Yes but it’s “cliccare”. As for jogging, we use it alongside with footing, but we don’t pronounce it “yogging”.

Actually we say that, although the spelling is chattare. We also use postare, twittare, taggare…

There’s nothing to work out, and nothing to ask about.

Right from the start, my argument has been and is about the change of spelling of adopted words as opposed to using the original spelling, and not what the actual official words are. I still don’t know what your source for official words is.

Bashing Maltese and calling us dumb for using dots on letters to tell them apart simply because Brits “know” the different sounds for the same spelling is ridiculous.

Agreed, Daphne.

It is David Cameron’s, as it happens, not that my wife’s accent has anything to do with my views and this discussion

Yes I do know that about who sets official standards. But I don’t see how the official Maltese is that spoken by the uneducated many, as you say.

[Daphne – FP, this is what the discussion is all about. If the official spelling is ‘blekbort’ (for blackboard) and ‘cett’ (chat), that also tells you what the official pronunciation is, and what sort of people are setting the standard. Who says chet? Who says blekbort? Work it out. Or ask your wife.]

Just for your information, I wouldn’t call you for advice on plumbing and car engines not because you’re one of the uneducated many, but simply because I’m one of the educated few in this case.

Off in tangents again.

Back to Dr Sant, who I much suspect was not speaking in the context of gardening, mini-skirts, dbielet, genocide and what have you …

Jikkattja 5 percent.

Inti tgħid iqaċċat 5 percent.

Jien ngħid jaqta’ ħamsa fil-mija.

[Daphne – I would have said ‘iqaccat hamsa fil-mija’. It’s a lot more effective than ‘jaqta’.]

Iqaċċat: breaks off
Jaħsad: harvests
Jaqta’: cuts

Daphne must have a different dictionary to mine.

[Daphne – I don’t need a dictionary, FP. I learned the words in context (through gardening, mainly). You use ‘qaccat’ when you slash, break or tear off lots of something. Tista tqaccat id-dublett, per ezempju, u jigik mini-skirt. Tahsad – this is when you slash a plant right down, after wind-burn, for instance. Yes, it does mean ‘harvest’, too – but its meaning in this context came originally from the use of the scythe (to harvest wheat etc), but then came to be used for all kinds of harvesting, including hand-picking. You can ‘tahsad’ people, too, by giving them a nasty shock. Same difference.]

Well, I don’t really know what you’re trying to say either.

What rules are these that you speak of that are morphing Maltese into a patois? Where have I argued for this?

I honestly don’t know where you got that idea from. My basic argument is for regularising and tranposing foreign words (where there’s no Maltese equivalent, naturally) using the already established pronunciation rules, and not to leave them in their original spelling. Otherwise, a patois is exactly what you’d end up with.

I remember a time when there was a resistance by some to adopt the word television, because, they said, Maltese gives us enough to translate that to “trażmissjoni tal-istampa mingħajr fili”. Not much more of an exaggeration than Daphne’s “nitkellem fil-vojt man-nies fuq l-internet”.

Don’t you see that this is stretching things a bit too far? When people say “chatting” in English, do they say “chatting uselessly with people over the internet”? Of course not! The “uselessly with people over the internet” bit is a given if the context is the internet, so insisting on “fil-vojt man-nies fuq l-internet” is an exercise in masochism.

What would be the best translation is arguable – in our parts, “paroli” has taken the meaning of “idle chatter”, so “tparla” may be a good candidate here. Or not. But one word is definitely enough.

On the other hand, had there been no option other than to use the adopted word, then I definitely favour spelling it phonetically using Maltese orthography to be as close as possible to the original pronunciation, for reasons that argued about elsewhere.

That, in a nutshell, is the gist of all my arguments on this thread.

And when they realised that jogging could be misundertood as doing yoga, they invented footing.