Ten years ago, a group of European leading language-technology experts concluded that Maltese is at the highest risk of disappearing in the 21st century together with Icelandic, Latvian and Lithuanian. They are spoken by a small number of people and lack technological support in automatic translation, speech interaction, text analysis and the availability of language resources.
The researchers claimed that 21 out of 30 European languages could become extinct in the digital world. They said that the lack of available software for the high-risk languages means that, without drastic action, they will be unable to survive in today’s digital world.
They recommended “that a coordinated, large-scale effort has to be made in Europe to create the missing technologies and transfer this technology to the languages faced with digital extinction”.
Hans Uszkoreit, who coordinated the research, said: “The results of our study are most alarming. The majority of European languages are severely under-resourced and some are almost completely neglected. In this sense, many of our languages are not yet future- proof.”
We still need to take serious steps to strengthen the Maltese language if we want it to survive in the digital era.
Our schools today have students from all continents and there are classes where Maltese students and Maltese- speaking students are a minority; we should, therefore, extend the opportunities to learn Maltese as much as possible with programmes that fit the need.
We must create a digital ecosystem which serves as a firm platform for the Maltese language.
The Maltese language has a very weak digital presence and, from a young age, most children are being exposed to English online. The language of the digital technology we use every day is all in English: the apps on the smartphone, the tablet and the laptop, the social media pages, YouTube and most of the content on it.
Most of the websites we visit are probably in English as well. The Maltese language is simply not there in the vast majority of our online consumption.
We still have not taken seriously enough the predicament of the Maltese language in the digital world. It is, by and large, the most serious danger faced by our language. Countries such as France and Germany, whose language is used every day by tens of millions, are also having this same debate because they feel aggrieved. If they are worried, why aren’t we, with a much bigger task at hand?
I think these are the discussions that need to take place because these are the big questions that need to be asked about the future of Maltese. If the Maltese language vanishes from the online world in 10- or 20-years’ time, our language will be in jeopardy.
We must create a digital ecosystem which serves as a firm platform for the Maltese language- Evarist Bartolo
We must come up with solutions to level the playing field and make sure Maltese finds its place in our smartphones, tablets and websites. Artificial Intelligence and much-improved automatic translation of online content can be very crucial and, possibly, our salvation. We’ve seen efforts on Google and Facebook but I think there’s still a long road to finding the right balance.
In addition to this, we must make sure we safeguard the Maltese language in online communications, including texting. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has received text messages in Maltese which need some sort of decoding equation to understand.
MATSEC examiners have pinpointed this out in their reports – where the misuse of Maltese in the context of shorthand texting practices has found its way into assignments and examination papers. This is another important challenge that we must address and, while languages such as English have the luxury of being subject to auto-correction on smartphones, tablets and software, Maltese remains in its mumbo-jumbo form.
This is not only worrying in terms of the correct use of the language but it is not even useful when communicating through messaging.
I am glad that, finally, we have started to address the anomaly in our schools where foreign students are able to learn other foreign languages, such as German and French, as a foreign language but cannot learn Maltese as a foreign language.
We should also consider seriously making this available to Maltese children whose first language, for some reason or other, is a foreign language.
I think strengthening the Maltese language is a very important step towards safeguarding its future. In schools, we should extend the opportunities as much as possible with programmes that fit the need. We should be practical and reach as many students as possible to make them love and use the Maltese language.
Beyond that, we must make sure we help create a digital ecosystem which serves as a firm platform for the Maltese language if we want our language to remain alive in the future.
Evarist Bartolo is a former education and foreign minister.