The language double standard

Maltese people are bilingual. Or should be. Maltese is our mother tongue and English our link to the rest of the world. It is important to remember there is a world beyond the community we feel we belong to. In the words of Salman Rushdie, who has written extensively about the politics of language, "we should not confine ourselves within narrowly-defined frontiers because this would mean we would be going voluntarily to that form of internal exile... called the homeland".

This is why it is important that Malta and the Maltese people are bilingual. And, yet, despite the raging debates on the ascendancy of one official language over another, Maltese writers choose to write only in Maltese. At first sight it seems that the nationalist argument has won the day. But the truth is much, much sadder.

The absence of Maltese literature in English is a clear sign of the Maltese people's fear of engaging with a language they are still in awe of. This fear and awe has led Maltese writers to abdicate from making a world language their own (and ours). English may have reached its current dominant status because of the wide-ranging influence of the British empire in the past three centuries (a role nowadays played by the United States) but it has also triumphed because of its resilience.

Revisiting some literature on India recently, I remembered that a similar debate over the ascendancy of the English language rages in India. But the Indian people (and others) have resisted the overarching influence of the English language by using it to promote their literature and, at the same time, developing their own special variety of the language.

The New Statesman of January 30 quotes David Crystal, professor of linguistics at the University of Wales in Bangor, as saying that "given India's huge population and its industrial and cultural influence, Hinglish could soon become the most widely spoken form of English in the world".

"Hinglish" (Hindi-English) started out pretty much like Minglish (Maltese-English), something to be jeered at. But it has now become "the hip voice of urban India". India has put its stamp on the language of the coloniser. I find it an amazing turnaround of events.

Language develops much faster in its spoken form and yet in Malta we seem to be afraid of language development. We speak of retaining the purity of Maltese (the idea that a language could be pure is as oxymoronic as they come and more than a little delusional), rail against English loan words introduced into the Maltese lexicon, forgetting that languages grow by borrowing from each other and bending to the influence of one another.

India may have been resisting the ascendancy of English on its territory for years but its many languages have themselves been markedly influential. Hobson-Jobson, the legendary dictionary of British India, ascribes Gujarati and Marathi origins to the word tank, Sanskrit to the word cash, Hindi to shampoo, as examples somewhat more obscure than the familiar pukka, curry, cummerbund.

The point here is not that Maltese has not done enough to influence English. It is that we still refuse to shape the malleable English language to suit us. We are afraid of English. It is our sacred cow, and we collude to retain it as the language of the educated elite instead of using it universally as the language with which we invite others into our world, small and idiosyncratic as it is. English is a world language, it can take it. It is what it's there for.

The irony is that we aspire to speak "proper" English and correct each other patronisingly at the slightest lapse, but we cannot or will not write it. We do not need to speak the Queen's English. Maltese English works just fine for the purposes of communication. But we need a good grasp of English to communicate our story to the outside world. It is important to have more than a basic grasp because otherwise we will remain lost in translation. It hardly matters if someone drops a "th" here and there, or even lays the stress on the wrong syllable. These are superficial inadequacies which are really not worth the indrawn breaths and disapproving looks they elicit.

Conversely, writing requires a great deal of perfection. The written word is the apex of the linguistic form, and, whether we are writing in Maltese or in English, our command of language is appalling. This is mainly because we all believe we can write, another one of those self-delusions which has run amok in the modern world. And if you don't believe me, or think I'm trying to make an elitist argument, all you have to do is pick up each of the four daily newspapers. I have to, as part of my research, and I am fast developing a nervous tic.

Maltese literature needs to be written. This is a call to arms, or should that be a call to arts? Maltese writers need to write. My emphasis has been on English because it is my language of choice, but also because it is as important as Maltese in the balance of today's world, and because there are many prepared to speak out for Maltese but few who speak out for English without sounding like they are in thrall to the empire. The militants among us like to hold forth about literature being the expression of nationality. It is not. The idea of authenticity (the authentic Maltese voice) and purity (of language) is a fantasy, a myth. We are a mélange and should learn to celebrate it.

The first part of this article appeared on February 11.