You’re in luck, plimsolls are back.

Mario – I see that today’s tension seems to have given you a sense of humour.

“Dr Farrugia said that the salaries in Malta was one of the lowest in the Euro Zone and that more couples are choosing to have less children, while at the time the ageing population of the country is on the increase. “

A German ‘Slipper’ is an English loafer or low shoe.
Also the Germans call a mobile phone a ‘Handy’, as Stephen Fry so wonderfully explains:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39EPz2JsbUk

Re ‘slippers’, the brown canvas shoes that were ‘standard kit’ issue to the British Army were listed as ‘slippers’ in the QM stock sheet. Issued as part of the ‘gym’ kit along with a huge pair of baggy shorts and an oversize T-shirt, the ‘slippers’ were also used in ‘papocc’ mode that being their secondary purpose – which is where the Maltese ‘sliper’ originated, with the final ‘s’ subsequently dropped for speech economy.

Tonio Farrugia, I agree with you, though at times I find the word ‘slippers’ in Maltese rather odd.

I served with the British Army in the UK for 11 years and running shoes, sneakers, gym shoes, tennis shoes etc. were usually referred to as ‘plimsolls’.

My mum used to call them ‘plimsolls’. As a child, they were referred to as ‘P.T. shoes by my teacher in a British Forces school. The word ‘sneakers’ ‘sneaked in’ in the late sixties (to my knowledge) or slightly later.

You have to pronounce the word ‘slip-ehrr’.

[Daphne – Or, if you want to be really annoying and tal-pepe, slip-AH.]