I’m merely pointing out that given how Maltese characters were invented – literally so – only fairly recently, there is a strong case to be made for getting rid of them, because they serve no particular purpose and just cause major inconvenience.

Most people don’t use them anyway, which tells you pretty much what you need to know about their importance in helping people read.

You should ask yourself why, given that Maltese people were already happily writing Italian and English (yes, and Maltese) at the time Maltese characters were devised, those brainboxes felt it necessary to invent new characters for sounds that already exist in those languages – and then NOT invent a new character for a sound that DOESN’T exist in those languages (q).

Because you’d have read it for the first time at school and your teacher tells you, and you remember it thereafter.

And because, when you encounter it later in life, you have the experience to relate the letters on the page to the spoken word that you obviously know already.

English words are not read syllable by syllable but are ‘scanned’ and ‘recognised’ in their entirety by the eye/mind – pretty much as a bar-code scanner reads a bar-code.

There is no reason under the sun why Maltese should be different.

Maltese people are accustomed to this already from their knowledge, however basic, of English.

You need to learn writing Maltese like you learnt to write your English.

How would anyone know how to pronounce ĠGAJTA , ĠGANT or GEĠWIĠIJA when one reads it for the first time like ?

How would you read GARR if we had it your way.

They’re completely unnecessary. Another of those stupid ideas dreamt up by whoever devised the Maltese alphabet in the 20th century, on the basis that Maltese people are too thick and slow to work out the difference between sounds if they don’t get a dot or a slash.

If I can tell the difference between though, through, thorough, tough, trough and the rest, you can bet your last cent I can work out the difference between a g sound with a dot on and g sound without the dot on, even without the dot.

Do you imagine I’m not going to recognise the word ‘siggu’ and pronounce it with a hard G instead, just because there are no dots on there?