The advantages of a bilingual country

I would like to comment on the recent spate of letters referring to the Maltese language. Firstly let me say that I think that Maltese should be preserved and not bastardised more than necessary. However, if foreign words are used, they should be written and pronounced in their original form. It is very difficult to "unlearn" bad habits. English is changing constantly and adopting new terms, but these new terms are not "anglicised", for example spaghetti from the Italian, or angst, a German word for fear.

People living in a bilingual country are so lucky to have the opportunity of learning two or more languages from a very early age. According to some studies, the learning curve for languages starts decreasing at the age of 10 or 11. It is a great pity, therefore, that more emphasis is not placed on English which is, after all, one of the official languages of this country. It is spoken (as first or second language) by more people in the Western world than any other language and of course in IT circles it is the main language used. In the near future, fluent English skills will probably become one of the single most important criteria for employment anywhere in the world.

Unfortunately there does not seem to be any attempt made to familiarise children with English from an early age. What a frightful waste. For example, I received a lovely publication about Gozo in the mail today. All the text was in Maltese with a footnote that an English text could be downloaded. Fine, but think how much better it would have been for the copy to be in both languages. Children paging through this brochure would have had the opportunity of reading the English text as well, or at least trying to.

It seems to me that the government is trying to revert to the Mintoff days as far as English is concerned. One of the main reasons that we purchased a property here, and not in Spain or Portugal, was because English is my home language and it would mean that I did not have to learn yet another language in my old age.

In 1999, I received some official documents from the Land Registry Department which were both in Maltese and English. Two or three years ago we needed to make some amendments to the ground plan and only recently I eventually received a new Certifikat ta' Titolu which is only in Maltese. I phoned my notary to request a copy in English and was told that this was not possible.

Not possible in a country where English is one of the two official languages?

I telephoned the Land Registry office in Malta who referred me to the office in Gozo. There I was told that the computer program could only write Maltese (!). Strange, that in 1999 the computer program was bilingual - has it forgotten English?

Anyway, after much discussion, the supervisor came out and rudely told me that if I wanted it in English I would have to talk to the programmer!

As far as I am concerned it is my right to have any official document in English. I then went to the Ministry of Gozo offices and after some discussion with the delightful and helpful secretary there I have been promised an English translation within a week. Incidentally, the secretary was also refused any assistance from the Registry office when she called them while I was there.