Like prophets in their own land, scholars who have laboured to preserve and promote their national language have often suffered at the hands of their countrymen.

Samuel Johnson, who wrote the first proper English dictionary, pursued his work without official help, “amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow”.

Eliezer Ben Yehuda, who championed the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language, suffered even more. Orthodox Jews attacked him, the Ottomans imprisoned him, and no less a figure than Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, called his project “ridiculous”.

Global languages like English don’t need defenders anymore, but small languages do. By any measure, Olvin Vella has been one of those defenders.

Vella’s groundbreaking research on de Soldanis and Vassalli shows how Maltese began to evolve from a collection of dialects towards a standardised language. He has written and lectured on historical phonology, the language of the qarċilla, and 18th-century curses.

He has supported colleagues and students working on projects ranging from the editing of de Soldanis’s Id-Damma to compiling a glossary of football terms.

Anyone who thinks professors do this kind of work for the money or the glory knows nothing about academic publishing.

Over the past weeks, I have been appalled to see such a distinguished colleague suffer mockery and abuse. Outrage at nepotism, or the appearance of it, I can understand. But even on the least charitable reading of what happened in connection with the Centre for the Maltese Language, Vella played only an incidental role.

Who among us has not received a document and failed to read the fine print before firing off a reply? Who among us has not hastily said “yes” when, upon consideration, “no” would have been the better answer?

Even if Vella committed an oversight or an error in judgement (and may he who has not, throw the first stone), does that negate the years he has spent instilling the love of Maltese in generation after generation of students? Does it cancel the patient, painstaking work he has done as a researcher and editor?

Does Malta truly have so little appreciation for a good and faithful servant?- Michael Cooperson

Does anything he is accused of doing justify the bizarrely personal viciousness, the utterly gratuitous disrespect, I find in the comments section? Is this, in short, any way for a nation to treat its scholars?

Readers of Times of Malta may wonder what right a foreigner has to sound off in a dispute that is none of his business. Precisely because I’m seeing all this from a distance, I can report on how it looks to someone with no loyalty to any political party and no interest at stake except love of the Maltese language.

When I first visited the islands, Olvin invited me to attend the class he was teaching. His lectures – sympathetic, incisive and frequently hilarious – taught me to understand Maltese. His love for the language and his concern for his students were evident in everything he did.

Through him I met the teaching staff of the department, all of whom I admire and several of whom I now count as friends. I also came to know the community of linguists, historians and literary scholars worldwide who take an interest in Malta.

Members of that community respect Vella for his work as a scholar. We are also grateful for the help he so cheerfully offers as we make our blundering attempts to master his language.

Malta could have no better representative in the international academic community. If he made a mistake, it is a mistake for which procedural remedies exist. Apply those remedies, if necessary, but stop the slander.

Does Malta truly have so little appreciation for a good and faithful servant who has devoted his life to her national language? And if all his toil counts for nothing, what message does that send to those who would join him in that task?

Michael Cooperson is professor of near Eastern languages, University of California, Los Angeles.