It’s funny how any hiccup involving the Maltese language always provokes hysterical reactions in the English language newspapers. Unfortunately, two articles that appeared on 15 January entitled “E Seksi Artikil” and “E(W)reka” demonstrate a shallow understanding of how languages work, giving rise to many erroneous conclusions. Incidentally, both authors speak English as a first language and their Maltese is definitely not as fluent.

In “E(W)reka” Ms Micallef boldly suggests we take a deep breath before we count to five in Maltese! I have never seen Italians do it and their numbers from one to five and upwards have exactly the same amount of syllables. Does this entice them to switch to English, or French for that matter?

The reason most of us count in English is that we were all taught arithmetic in English from day one, even in government schools. We also invert numbers in the spoken form, because Arabic script is written from right to left, and this can be confusing for some when adding. Mass tourism has not helped either.

Her jibe at “those who genuinely love our language and think rules and regulations can dictate how we speak” doesn’t add up to modern reality. Nobody is dictating how Ms Micallef can speak, so much so, that she can indulge in Minglish to her heart’s content, or show off her halting Maltese for that matter.

I should hope that, using her own logic, those who make a pig’s ear of English are recipients of her sweet, condoning smile. To go on ad nauseum about the preservation of all Maltese words like mitjar or gugarelli is very old hat and so 1970s. The very opposite is happening in fact, as Daphne rudely points out in her article. We are all too happy to take on every loan word possible and, much to her chagrin, write it in Maltese phonetics.

I wholeheartedly agree with Ms Micallef in her plea to raise the level of English, but why is this issue juxtaposed with Maltese, as if each language is exclusive of the other. I do not share her single-minded notion that a higher English standard will get us jobs. English is not a panacea for our problems. We have, for far too long, abandoned a large number of our school children to their own destiny and in the process created an underclass with no skills and illiterate in both languages! Perhaps it is the greatest indictment of this government and knocking Maltese is as frivolous and myopic as it is dishonest.

Daphne’s “artikil” starts off with a chain of misspelt English words disguised in Maltese phonetics, an exaggerated nonsense by her own admission, to reveal “what is now passing for official Maltese”. Really?

Never mind the intro, the gist of her gripe is that Maltese is fast becoming a pidgin language. For us Maltese language lovers, any level of concern, no matter from which unlikely quarter, is very welcome.

Pidgin languages are by definition languages not native to a people, coming about spontaneously when two speakers of different languages try to communicate. One might argue that Manglish spoken between Maltese Maltese speakers and Maltese English speakers might border on a pidgin, not a comfortable notion for some.

When pidgin languages outdo the native language they become Creole languages. In time these will be called plain languages.

English, for one, has passed through this development maybe more than once in its long history, changing in the process not only its vocabulary but its syntax and grammar. Up to five centuries ago it was unintelligible to any modern English speaker.

The introductory paragraph, albeit exaggerated, is based on a wrong premise. What is happening to our language is relexification, the supplanting of old words for new ones. It is simplistic to draw comparisons between the progression of English and Maltese as the former grew parallel to the hegemonic expansion of its culture. We, on the other hand, were the targets of this linguistic expansion.

All languages have limits to their capacity to assimilate words. English has hybridised, its Anglo-Saxon element exposed to French and Latin enabled it to assimilate Indo-European languages with strings of vowels or consonants. But in some instances and for obvious reasons, English does change the original writing e.g tsunami. All the words culled from Indian, African and Asian languages must all be changed, e.g jodhpurs, shah, tsar, check-mate (ix-xih miet), and countless others.

Maltese cannot assimilate English words well, not only because of their structure but also because we conjugate words in a way English does not. For example, we cleverly adopted the word ‘shoot’ in the football context but then needed to conjugate it. Is Daphne really expecting us to say “nixshootja” or are we compelled to use “ta daqqa ta sieq lill-ballun”?

Even plurals present problems as we use a variety of suffixes to create them. Would not respecting the original orthography and affixing the Semitic addenda render words more inelegant? e.g coatijiet. Or is she suggesting we do away with loan words altogether, or our inherent linguistic heritage?

The point that blekbord should not be pronounced blekbort is flawed. Words like hadid and sadid have a “t” sound on the last consonant. Suggesting that this word might be pronounced blekbod is surely tongue-in-cheek with its post-vocalic “r”. There are more English speaking people who pronounce the “r” (USA, Canada, Scotland and Northeast England) than not. The “th” is not even pronounced in Ireland.

Maltese has been experiencing a maelstrom of loan words unprecedented in its short history, and other languages such as Danish have agonised over this problem. We are not alone but our situation is unique as languages are unique. While I tend to agree that we have been too eager to accept any word which the masses take on, such as ticer and blejd, other words like garaxx, gerzi, kowt, kejk, ormaj are here to stay. It might be unfortunate, inelegant and ignorant if you like, but no amount of indignation is going to change things.

Unfortunately, what we are arguing about has more to do with the effect and not the cause of this malaise. As long as we keep trying to push out Maltese, this will happen. If we insist on introducing new ideas from “wardens” to “park and ride schemes”, “home loans”, and anything coming from the government and its agencies, including the Housing Authority, in English, the people will simply parrot the catch phrases and slogans supplied by our political cognoscenti.

It had to be a foreign bank, HSBC, to cunningly adopt a strategy to target new clients in their own language in ATMs, and lately by a linguistically convoluted ad saying-SALE Ta L- HSBC. Funny that, isn’t it?

With language the abiding word is change. The English written by your two columnists will likely be archaic in 50 years’ time. Most of their ideas already are.

Christian Holland

NAXXAR