First of all I would really like to thank and commend Ms Caruana Galizia for her “E seksi artikil” (TMIS, 15 January). I’m very proud of my language and seeing it being polluted this way makes me angry and sad. There was also a point when I felt ashamed too.
Some months ago I was at a conference on Machine Translation (translation using computers). Several authorities in Liguistics and Machine Translation from around Europe were present. In his address, Dr Albert Borg, member of the National Council for the Maltese Language, wanted to give an example of how we've borrowed some words from English into Maltese and he came up with the sentence; “Aghmillha wejvi 'l fleggi.”
According to him and Dr Ray Fabri, himself a member of the same council for the promotion of the Maltese language, that sentence is written in correct Maltese. I asked them, how could that be? That sentence is used by parents when baby-talking with their young children!
So I believe “wufwuf” and “doggi” can be used as well instead of kelb!
Ms Caruana Galizia was right when she called this new form of language a “pidgin language”. These languages are born when speakers of two different languages talk and need to find an in-between way of communication. Such languages are very primitive usually and only exist because the speakers don't understand the other’s language. In Malta we're blessed in this respect because we're taught both English and Maltese right from the start. Therefore most of us can speak both fluently and switch between the two languages.
What the National Council for the Maltese Language members should strive to do is to be pro-active. Rather than waiting for a word in English to become commonly used in Maltese, they should come up with new words and oblige journalists and writers to use this new word when needed. They should not ignore these words and then assimilate the “mistakes”, calling them new words. If this is too much for them, they should at least desist from transliterating English words into Maltese for which we have a proper word already, like the examples given by Ms Caruana Galizia; ticer and blejd, for ghalliem and xafra.
Tony Sammut
ZURRIEQ