Perhaps the most suitable Maltese translation for ‘scoundrel’ is ‘minghul’ (pronounced – minawl); as in “Itlaq ‘l hemm ja minghul!” It conveyed the meaning of someone who spells trouble and disaster. It also had a ring of devilry around it.

It was regular currency (at least in rural areas) up to the 70s, when (it seems) Malta was adopting a more ‘politically correct’ attitude. With hindsight, it was never more apt (politically speaking) than in the decades that followed.

Christ. I knew this would happen.

Muscat cannot do otherwise.

Heq ux, min hexa mexa.

Yes the lawyer, who until recently used to belittle people who participated in politics especially Nationalists. He also used to brag that he does not vote PN. Time (or rather opportunism) does change people.

[Daphne – Yes, and to whose wife’s family a delegation from the PN had to be dispatched in the 2008 general election because they told everyone who would listen that they were going to stay away from the polling-booth en masse because an army officer in the family hadn’t got the promotion they felt he deserved. And what happens when Labour is elected to government? They promote everyone else and he resigns his commission. I have no time for these antics. Let’s hope they bothered to vote for the Nationalist Party this time instead of not voting or voting Labour. Because let’s face it, if you can’t even persuade your own wife’s family to vote PN, how are you going to persuade the rest of the country?]

[Daphne – That’s a villain.]

Don’t know. Maybe he has more than one sibling.

I always thought ruffjan was a sort of laqghi.

[Daphne – In my neck of the woods it was those types hanging round the port and Valletta bars.]

“And you say a democratic state can be run in Maltese?”

Baxxter, neither can a modern, up to date democratic party.

Until the Akkademja tal-Malti uses the best university expert who IS available, to add more depth to concepts and new words in Maltese, English should be adopted without further dilly-dallying on this issue.