I’ve just discovered the error in my ways.

Didn’t realise I had a convenient “Replies” tab without which it gets pretty difficult to keep tabs. :)

I must have misunderstood what you meant by bastardisation. My apologies.

I heartily agree with what you’re saying here. People who work in the “language supply lines” feel no sense of responsibility and pride in what they do.

We’re an “iwa mhux xorta” nation, something which I hate with a passion.

What should have been a general discussion has turned into an involved conversation between two people, which locks others out.

We can’t have that.

They are simply adopting the word in English, writing it down how it phonetically would be said in Maltese.

Taking your example “television” would be changed to “televixin” as the ‘x’ has a ‘sh’ sound.

This has nothing to do with your statement. It is also important to point out that what they are doing has got no rule at all, ie. they invent them on the fly.

With most of these words taken straight from English, there is already a proper Maltese word, but they will still use the phonetically sounding word in English.

So yes, I insist this is bastardisation of the Maltese language, and yes it has to stop.

What I can’t understand about you and your beating Maltese to the ground is that you expect everyone and their dog to pronounce English “properly”, and this, ironically, even when the majority of English themselves don’t.

The list of countries which have English as an or the official language is endless. I challenge you to mention as many as you can where the majority of its people pronounce English “properly”.

And then we’ll be able to work out, fairly scientifically, how justified one would be in singling out the Maltese as the criminal speakers of incorrectly-pronounced English.

Yes, Maltese does not have enough phonetic breadth to cater for certain English sounds. So what? Does English, for certain foreign language sounds? Of course it doesn’t.

But it’s English. So that’s OK.

And Baxxter hates the Akkademja. For whatever reason. And that’s OK too.

And I fail to see how it is any more tedious than any other language.

You also write in English better than most:

“At this point I think a hearty ‘F*** il-Malti’ is in order. It’s harming us. We should get rid of it.”

What is the proper Latin pronunciation?

Go on.

P.S. re. your last paragraph, yes, it does matter that they’re English and French, and it does make it OK. Because they’ve had at least 1100 years of development of the language, and a culture and civilisation. Aside from a few scraps of writing, Maltese has been around for less than 150 years, and we’re still making our minds up on the rules and the spelling. As for civilisation, what little we have was sure as hell not built using Maltese thought processes and communication.

Destroy the language, my dear FP@Disqus? I speak and write it better than anyone.