With the prospect of a national election looming ahead, hoping all concerned (with emphasis on our politicians) openly lay their cards on the table to conscientiously tackle the lingering challenge of Our Indigenous Maltese Language!
The Act of Parliament in its current state, that created the National Council for the Maltese Language, gives the said Council absolute authority – carte blanche – over OUR language by publishing legal directives concerning Maltese in the Government Gazette.
The sole ownership of the Maltese language belongs exclusively to the Maltese people, collectively and individually, all with equal claim to its authorship! More specifically Section 2, Article 6/2 of Chapter 470 of the Government Gazette, needs to be completely expunged from the said Act. For it is this particular Section which bestows absolute legislative authority upon the National Council to make changes to the Maltese Language as it sees fit by decree published in the Government Gazette. Such measure usurps true ownership of the Maltese Language from the Maltese people who created it.
To me and to a large number of leading Maltese thinkers and writers, the said clause becomes an insult bordering on the betrayal and treason of the principal trait identifying us as unique within the world family of nations!
This basic truth is proven by the fact that modern civilised first world nations such as Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand do not possess a distinguishing language of their own necessitating them to use the language of Britain: English! Yet these same nations still feel the dire need to express their own singular origins as sovereign nations, independent of their British cultural ties, by adopting and by creating their own language variations (idioms, lemmas, pronunciation, intonation, semantics...). Their national desire to identify themselves as distinct from the British, without any inference of antagonism, inspires an ever-increasing linguistic corpora peculiar only to their people, thereby identifying them as Canadian, Australian, American and New Zealanders.
The still festering national language qualm in the case of Maltese – a language unique in its own right proudly having developed its own lexical and literary repertoire over centuries of social intermingling on the world stage – remains a gaping wound of national proportions that only serves as an ideal tool for dictatorial and despotic decisions. Not exactly the attitude and behaviour of highly cultured scholars whose only genuine modus operandi – if they truly cherish the sublime ingredients of their calling – ought to be! While an entire nation looks forward to their wise guidance in the proper and apt preservation of our unique national tongue, the language rut at all social levels proceeds with its momentum unabated.
Stubborn pride and conceit in capriciously tampering with the wisdom of the Founding Fathers of Maltese can and will eventually lead to our language nihilism as happened historically in various corners of the world to so many other minority languages the memory of which persists merely in the archives of oblivion.
So hallowed, profound, personal and intrinsically unique is the nature of “language” – in all its human spoken and written forms – that no single individual (be they the Chief Justice of the land, the President or Prime Minister, the top Hierarch of the local church, the Rector of the top institute of learning, et al) or any group, should ever hold absolute authority over a people’s tongue. For “language” evolves consciously and subconsciously, even incidentally, with all possible nuances that the human brain is ever capable of imagining, implying, intending … Hence, I ask YOU dear reader-thinker, who on this earth has absolute right to legislate and enforce by decree upon this singular uniquely human limitless innate power? Certainly not by passing autocratic laws!
Human language (spoken and written) intrinsically incorporates a people’s deepest and most personal intricacies, including the celebrated communal triumphs and endured woes that its sole true owners accumulate and develop over centuries to the benefit of all.
Rules of grammar (including the entire linguistics corpus) and lexicons (dictionaries, word lists, glossaries, etc), owing to the transient ever changing nature of language, should be treated as significant “guidelines” but never as sine qua non or infallible dictums arrogantly imposed by legislation. Indeed these “rules” after all, know their origins from the earliest days of civilisation; they are not invented or composed at the whim of individual scholars. The scholar observes, collates, compares, analyses, scrutinises, then formulates the unwritten “rules” already extant within the established language structure into registered rules under the collective notion of “grammar”. Grammar is inherently and conceptually built into human language. The basic collective wisdom and knowledge upon which language is built and develops!
With profoundest respect towards the forebears who initialised as well as the worthy contribution of the current users, language should be left to develop always with reverence towards its collective communal users.
In view of the forthcoming national election, I invite all declared candidates of all colours and creeds, who present themselves to the Maltese public in the forthcoming national ballot, to publicly declare beforehand their understanding and intentions concerning the future of our unique Maltese Language.
Through your individual public declarations let the people of this proud nation know so all may be more suitably armed to participate more proactively in the preservation of the past and collective on-going wisdom of our own language that does not belong exclusively to the National Council of the Maltese Language nor the nation’s administration constituted by the entire National Parliament and the Judiciary.
Getting rid of the nominated offending Article incorporated within the Act is a non-negotiable necessity before it is too late. This should then be followed by a thorough review of the entire Act where archaisms such as artikolu and kapitolu instead of artiklu and kapitlu and all other concealed subtleties are clarified. Let no obscurities hover over vague modes of expression.
Before one can instruct others in the art of writing and speaking one’s tongue, such as the relentless attacks upon our journalists, let the would-be self-appointed fonts of wisdom first familiarise themselves more thoroughly with the people’s language with due sensitivity and respect towards our entire Maltese nation in toto.
There is so much more to be done and time is rapidly running out while those responsible dilly-dally with our grandchildren’s survival as a nation.