2. No, the two are not equal.

3. This is not a matter of superior or inferior, but of correct and incorrect.

4. The higher a group’s level of education, the more correct their language, and vice versa. So yes, the ‘go to’ version of words are those used by the educated classes and not by the uneducated.

5. Irkotta is used by the uneducated; ricotta by the educated. The fact that irkotta is now pushed down everyone’s throat does not mean it is the correct version.

6. When looking for the correct British-English word, I don’t check the version used by the people in Eastenders.

I don’t have a problem with people who grew up in Zabbar saying ‘irkotta’ or ‘arkotta’.

I have a problem with the official language police saying that this is the true word and that the rest of us, who have had the privilege of a better education, must use it too.

They can bother off, quite frankly. They are no more going to oblige me to say ‘irkotta’ than they are going to oblige me to say ‘blekbort’, another word used by the people who say ‘irkotta’.

How can you have precision in thinking and aligned concepts, when we are divided on the words we use and why we use them?

Without adequate language analysis, this is going to continue happening. I am not as rigid as to think that new words cannot be invented. I am of the opinion that they can be, as long as some logic is inserted and I think that Maltese, in its own right, could well develop along those lines.

I speak a number of languages: two short of ten, and understand a host of others. Reading dictionaries has been my hobby since age 5, expanding with each language acquired. Italian came before Maltese in the acquisition list. I was fully conscious of the etymology and source word before I wrote the comment.