THIS may well be the first time this week you will have read a quotation from Charles V (1500-1558), and it may be some time before you are presented with another. But looking back on the Letters Pages of the past few weeks, this celebrated utterance of his came to mind: “I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.”

It can safely be assumed that the one-time ruler of the Holy Roman Empire was something of a polyglot. So too, it would appear, are many of our readers, for languages have recently provided a recurring theme.

Erudite English on the part of our correspondents is of course a given; and there have been discourses on Scots, and its status as the “real language” of Scotland; the place of Gaelic, and whether Japanese should be taught in our schools; we have even discussed the language of the Picts, and Latin has again been mentioned in despatches.

We are in the midst of what passes for summer in Scotland, but there has been no silly season here. Domestic politics is still a hot topic, but not to the fevered extent of previous months. Yes, we have discussed and analysed the Budget, English Votes for English Laws, and the pros and cons of the first past the post voting system when compared with various forms of proportional representation, but there has been much else on the agenda.

Consider some of the matters we have been talking about just in the past 10 days or so.

Readers have covered the saga of Greece and the European Union; fracking, ferries, pharmacies and foxhunting; private schools and Police Scotland; childcare; the weather in song and verse; the fate of our garden blue tits; the upkeep of graves; hydrogen technology for ships; marine protection areas and inshore fisheries; the newly-renamed Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, and those near ever-presents, the state of our transport infrastructure and subsidies for wind turbines.

Some topics will stick around longer than others, but it is sometimes necessary to call a halt to a debate when it might appear to be descending into a tit for tat argument between two combatants. As can be seen from the aforementioned, there are always other things to get our teeth into.

Like every other newspaper, we have our share of regular correspondents, but it is pleasing to be able report once again that we have welcomed some new contributors in the past few weeks. Thank you all, especially those who go to the trouble of taking up pen and paper and use the old-fashioned envelope and stamp method. Everything is read, and all correspondence is welcome, even if only a selection can be published.

That mention of the post reminds me to counsel patience; do not be overly disheartened if your letter does not appear in the next available issue – it might be published in the following days. We do not discount handwritten letters just because they take a day or two to arrive; similarly email contributions can sometimes have a shelf life.

I look forward to hearing from you. Gracias, grazie, merci and danke, as Charles V might have said.