A question of language

I believe it was Emperor Charles V who was reputed to have spoken Spanish to God, French to his courtiers, Italian to women and German to his horse!

In today's world of quicksilver communication it seems that we have all become multilingual like the monarch who, immortalised by Titian, still wearily gazes at us from the famous portrait at the Prado, retired from the cares of a turbulent empire inherited through fortunate Habsburg marriages that made him ruler of the largest territory since Ancient Rome! Today there is no need to be in poor Charles's indeed unenviable position. All one has to do is turn on TV or surf the net!

We are all very proud that Maltese, a language spoken by a sovereign population equivalent to a third of that of a minor European city, has been accepted as "official" by the EU which we are contracted to join next May.

However proud we may be, there are problems that have nothing to do with the EU which in this writer's opinion are producing two distinctive types of Maltese - the academic Maltese and the workaday Maltese. The former is self-conscious and actually sounds contrived while the latter is the total opposite and, depending on the user, is a slapdash mishmash of our three most popular influences; Maltese itself, English and Italian!

Purity of language has always been a problem and is becoming more and more difficult to achieve every day. The formalisation of Maltese is a very recent phenomenon born out of the pre-WWII language controversies that then produced Italo-Maltese and Anglo-Maltese. As always happened in the past since the Norman liberation of 1090, the rulers, upper crust, intelligentsia and professional classes spoke one type of language while the rest of Malta spoke ordinary workaday Maltese!

I am sometimes at a loss regarding the origins of today's standard Maltese, which logic dictates should be exemplified on our strongest means of communication, television! While the strong infiltration of Latin words seems to be accepted without comment, the emergence of English words when there are perfectly good Semitic ones provokes a storm in a teacup! An example of trilingualism is inrawmu, nippromwovu and nippromowtjaw! I have actually read of bejbis instead of trabi in one of our Maltese language papers.

I confess that I am at a loss at how to solve this problem. One simply cannot force people to use language as set down by the Ghaqda tal-Malti and the Akkademja tal-Malti. All we need in addition to traffic wardens are language wardens! Incidentally, I was intrigued to be told that the wardens are affectionately known as wirdien because it is the plural of warden! Ingenious juxtaposition of language, is it not!

Joking apart, what I fear most is that, because of the militancy regarding the use of language and the onslaught of technology, real Maltese is now fast becoming a totally elitist language!

How many people do you know who speak perfect grammatical and idiomatic Maltese? Very few, if any! I remember the late Victor Apap whose Maltese was second to none. Listening to him on radio was sheer pleasure!

Who in today's media has that singular erudition and command of the Maltese language without making it sound stilted and full of obscure words which one simply has never heard of except in Mgr Saydon's translations of the Scriptures? As for the scriptures, the language used there is as archaic as that used in the King James Bible!

I certainly admire individuals who can pull off this great feat, bombarded and infiltrated as we are by foreign influences! How difficult it must be when from day one our schoolbooks are in English!

The French learn mathematics in French and the Germans learn geography in German but the Maltese study history in English and algebra in English and general science in English! They also study French, German and Italian in English! How can one not expect the phenomenon of Minglish not to result? Our cinema is English-speaking and so are most of our Cable TV channels!

I speak English to God, my family and my two cats. Circumstances dictated that the language that I dream in is English. That is a fact! I deeply regret not being in full command of the Maltese language; however, I am not alone! The massive circulation of this newspaper alone proves my point! More than anything else, it is lack of confidence that inhibits my usage of Maltese.

I am a voracious reader, an avid talker and a competent scribe and yet I am not English unless one considers one great-great grandfather of which biologically speaking we all have eight! My linguistic DNA has been formed out of a number of political and cultural circumstances over which I have had very little control!

This is a common occurrence. Most of Malta's present population was born when the map of the world was still painted red! Look at India, the mighty subcontinent. With Hindi, Sanskrit and Urdu and another seven official languages not to mention the unofficial ones, English is the only language that somehow allows officialdom to function.

The type of Ind-glish used varies considerably as it does here; however it is the only Eastern country one can visit without being totally at sea as one is in Greece, for instance! The number of eminent Indian novelists who have emerged over the past 30 years is astounding; VS Naipaul, Vikram Seth, Anita Desai, Arundhati Roy to name but a few!

Some of these have won Pulitzers and Bookers! Are the Indians not proud that they can achieve such feats in literature that seem to elude us completely? Of course they are!

Where do we go from here? The reality of it all is that, although the map of the world is no longer red, the language of Shakespeare, Dickens and Somerset-Maugham has developed into the language of the computer age!

I sometimes feel that all other languages, let alone Maltese, are now at risk as this means of knowledge and communication gathers momentum. Are we heading to a time when most languages will be ousted in favour of computer-speak simply because common usage - which, at the end of the day, indisputably determines a language - becomes global?