Editorial : on Malta and Libya

Abstract

On May 5th Malta Television showed our Prime Minister, Dr. G. Borg Olivier,and the Maltese delegation that accompanied him in the company of the Prime Minister and other high officials in Libya. The two Prime Ministers expressed interest in the mutual wellbeing of the countries represented by them and expressed the hope and wish that the friendly relations between our two countries would prove fruitful not only in commercial agreements, but also in cultural collaboration. Though Malta's civilisation is mainly European and Christian, yet we speak a language that is basically Semitic with more morphological and syntactic agreements and correspondences with the Arabic spoken in Libya than with Italian or English. These are both Malta's main cultural languages, the latter being also an official language with Maltese in the Constitution of an independent Malta except that, thanks to a fait accompli difficult to undo now, presented by die outgoing colonial administration under the last naval Governor Admiral Sir Guy Grantham, English is the only official language of the university, an anomaly that is now offensively discordant with the official status of Maltese as the primary official language of Independent Malta.