Grammarian

The son of Salvatore Vassallo, a stone mason, and Catherina née Sammut, Ġanni was born in Luqa; the brother of the architect, Andrea.* Ġanni joined the civil service at an early age. In 1914 he was appointed registrar to the law courts in Gozo where he lived till his death. Vassallo was a versatile writer and also translated several novels into Maltese. He published his first novel, Irsir tax-Xwieni in 1892 followed by Flora, Mahdi, and Cassilda.  In 1894 he joined the Xirka tal-Malti whose aim was to promote the study and writing of Maltese.

Vassallo was a pioneer of Maltese orthography. He proposed his own system and, at the turn of the century, published a concise set of rules about orthographic usage, Il-Muftieħ tal-Kitba Maltija (1901). In 1920 he became an active member of the commission appointed by the Għaqda tal-Kittieba tal-Malti to establish a scientific alphabet of the Maltese language. He worked side by side with Ninu Cremona to publish jointly the Tagħrif fuq il-Kitba Maltija (1924). Vassallo also published L’Ortografia Maltese (1928) in Italian, The Cathechism of the Maltese Orthography (1928), and It-Tieni Muftieħ tal-Kitba Maltija (1931) which was a revised edition of his earlier work.

This biography is part of the collection created by Michael Schiavone over a 30-year period. Read more about Schiavone and his initiative here.