Maltese has been constructed artificially as a language for dummies or for people with a low IQ. That’s what happens when it is ‘invented’ at one go by a well-meaning Father of the Maltese Language instead of being allowed to develop naturally and organically. The problem, I suppose, is that too many Maltese were illiterate for too long, but if we had allowed for organic development, written Maltese would still be roughly where written English was in the 16th century – if that. I make the same ‘language for dummies’ point as you do, and repeatedly, about all those crossed hs, dotted gs, cs and zs. The rules seem to have been laid down for their own sake, to make things as annoying as possible, and to give the language police a reason for living. Look at the number of Labour-leaning columnists and Malta Today reporters busying pointing out with glee that I ‘misspelt’ the Maltese word for vagina because I failed to put an ‘ghajn’ in it. They missed the rather delightful irony that ‘ghajn’ is also the slang for anus, which had me in fits. The sad thing is that, unlike with mainstream European languages, the written version of which has evolved over a thousand years, we had the perfect opportunity when casting written Maltese in stone to create something as user-friendly as possible, and instead we went the other way with all our irritating and pointless dots, dashes and ghajns. Whoever came up with the idea assumed that unless there’s a dot on the zs in ‘zunzana’, we’ll all go around pronouncing it ‘tsuntsana’ – you know, like tourists trying to read a foreign language. Yet with or without a dot, we know how to pronounce the word, because we know the language, and because the human brain is able to read by recognition, and doesn’t need pronunciation guides like dots and crosses. So other languages put little marks on their letters? So what? Why take on burdens that serve no practical purpose? The ‘ough’ in though, through and tough is pronounced completely differently, for example, but despite the lack of a distinguishing mark, we still know how to pronounce them, because we have a brain that can assimilate that kind of knowledge once it is learnt.]

At age sixteen, young people ought to have the opportunity to further their studies and have different experiences for personal enhancement.

A serious and responsible government, would first and foremost, examine the well-being of its youth and take appropriate decisions rather than rushing into hasty pronouncements concerning them. Giving the vote to sixteen year olds is certainly not the way of promoting our youth’s interests.

For instance, it is high time that the authorities take stock of the student retention rate in higher and further education. Why is it that Malta has one of the lowest rates among EU countries? And what about seriously investigating absenteeism and child labour?

One would expect the opposition to raise these questions. Instead, we are being dished with eye-catching but counter-productive youth policy proposals.

Lowering the voting age will effectively lower the age of majority, when one is considered an adult… Isn’t this a way of shedding off societal responsibility and burdening it squarely on the young an inexperienced?