One of the quirks of this small country is that every so often someone comes out to try and upstage, review, revert or anyway change what has been accepted wisdom for generations.
The latest victim is the valiant grand master who led Malta and its defenders with great courage during the Great Siege.
It was not enough that for the past 60 years the capital city which bears his name did not have an effigy of him for the previous one, which used to be at City Gate, was damaged by war and subsequently removed, never to be heard of again.
Nor was it enough that a new City Gate was built in the late 1960s and two niches built on either side were left empty for the duration of the existence of that ungainly City Gate until it was unceremoniously pulled down.
Nor was it enough that the world-famous Renzo Piano did not think of redressing this lack of respect when he planned the new City Gate, the Parliament buildings and the restored but still roof-less Opera House and it had to be a private bank to come up with an idea of creating a statue in a new square.
Nor does it seem enough that there was incorrect information given out – the statue was built not on the effigy of the grand master on his tomb in St John’s Co-Cathedral crypt but on a portrait by De Favray.
To all this has now been added the supreme indignity of a public controversy over his name. Is it Jean de la Valette as we have always known him, or Jean de Valette?
We have this penchant for turning things on their head and for some smart Alec coming forth to set us right where we have always been wrong.
Take our own language. It has been centuries in the making and it has taken the experience of centuries to bring it to the stage where it is now but now the powers that be have decided we must all mend our ways: We no longer write ‘skond’ but ‘skont’ – there we go, and we were thinking that ‘skont’ is when you are given a discount.
August has always been August in English but not in Maltese: What we used to know as ‘Awissu’ has now become ‘Awwissu’.
And so on and so forth. Or fifth (sic).
This is not the same as what happens when a people moves from one generation to another. The people set their pace, and their direction and it is useless for anybody to try and stem the tide or to try and channel it this way or that. This is how our language was created and how it evolved over the years. There was no authority telling people how to spell words – people adapted what they found or what was brought in from abroad and changed it to adapt to the Maltese peculiar circumstances.
Take a simple word such as ‘laring’. The word, obviously, is derived from the Italian ‘arancia’. To which the Maltese of past generations added the typical Maltese article ‘l-‘ thus ending up as ‘laringa’. But then, collectively forgetting we had already tacked on the article to the original, or stem, word, successive generations added a further article. So now we say ‘il-laringa’ and think nothing about it because this is the way we have always called oranges.
Instead of ‘authorities’ telling people how to spell names, it would perhaps be far better for the authorities to listen first to how the people pronounce things and take it up from there.