“It’s Bouquet, for heaven’s sake. BOUQUET!” And Daphne with a flat ‘A’. Just SAY it. Please DO mention my name!

I see a certain similarity between Daphne Caruana Galizia and Franco Debono.

They both think they’re in the limelight. That they’re the hot-topic of the day. The only problem there is that Dr Debono is, and quite justifiably, but DCG? Oh please.

Daphne’s (pronounce that with a flat ‘A’) latest obsession is that everybody in the media is talking and referring to her continually. She’s just so frustrated that nobody’s mentioning her name. And guess why? Because all the news reporters, bloggers and opinion writers on the island can’t figure out how to pronounce the flat ‘A’ in her name.

As if her flat ‘A’ needs to be written differently…

Paranoia anyone?

And this is the very worst bit: my first name has a flat ‘a’, a vowel sound which doesn’t exist in Maltese and which is unpronounceable by people who grew up speaking only that language. Vowel sounds are learned only in childhood or never at all. The most you can hope for after childhood is a close approximation.

They never say my name because they can’t pronounce it and they know I will laugh at them.

Oh what a terrible humiliation, having Daphne (with the flat ‘A’) laugh at you because you didn’t pronounce her name correctly! (sic)

Excuse me ma’m, if you’re so sure that your name is unpronounceable by any local person then deal with it!

Better go and learn how to pronounce the latest trending names yourself, rather than blogging about how “stupid” names like Byron, Cleavon, Gail, Jamie and Lyon and various other mainstream British and foreign names sound in the language you barely half-learned to speak and comprehend.

Let’s hear you speak one day. Rather than poking fun at Dr Yana Mintoff for her foreign accent notwithstanding her great command of the Maltese language. We’re terribly eager to see you on TV – even if it’s GonziPlus or XaraPaNk – explaining how your name should be pronounced and correcting Dr Yana’s foreign accent.

The only other person we ever heard of having your same issue was Mrs. Bucket who insisted on having her surname pronounced as Bouquet. And thankfully she wasn’t for real but a fictitional character from BBC comedies.

We have fun reading your blog Mrs. Bouquet. Especially where you start insisting fervently that you are not of menopausal age and you are not middle-aged.
And in the same sentence you refer to people in their 30’s as middle-aged.
As long as they’re not PN activists or supporters.
We’ve never heard you describe people like Wayne Hewitt as middle-aged, balding, or for using hair gel to try to . We wonder why?

We also never heard you make fun of the Hewitt family because a good half of them can’t write their last name properly. Log into your facebook alias and check out for yourself. Half his family writes their surname as Hewitt and the other half write it down as Hewett.

Do your research properly Daphne (with the flat ‘A’) before you blurt out your splogs and describe people in their early and mid-30’s as ‘middle aged’:

According to the current edition of the Oxford English Dictionary middle age is: “The period of life between young adulthood and old age, now usually regarded as between about forty-five and sixty.”

You can’t bend the facts, no matter how much you wish to.