All Maltese who work with the EU institutions are automatically listed as having Maltese and English as their mother tongue – since the two are national languages.

This means that we are never tested on our fluency in either language but then have to take tests/lessons in any language that we claim to know.

Consequently, if you are Maltese by ancestry and have a passport to prove it but lived in any country but Malta all of your life and spoke nothing but, say, French at home you will still be listed as “speaks Maltese and English” since they are “your mother tongue”.

This automatic let’s-skip-the-tests-because-obviously-you-must-speak-the-language-if-you’re-one-of-them attitude is curious but most certainly based upon ignorance.

I’m not saying that the Maltese working with the institutions do not speak Maltese – or English – but being more fluent in one than another is not uncommon. Yet, all Maltese are equal in the eyes of the institutions and all are fluent in these two languages even if it can be demonstrated that a particular person is not.

Kafka-esque, to say the least.

Is the man hallucinating, gone senile, or is sufferring from post traumatic stress disorder on the seventh anniversary of losing the PN leadership race?

Can some expert clinician please diagnose.

Whining and dinaring.