The biggest drug-traffickers and smugglers, convicted to long terms in prison, actually came out of St Edward’s as did one Chief Justice jailed for taking bribes to reduce a drug trafficker’s (not an Old Boy this time) prison term.

The same Chief Justice, while a judge, had shockingly stood as a character witness in the trial of a cocaine-smuggler who was at school with him at St Edward’s, saying that of course he would never have smuggled cocaine and that he believed him when he said he thought he was only smuggling emeralds (so that’s all right, then).

Malta’s first crop of heroin addicts almost all came from that school too.

This is not a reflection on the school but a reflection on some of the sorts of parents who found it easy to dump their sons there and have them out of the way.

You will know them by their fruits. On that score, St Aloysius sucks. The ones who didn’t turn into drug dealers and criminals all seem to be lawyers, with a sprinkling of doctors. Not one creative mind.

Apologies for going on about this, but in reality, people pick up much of the way they speak from others around them, and with children, that tends to be their friends and schoolmates.

Even with adults, your way of speaking is heavily influenced, even subconsciously, by those around you.

You take on the idiom of the group.

I find myself doing it many times, using very simple syntax and a limited vocabulary, while being barely aware of what is happening.

Maltese people use very, very simple sentences and very basic vocabulary, no matter whether they speaking English or Maltese.

Incidentally, that’s another one: “attended”.

People go to school. They don’t attend it. ‘Attend school’ and ‘attend college’ and ‘attend university’ are typically Maltese.

In idiomatic English, you go to all of those things.

Sorry to be a bore, but Maltese English has really morphed into a distinct dialect.

Yes, in fact there are many examples in politics today, and on the periphery, of men who went to St Aloysius College and can’t speak any English at all, or who speak it very poorly.

Well, I attended two full decades later, so there is a good chance that things might have changed slightly by then.

It’s irrelevant whether you used a capital C or not.

It remains wrong.

The fact that only ‘boys’ who went to St Aloysius College say it should be ringing the warning bells about that.

You will get no St Dorothy’s girl saying “at Convent”, which would be the equivalent.

Our teachers were far too strict.

True, there were some students who spoke “like dett” at College. Similarly, one of my sister’s classmates screamed “ajma my fingerrr” when she stubbed her toe. She attended St Dorothy’s Convent! You are right that the best English speakers were (and are still) those who spoke it at home, but you’re wrong to generalise.

I would be very surprised if there weren’t at least two San Anton School children who rolled their rrrrrrs, asked “woddi hack?” when they were confused and say that “lill-Mummy inhobbuwwwa hafna”