The language of any group and/or nation is the sole cultural and intellectual property of the people who speak it: collectively. Ownership of any indigenous language must never be usurped by any part the group to whom it belongs. Each single individual or group within this identifiable lot has equal rights to the use of that language without any one party seeking to impose its linguistic ideation over the rest of the language group.
Hence no matter what the Kunsill Nazzjonali tal-Malti prescribes or indeed what the Maltese Parliament proclaims with respect to the national indigenous language of the Maltese peoples (including us million or so of the diaspora who despite the “Greater Malta” concept are repeatedly ignored), the permanently supreme and ultimate creator, regulator, evolver, user, applier and owner of the Maltese language is none other than the Maltese people themselves; the Maltese nation. We must never succumb to the imposts of foreign pressure such as some section of the EU or other foreign academics who might fancy restructuring our verbal mode of expression.
The sole role of the academic in respect of our language is that of observer, collator, analyser and recorder. S/he then sets out to provide “guidelines” (grammars and dictionaries) as a means of providing a more effective ‘written’ form of the spoken word (spoken language always precedes the written) while respecting the non-written but long established through indigenous convention, the peoples’ mode of expression. This means accepting multiple forms of expressing similes without whimsically distorting the richness inherent in traditional parlance. With proper sensitivity to the indigenous tongue, this can all be attained without the necessity of creating new language moulds.
On the other hand, non-academic linguistic contribution from the grass-roots of any indigenous population must always, and at all costs, be acknowledged as supreme by being accorded its uniqueness as the ever and all essential originator of any nation’s verbal mode of expression. Any self respecting linguistic scholar or politician is therefore expected to accord their native language its rightful precedence, over, above and superseding all other “artificial” experimentation and/or manipulation, no matter where or whence these originate. This consideration implies the inclusion of all known dialectal variations and colloquial innovations.
New forms of expression in Maltese are constantly edging their way into our national tongue such as input from the cybernetic world, the abbreviated and coded language of our youth, grass roots references societal innovations (e.g. referring to traffic speed cameras in the broken plural form of kmamar from the singular pronunciation of kâmra; I have also heard kâmri). Irrespective of how offbeat these neologisms may sound to the more cultured individual, they must be noted on record in a national encyclopaedic lexicon. A very good example of such a language storehouse is the The Oxford English Dictionary first published in 1933 and reprinted with additions in 1961comprising 16 volumes. With our contemporary digital systems, the task should not be insurmountable as it would not require printing.
All other creative neologisms from the technical and scientific worlds are equally as important as this grass roots basis upon which all language is built. Ultimately all artificially contrived terms always lead back, somewhere along the line, to the grass roots of human language. The same rule applies to that application of language from the oft fertile imaginative creativity of a nation’s writer-thinkers. Very quickly, a random list of contrived words from some of our writers and thinkers of the past include żgiċċ (hovercraft), mitjar (airstrip), wejla (a small rowing boat), masġar (public gardens), xarrar/berrieq (spark plug) and from my own creative baggage such terms as eposta (an email; to email), skalatur (escalator) and kondizzjonatur (air conditioner).
Language alters, changes, expands, contracts in meaning, even at the very instant a word is uttered. To explain myself in as non-technical terms as possible for all readers participating in this discourse, “meaning” follows several levels and aspects. The utterer (writer/speaker) frequently is unable to convey precisely what his/her own mind conceives and wishes to convey. Likewise the receiver (listener/reader) just as frequently understands (i.e. interprets or misinterprets) the message conveyed. Such is the marvellous and not so marvellous nature of human language. It only ever allows us to communicate on an approximate and therefore imperfect level. Hence dictionaries and grammars, along with the entire linguistic structure devised by language scholars, ought to be treated as guidelines and not as infallible and unbendable rules.
My principal objections as well as that of several leading (though silent) thinkers in Malta and elsewhere in the world of Maltese to the KNM include its power through the Maltese Parliament of “imposing” the will of a minuscule minority over an entire nation’s mode of expression and hence a nation’s “thought processes”.
The very notion of legislating for any people’s language constitutes the ultimate obscenity one can ever inflict on a sovereign people. Such approach disregards, in the most contemptible manner possible, centuries and possibly millenniums of human interaction engulfing a people’s culture, history, anthropology, beliefs, mores, thought processes, perceptions, traditions, heritage and all aspects peculiar to all modes of being human.
This objection alone, which constitutes the greatest affront, the greatest insult anyone can inflict on a sovereign people, should suffice for the Government of Malta in unison with Opposition to restore the Maltese language to its rightful dignified place as the unique mode of expression of the Maltese nation.
In conclusion I suggest, in view of the widespread resentment among so many of Malta’s thinkers, teachers and writers, that short of repealing the entire legislation that established the Kunsill Nazzjonali tal-Ilsien Malti, at the very least a thorough review be undertaken so that all-knowing and limitless legislative power be deleted once and for all.
Finally, considering the widespread serious mistrust the National Council for the Maltese Language had engendered, none of the original members of the Council who were so heavily involved in the setting up of the ‘Kunsill’ (the tussle with the Akkademja; the setting up of the provisional body then known as the ‘Board’; the final usurpation of the Akkademja’s very raison d’être, etc.), should hold any office in the ‘Kunsill’ if good will and progress are to triumph.