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The end of this scholastic year marks the end of a series of meetings with primary school teachers who were updated on the new regulations of Maltese orthography.

The new regulations, which are known as Deċiżjonijiet 1 (Decisions 1) and which came into effect in July 2008, aim to put an end to orthographic uncertainties in Maltese. During their meetings, the new rules were explained and shown to be consistent with existing rules, questions were answered and problems discussed.

The meetings were coordinated by the Education Officer of the Maltese language, David Agius Muscat, and organised by the Directorate for Quality and Standards in Education and by the National Council for the Maltese Language.

During these meetings, Professor Manwel Mifsud, George Farrugia and Olvin Vella, lecturers in the Department of Maltese at the University and who represented the Council, met with over 1,500 teachers.

The teachers were given a publication in which all the words decided upon were listed, as well as a manual with instructions on how to fix the settings on their PCs in order to use Maltese fonts. The manual was put together by the Committee for Maltese Language and Information Technology headed by Dr Ray Fabri, chair of the Institute of Linguistics at the University.

The collaboration between the Directorate and the Council is of particular significance because it ensures that, for the first time in the history of the Maltese language, the orthographic changes are becoming known to all in a systematic way.

The meetings were introduced by David Agius Muscat, who talked about the process that led to the new spelling rules. For a long time, writers and teachers of Maltese came across a large number of words with spelling variants, such as Awwissu and Awissu (August). The fact that these words could be written in more than one way was creating uncertainties in spelling.

The National Council started a public debate by inviting authors and all those who use Maltese in writing to give their opinions on the correct spelling of such words. Their comments and suggestions were compiled and published for free, and a national seminar was organised in which the ideas were discussed. Finally, the Council appointed a body of experts, led by Professor Albert Borg, to decide on the spelling of each and every word in question.

Presently the teaching of Maltese in the Primary sector is facing a number of positive challenges, including the successful introduction of new textbooks and supplementary reading material for the coming scholastic year. The new regulations can be downloaded from the website www.kunsilltalmalti.gov.mt