AD Chairperson Carmel Cacopardo and Arnold Cassola yesterday visited the book fair at the University of Malta, and said in a joint statement that: “It is ironic that while we are here celebrating languages, the Minister and the Matsec Board are proposing to change the exams in Maltese by introducing a new exam, ‘Maltese as a foreign language’.”

There is nothing wrong in that, AD said. “Indeed this is an excellent idea, if it were meant for foreigners who are interested in improving their Maltese language skills, so necessary for those who really want to integrate well into Maltese society. Instead, it seems that this exam will have the same legal standing as the present SEC exam (Level 3) and therefore it would be able to substitute the present Maltese exam and any Maltese national will be able to sit for Maltese as a foreign language instead. It seems that now, the Minister is backtracking.

“It is a shame that such an idea was even conceived. Imagine Italians sitting for Italian as a Foreign Language, the French for French as a foreign language, the Japanese sitting for Japanese as a foreign language and so on. There would be an uproar in the country. “

Alternattiva Demokratika said it had fought strenuously for Maltese to be recognised as an official language of the EU: “Following the successful outcome of our battle in 2004, Ireland and Spain decided to fork out their own national money in order to ensure that documents could be translated into and debated in, respectively, Gaelic and Catalan/Basque/Galician, whenever deemed necessary.  We Maltese, instead, opened up millions of euros worth of jobs for translators, interpreters, proof readers, and so on without forking out a penny.

“Minister Bartolo is risking putting the jobs of all these translators, interpreters, proof readers, and others at risk with his Matsec proposal. This proposal also risks rendering the Department of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Malta irrelevant.  In the EU institutions there is a strong push to save money on languages, by eliminating all and just have English, French and German as working languages.  This is totally unacceptable. Every student living in Malta, in the Maltese education system, whatever the type of school should learn Maltese properly and to a high level. There are foreign students in the Maltese system who speak and learn Maltese perfectly, so Maltese students should be able to do so as well.

“Evarist Bartolo's proposal that Maltese nationals born and bred in Malta can sit for Maltese as a Foreign Language will give Brussels the excuse needed to save millions of euros, by not having Maltese any longer as an official language of the EU.

“Rather than demoting our national language and official EU language to ‘Maltese as a foreign language’, it would be better for our Ministry of Education to examine why our bi-lingual system is giving such dismal results in school, with around 30% of our youths not completing compulsory education, and studying how, for example, the tri-lingual Luxembourg system is so successful, such as to be first country in the EU for language proficiency.”