Maltese in court

Mark Anthony Sammut (November 26) seems to have become an intolerably angry man. I don't really blame him for he cannot get one right. Not even his silly comparison with his festa's Catherine wheel, which does go round and round but definitely does not repeat itself; how many (repeated) Catherine wheels would he have before finally it expends itself?

To try to curry favour with his "bored" readers, Mr Sammut quoted impressive excerpts from large two- or three-tomed dictionaries with thousands of pages, some of them also containing pictures for the delectation of young children.

Mr Sammut wisely refrained from saying that any one of these large dictionaries had repudiated the undeniable fact that "jargon" means "gibberish, unintelligible words (like patwit), barbarous or debased language". Neither do they confute the irrevocable fact that the word "legalese", so dear to Mr Sammut, is a mere colloquial term used in documents but not in law courts.

To no avail does Mr Sammut take refuge in these large dictionaries that generally include all possible meanings, even just colloquial terms like "legalese" and slang. He seems to be happy that his quoted definitions say that some persons look on jargon "contemptuously". Of course they do! Since Mr Sammut's excerpts do not obliterate or confute the ones I have been correctly quoting, then his extensive quotes are obviously irrelevant and immaterial.

Mr Sammut writes that the Concise Oxford Dictionary (with over 1,600 pages) is not only brief but also contains much but certainly not all. I say that the full meaning of the word "concise" is "brief but comprehensive in expression". The word concise is no caveat for anyone as such dictionary editors carefully choose the most representative and most likely meanings and definitions. I would say without preoccupation that the well-known Concise Oxford Dictionary is the most widely consulted dictionary anywhere.

Mr Sammut has a strange habit of forecasting and promising future action. Such as when he promised his bored readers he would consider his correspondence closed and then broke his own unsolicited word and did the opposite. I wonder what his bored readers will say to someone who freely and publicly admits having broken his solemn word. He has now done it again, promising readers not to reopen this unilaterally closed controversy with no "by your leave, Mr Editor". Time will tell! If he does break his word again, and I hope he does reply, he shall find out that I remain steadfast and uncompromising against those that deliberately denigrate our Maltese identity.

Another such guessing instance is when he preposterously predicts (November 26) that "already Mr Camilleri is repeating his views ad nauseam adding nothing new". Isn't it somewhat presumptuous of him to even try to guess what I intended to do; although there are persons who need repetition badly to start having a glimmer of understanding. In fact he gave readers a twisted and warped meaning of my intention to defend my integrity from his accusation when I invited him to look up the word jargon in the "Concise". Why stoop so low?

Mr Sammut had intentionally denigrated our Maltese identity by stating unequivocally that our law courts' hybrid jargon was "the quintessence of the Maltese identity" and that it was also "the epitome of our identity". None of these mythical conjectures can be, by a long stretch of the imagination, identified with our Maltese identity. Mr Sammut's irresponsible assertions, which he fails to regret, deserve the unqualified condemnation of every Maltese person born and bred on these incomparable islands.

In consonance with my initial subject-matter, I still maintain that, despite Mr Sammut's "no comment" attitude, the use of the word miftiehem is much much better than the barbarous word patwit in our courts of justice.