Opposition leader Alfred Sant said yesterday that he backed the Maltese Language Bill, currently before parliament, even though he viewed it as not going far enough.

The opposition would support the bill only because it was an improvement over the current situation, he told parliament. However, this bill should have created structures which were less bureaucratic, more cohesive and independent of the state.

"I view this as a first step towards comprehensive legislation and I am sure this bill will have to be revisited in a few years' time" Dr Sant said.

He said one area which the bill ignored was the use of the Maltese language by Maltese communities abroad, even though this was an important part of Malta's language heritage. The wishes of the Maltese communities abroad should also find expression in the law.

Dr Sant said he did not think that EU membership would weaken the Maltese language. British colonialism had not done so in almost 200 years. The challenge facing the Maltese language in the future would come from within, from the commitment or otherwise of the Maltese to hold their language dear as an expression of their identity.

He said the bill did not give enough importance to the literary dimension of Maltese, a verbal system of communication that was among the smallest in the world.

Although there were other small communities which had their own language, such as Indian tribes in North America, the aborigines of Australia and communities in the Pacific, Maltese had always managed to exist in parallel with much stronger languages such as, in recent times Italian and English.

Maltese was influenced by foreign languages and although it had Semitic roots, it had not developed in isolation from foreign influences. It was not a pure language because of the mixture of influences. It was easily subject to change and positively corrupted itself in a rapid manner. There was no structure which could be retained as the model of the language.

Dr Sant said that there were several levels of Maltese - that spoken in everyday life, that of the printed media, that of literary writings and that used in audio vision.

All these dimensions, he said, should be reflected upon and measures should be taken about them.

In the bill the legislator was recognising the existence of Maltese as a living language and offering protection to this precious phenomenon.

But this was not enough. The bill did not give enough recognition to the fact that the protagonists in the protection of Maltese were writers who had had the courage to express themselves in Maltese in a literary way.

They used Maltese to assert a national identity against the cultural climate of their time and to express national reality in an artistic manner giving a greater sense to the language itself.

Maltese was to them not just a language of use but also a tool of creative and artistic expression.

Dr Sant said that Maltese would have been safeguarded better had this responsibility been given to civil society, a united group of Maltese organisations that was proactive in safeguarding the language and independent of the government.

Under the Labour government, the Akkademja tal-Malti had been invited to draw up proposals so that it could have become the guardian of the language.

The intention was to give it state recognition and have its structures reformed in a way that would have put it in a position to advise, judge and issue regulations on how Maltese could develop and progress.

He believed that this model would have been much better than that being debated.

Dr Sant said that besides the Akkademja tal-Malti there were academic researchers. There was a certain amount of competition between the two, working together in certain instances and on different programmes in others.

Turning to interpretation and translation, Dr Sant said he did not believe the bill was dealing adequately with the challenges the language would be facing.

Dr Sant referred to George Vella's speech on Monday when he spoke on savings which could be made if Maltese MEPs spoke in English.

Dr Vella had not, through his comments, negated the importance of the use of Maltese, Dr Sant said.

But apart from that, what was to happen regarding the impact of translations? Clearly standards had to be raised and one could not have European expressions literally translated into Maltese to the detriment of Maltese expressions.

Earlier in the debate, Labour MP Stefan Buontempo spoke on the Maltese language as being Malta's greatest heritage.

He said the Maltese should be proud of their language as it distinguished them from other peoples. In spite of being ruled by different peoples, the Maltese had managed to retain their language.

The bill, he said, aimed to safeguard and promote the development of the Maltese language, such as in the area of science and technology.

Although Maltese had been recognised as an official language of the EU, it was humiliating that there was still a shortage of interpreters and translators.

Indeed, the government needed not only to move legislation, but take concrete action to strengthen the language. Greater importance to Maltese needed to be given in schools. For example, Maltese reading books in libraries and schools had not been changed for ages.

Mr Buontempo referred to the National Council of the Maltese Language, being established by this bill, and suggested it should include a representation of Maltese living abroad.

Mrs Helena Dalli (MLP) said she agreed the bill was necessary and she hoped it would be enforced.

Many words which were not Maltese were creeping into common usage. One such word was partecipazzjoni when the proper Maltese word was sehem.

In the technical field there were areas where the English word had to be used because a Maltese equivalent did not exist. But one should not be lazy and use non-Maltese words when Maltese words were available.

In broadcasting it was important to have a person checking the use of Maltese, which was, unfortunately, being butchered.

This was the case especially in the contracted programmes on national broadcasting stations. Mrs Dalli also complained about the quality of school books in Maltese and said greater effort needed to be made to promote reading in Maltese.

Chris Agius (MLP) said the Maltese should be proud to have their own language, despite coming from such a small country. Maltese was a Semitic language which had absorbed words from various sources such as Italian and English thus culminating in the diverse language it was today. The language was so rich that, all considered, little use needed to be made of foreign words.

Mr Agius said broadcasters and journalists should be trained in the proper use of the Maltese language.

He said it was shameful to have students who excelled in a great number of "O" Levels and then failed in their mother tongue.

Students attending government schools were being put at a disadvantage by being taught in Maltese but then having examination papers written in English.

These students were clearly at a disadvantage in respect of those students who had more confidence in the English language.

Concluding, he also referred to Maltese dialects and said these should not be ignored as they were evidence of the richness of the language.

Parliamentary Secretary Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici also spoke on the link between language and national identity. It was a pity that certain technical words had not been translated into Maltese with the excuse that Maltese could not absorb such words.

This bill established, once and for all, a universal way of spelling this language. One needed to introduce discipline in the way Maltese was written. One should, however, be wary of falling into the trap of being a purist by avoiding the introduction of new words.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici disagreed with remarks on Monday made by Dr Vella (MLP) about savings that could be made if Maltese MEPs spoke in English instead of Maltese. The argument, he said, was not monetary but a question of national identity.

He observed that while there were a number of institutes and circles in Malta which promoted foreign languages, no such centres promoted Maltese abroad.

He said Maltese scholars would benefit from returned Maltese migrants who would bring back to Malta a language which would not have evolved like the Maltese spoken in Malta.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici welcomed the growing number of books written in Maltese but said the demand for more was still strong.

He agreed with Mr Agius that dialects needed to be protected and, possibly, also regularised. It was important, however, that there was a body which avoided the misuse of certain words, as this bill would do.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici said EU membership and the recognition of Maltese as an official EU language gave impetus to the language.

Michael Gonzi (PN) stated that unfortunately, due to the country's size limitations, many of the correspondence, articles and textbooks were in English. This led to many people practicing in fields such as medicine detaching themselves from written Maltese.

But whilst forgiving the fact that these people made mistakes in written Maltese, one could not forgive the fact that the official website of the European Union repeatedly featured a blatant mistake in the spelling of the word zghazagh (youth).

The treasure of the Maltese language was the fact it was a Semitic language written in the Latin alphabet.

Ninu Cremona and Gorg Pisani had been among those who made enormous efforts to preserve the Maltese language. With this bill, one would therefore consolidate all the work done throughout the years.

Fredrick Azzopardi (PN) observed that the Maltese in Australia had developed their own version of Maltese in what was today known as 'Maltraljan'.

He said the danger that the Maltese language faced was not extinction but misuse.

The National Council for the Maltese Language, which this bill created, was necessary to establish a universal way of writing the Maltese language thus avoiding incongruencies occurring in various texts.

Winding up, Education Minister Louis Galea thanked all the organisations involved in promoting the Maltese language.

He agreed with Dr Sant that the challenge to Maltese would not come so much from foreign influence as from the enthusiasm or otherwise of the people to consider their language as precious.

Dr Galea said the Council for the Maltese Language would be autonomous and not subject to the will of the government.

The minister reiterated that he had not agreed with the removal of the Maltese "A" level entry requirement for the law course at University and he hoped there would come a time when the university senate would reconsider its decision.

Dr Galea called on the media to cooperate in the promotion of the proper use of the Maltese language. The bill was then given a second reading.