No, respectfully, the hyphen is not required. And not only because they come from Chomsky’s. They are cases of phrase-structure ambiguity. Like “flying objects” and “misruqa” and what not.

[Daphne – The ‘respectfully’ is unnecessary. You are quite wrong. The rule in British English is clear and unquivocal: when the meaning would otherwise be ambiguous, use a hyphen. Noam Chomsky’s works are written in American English. I don’t know the rules for that particular branch of the language, or even if there are any. I prefer British English because it is the real thing. It is also the form we are meant to use in Europe generally and in Malta in particular, where it is one of our official languages. It is virtually impossible to have any ambiguity with ‘flying objects’, aside from the fact that it is an established noun in and of itself, thanks to UFOs. Purely as a note, ‘they’ cannot “come from Chomsky’s”, unless Chomsky is a shopkeeper, a restaurant or similar.]

As to “glasses” and “for you/me”, the ambiguity is in the meaning of “glasses” and the apologetic/polite idiomatic turn for “instead of you/me”. As to their bad English – Queen’s, slang or otherwise, I heard them from the horses’ mouth – English English native speakers.

[Daphne – With respect (which is the correct term, and not ‘respectfully’), you don’t sound to me like somebody who is equipped to tell the difference. This is one subject I know a fair bit about, so please don’t be so annoyingly presumptuous. I would never DREAM of arguing about the finer points of the language with somebody who is super-fluent in Maltese, even though I am a native speaker myself. I would assume that they know what they are talking about, so instead of bitching and bickering, perhaps I should listen. That’s actually how I pick up a lot that I never knew before. There’s isn’t anything interesting to read in Maltese, so the only way to develop what I know is by listening to articulate people and figuring it out.]

Same here.

That’s what comes of being diglossial. The writer was trying to use the sort of atemporal present tense. In English, especially in newspapers, we do it all the time:

“Girl robbed”

“Train crashes, many injured”

How would you write the present tense of the 7th form of this Arabic verb? That’s right, it would be:

“Tifla tinsteraq.”

And we’re almost back to where we were.

My friends, it’s time we stopped using Maltese to communicate concepts that it cannot handle. If that means confining it to poetry on fishing baskets and vulgar chants, then so be it.

P.S. The writer could have avoided the confusion by getting his Maltese brain to focus on the essence of the story, viz. that a handbag was stolen. The owner of the handbag is a minor detail.

“ġie misruq” is bad Maltese. The calque “ġie” is for Romance words, e.g. “ġie żviluppat/aġġornat/stmat”, etc. “ġie misruq” is “insteraq”. I do not blame you; on TV you get “dan il-programm qed jiġi miġjub lilkom” ad nauseam. It should be “dan il-programm qed jinġieb lilkom”.

I think you (Daphne) are right. “misruqa” could mean “abducted” or “robbed/stolen”. Like “to learn/teach” or “house/home” for Maltese “dar”. But then you get “raġel/bniedem” for “man”.

Each language perfectly suffices for its speakers. Eskimese is not as widespread as English but its vocabulary for ice, snow, hale, etc, by far outstrips that for English because it is their bread and butter!

Back to “misruqa”, I tried to find something comparable in English. What is “They are sailing ships?” or “They are cooking apples?”

[Daphne – English does not allow for such errors. It is possibly the most precise language in existence. ‘They are sailing ships’ means that the people of whom you speak are on ships and are sailing them. ‘They are sailing-ships’ means that the ships of which we speak have sails and are propelled by the wind. Similarly, ‘they are cooking apples’ means that the people of whom we speak are doing exactly that: cooking apples. But ‘they are cooking-apples’ means that the apples under discussion are of the variety meant for cooking. The hyphen creates the noun. Without the hyphen, it is a verb and a noun.]

Or “I had almost broken your glasses for you” or better still “Please undress for me” (do not take me wrong – it’s the nurse to the patient!)

[Daphne – That’s just bad English, so a useless comparison.]

Same here.

I think the verb you’re referring to Daphne is ‘nsteraq’, the 7th form of the stem ‘seraq’. It means “he was robbed”, as opposed to “ġie misruq”, which literally means “he was stolen”.

I saw that article on my Facebook wall earlier, and I too was somewhat baffled by the poor choice of words.

39 characters including spaces: Jinsteraq handbag fuq karozza tal-linja

42 characters: Tifla ta’ tmien snin misruqa fuq tal-linja

David, I am a Maltese speaker born and bred, and I understood it to mean kidnap. Any native Maltese speaker would.