I have always been fascinated by the English language. The more I read, the more I understand how comprehensive it is, as the language is rich with words for each and every moment, feeling, description and opportunity, with each having a different shade of meaning for the varying circumstances.

There are occasions when the English language has 10 words for the one we have in the Maltese language. But each of those 10 words has a diverse nuance that makes it unique, and therefore appropriate, for the kind of denotation one wants to give a particular occurrence, explanation or event.

And yet, I cannot find the right translation for the Maltese word “injoranza”. It is not ignorance, because in English ignorance means lack of knowledge, and the Maltese meaning of “injoranza” is much wider than that. Neither is it stupidity, which is close, but not close enough.

The first obvious choice to satisfy my curiosity was to look up the Thesaurus, and although there is a wide array of adjectives that somehow give an idea, they do not grasp the wide-ranging connotations of the word in Maltese. Lack of intelligence, foolishness, denseness, brainlessness and dull are all more or less interpretations that give an indication, but they do not hit the target in full. If we transpose all this onto a darts board, these words hit the green circle surrounding the bulls-eye, but not the bulls-eye itself, the red circle right at the centre.

I’ve also turned to experts in the language for assistance. Folly, idiocy, imbecility, obtuseness, thickness and asininity was what one of them told me, while a second opinion gave me a broader insight – unintelligent, doltish, moronic, thick-headed, slow-witted and witless. But then he added more: “The Maltese ‘injorant’ has shades of uncouthness and yobbishness, with rude, rustic, loud-mouthed, vulgar, crude and crass as applicable adjectives. Probably a compound word such as ‘dense and crass rustics’ would produce more accuracy.”

Probably, he said.

And then it all clicked.

There is not one word in the English language that can be the precise translation of the word “injoranza” as we know its meaning in Maltese. Simply because ‘injoranza’ in the real sense of the word pertains only to us Maltese. Nobody has coined a word for “injoranza” in English because they have not found the need for it.

They do not have the type of ‘injoranza’ that we have here.

And all those adjectives mentioned earlier, put together, can only serve to make up the puzzle with the meaning of ‘injoranza’, but which has the central piece missing.