Caring for language

The report 'Experts appointed to study Maltese language variations' (The Sunday Times, January 21) asked: "Should it be futbol or football, bagit or budget?"

Protecting Maltese as a language is an important matter, but ove protecting it would not do it any good, least of all if that means departing from existing words to encourage phonetically-spelt new ones from English and American.

One has to steer a difficult course between the old-time purist (which is passé and self-defeating), and a ready surrender to the assimilative in a globalising swipe. While there can be no status quo ante, equally there should be a respect for the historical genesis and meaning of words and names.

This is not solely about etymology or orthography. If language is not about meaning, if it a perfunctory technicality, it cannot be a creative or lasting tool. While the ultimate owners of language are the people who use it, some guidance would not be amiss, provided however there is no dirigiste rigidity.

Language and thought

In a symposium on the condition of language, Gerhard Schulz once remarked that in accepting certain kinds of language "as legal tender we allow ourselves to think what we say rather than say what we think. Instead of liberating thought, language then creates prisons for it." While asking in a rejoinder how strong and resilient a particular culture was, Leonie Kramer noted the fundamental weakness in the argument for linguistic libertarianism: "Language does not change, but is changed by its users for many reaons, which include ignorance, inventiveness, and a desire to manipulate opinion."

Having been responsible for first introducing the Maltese phonetic spelling of the word football in 1971, in an editorial of Il-Hajja, in consultation with my then sports editor Fr Hilary Tagliaferro, and in subsequent reporting, I hasten to add that this was partly because "loghob tal-ballun" was an imprecise rendering of its meaning. Playing ball could refer to ball games other than football. There was no equivalent Maltese word specifically for football, so a phonetic spelling, on the Latin American model, seemed worth risking.

In the case of bagit, the situation is different, because for a very long time the equivalent Maltese word has been estimi. If anglicisation, helped along by a semi-educated media, has rendered the previously generally accepted term less used, that does not and should not eradicate "the historical form of the word", much less sanction its replacement by a phonetically spelt English word almost neocolonially.

As a graduate in Maltese and the author of several books in Maltese over the past 36 years (and a member of the Akkademja tal-Malti), although not trained as a linguist, I believe that care should be taken not to anglicise words and then spell them phonetically when original words have been and indeed are still in use.

The pace of change

Cermen, for instance! In Malta one is said to chair by jippresiedi, i.e. as the "president" of a club or committee. If somebody prefers to use the English or American word, that should be spelt in English in italics, or put into inverted commas. There is no need to presume to invent a 'more' Maltese word through spelling recently imported English words, such as chairman or chairperson, phonetically.

On the continent the generally used terminology is "president", including "madame president" - presidenta in Maltese - that's how the charming chair of a successful Toronto band club described herself to me, neither as chairman/cermen nor as chairwoman/cerwumen.

Why on earth should one concoct writing oringgjus instead of laring maghsur, or meraq tal-laring? If this term were meant to specify a cash-and-carry supermarket product laring tal-pakkett might do better. Of course any writer could also say "orange juice" but without necessarily internalising and integrating it into the language by means of a derived and odd phonetic spelling.

The most popularly used and accepted Maltese word for to print is tistampa, not tipprintja. For stampat one could also say mitbugh, which is perfectly correct as well, if rather archaic now. On the other hand, a writer of Maltese might well prefer to say "mitbugh fi stamperija" instead of "stampat fi stamperija", if only to avoid a restricted code, and sameness, mixing the etymology in a run-on synthesis.

What's this about writing television as televixin? What, mandatorily? The Maltese word in current use since the 1950s has been televizjoni, which even takes the adjective (televiziv), whereas televixin doesn't. These are the wrong messages, surely.

Admittedly, technology has introduced many new terms, and the colloquial aspect of language certainly cannot be disregarded in human communication, but if we can help it we should not simply surrender to Anglo-American terms and write them phonetically, without blinking an eyelid. Often enough tiddilitja could be equally well expressed through thassar or tnehhi, although admittedly, in this case, the phoentic rendering could refer to a more specific computer-related function, thereby adding value or at least meaning.

The same care should be taken not to subject Maltese needlessly to consonants, such as the "j" or the "w" indiscriminately. Vowels in Maltese are pronounced. Thus, for example, it is perfectly correct to write and say Awstria, as opposed to Awstrija, which may however be a dialectical or village pronounction by a less educated person. Exceptions confirm the rule. A similar reasoning could apply to the spelling of euro vis-à-vis "ewro", depending on how one turns or twists one's tongue to make the (barely noticeable) difference. Pronounciation is still more difficult to regulate than orthography.

Tolerance in expression

There has to be a latitude of tolerance in many such cases. There are always options of various derivations, which enrich literary expression. Any undue mandatory rigidity would risk disfiguring the language if not ridiculing it, and it could discourage serious writing in Maltese.

Vocabulary and idiom are not always so readily available, or indeed comprehensible among rising generations, a good chunk of whom seem to have become unable to quite understand either English or Maltese, or indeed to hold a pen. Not that older generations were much better, many being unable to read Maltese or uneasy with it.

Already, for many reasons, discourse in the language may not always command the respect it deserves, it being reduced unfairly to the lowest possible common denominators (to say nothing of rampant blasphemy). The net result could be reductionist or confusing or both. Surely that's the last thing anyone wants, hence the advisability of a common-sensed expertise for somewhat updated guidelines.

There is a historical problem too. Malta has been subjected to so many changes over the past century even in the names of prominent places - that, apart from the shifts from Italian to English to Maltese or other combinations. One such is the entrance to Valletta (officially and popularly known in Maltese as Putirjal for ages) or indeed Valletta's main streets (some of which often enough continue to be popularly known as Strada Stretta, Strada Forni or Strada Zekka, respecting custom and origin). As Giovanni Bonello had once noted, strada had become practically a Maltese nomenclature - it is hardly Italian (via).

In the case of Putirjal, which had become distinctly Maltese from the original Porta Reale, the change accompanied Malta's constitutional shift to a republic in 1974, as did Strada Rjali to "Republic Street"; but in fact what replaced it - Bieb il-Belt (bab el-beld) is standard Arabic for the entrance to any town just about anywhere in the Arab world, not the entrance to Valletta, or indeed Victoria, which Maltese parlance had rendered peculiar and unique.

Oral and literary

Maltese having been more of an oral than a literary language for much of its existence, with a prevalent diglossia or even triglossia (different uses for language in different circumstances in the same country), care must be taken not to stir the pot unduly while at the same time ensuring that the language continues to be a living one, with changes however respecting continuities and a mix of options.

The latest edition of Il-Malti (LXXVIII, 2006) is very well done, pleasant and enriching, with original contributions in Maltese in poetry and prose, and some excellent translations from Camus, St Francis, Kahlil Gibran and Leopardi. If however we make no exception for poetic licence in the poem entitled In-Ners (p. 12), which perhaps we should, isn't the Maltese word for nurse normally infermier/a, specifiying usefully whether it is a male or a female nurse? Should we now all change to ners? And should we then write mejl ners and fimejl ners? Perhaps not; that would be stretching it further.

Here, the very home-grown legitimacy of language and indeed of poetry would be at stake. No amount of well-paid translations in Brussels for a different purpose or audience need endear it more deeply to rising generations, or facilitate the recourse to it for diffusion as a written creative medium of substance, whether in poetry or prose. The latter, incidentally, comprises or should comprise history, particularly our own history as a struggling nation, one of the smallest still surviving ethnic-linguistic minorities in the world.

Every time I publish in Maltese I have to face a chorus of desolation: "why not in English?" To a lesser extent, the same happens the other way round: "why not in Maltese?" This cruel dilemma will not be resolved by any pidgin-like compromise; ultimately quality is about education and caring for language, whatever language.

I wish the Maltese language experts good luck in the delicate and unenviable task ahead of them.

Henry Frendo is Professor of History at the University of Malta.