Spiritual bullies

Every summer, Malta is enveloped in an overwhelming pageant of feasts, which change its face both spiritually and secularly.

From the spiritual point of view, I would like to point out two disturbances:

1. Panegyrics should not last more than half an hour in length; and

2. the use of Latin in religious ceremonies should be banned.

In my opinion, we are spiritually bullied.

Carmel Mallia – Żabbar

Scooter parking

Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

As a suggestion to help local councils designate foot scooter parking, can the local councils not simply designate the old Nextbike Malta docking stations for foot scooters?

Many local councils seem to be dragging their feet on this and letting residents down, fearful of removing car parking or unable to provide the magic 400m pitch ride share needs to make shared services work.

Jim Wightman – St Julian’s

The Maltese language phobia

Times of Malta (June 15) reported that “Many can speak Maltese but most struggle to read or write it”. I’m one of them.

When I attended St Aloysius College in the 1950s, we were not allowed to speak in Maltese during recreation in the schoolyard.

I don’t remember in what class or form we were taught Maltese but I disliked the language from the beginning. I had no patience looking for “roots” of Maltese words, and I found all those “h’s” in the Maltese language – għ, h, ħ – exasperating.

When I receive a government circular, I feel irritated while trying to decipher a hodgepodge of printed words in Maltese-Arabic and in bastardised Italian and pidgin English.

After having lived in North America for 24 years, sometimes I’m at a loss expressing myself in Maltese.

So, I resort to speaking English.

Whenever I visit medical consultants, I always explain my medical condition in English.

Despite our claim to being bilingual, over the years I met quite a few Maltese technicians and professionals who were not very fluent in English or who felt ill at ease speaking in English.

If some Maltese professionals are not very fluent in English, the general Maltese population is even less fluent.

It’s absurd to bring over foreigners to study English in Maltese-speaking Malta. If they learn any English at all during their brief stay, it would be broken English while interacting with the Maltese population – or, at best, some English with a Maltese accent.

On one occasion, while walking through overcrowded Paceville, I overheard a young Maltese man telling two foreign students: “Nice Molta [sic] hu?”

As for Times of Malta, I suggest that the barrage of online comments in the Maltese language by Maltese readers who can’t express themselves in English – in a newspaper published in English – should be discontinued for the sake of those readers who don’t speak or read Maltese.

John Guillaumier – St Julian’s