Italian as Malta's third official language

Particularly interesting in the survey results on the reading habits of the Maltese was - and this is not a novelty - that the third language in which Maltese people read is Italian.

I would venture to say that if a survey were to be carried out at this point in time about which language, bar Maltese and English as the official languages, do the Maltese speak, spoken Italian would feature prominently and take a much larger share than the portion afforded to written Italian.

Indeed, for many of us, Italian comes easy because we are the generation who grew up watching Italian television as young children or teenagers, and have been able to master the spoken language, in quite a few cases, almost on a par with a native speaker.

Moreover, the geographic proximity to Sicily, and the mostly Latin character of the Maltese people, as well as the continuous exposure to Italian channels, make it almost second nature that a considerable part of the population would speak and learn all the four skills of the language with ease.

It is true that a good number of teachers of Italian lament the falling standards of this language, especially when compared to the calibre of students of a decade or so ago. The already fallen standards of English and Maltese have previously been commented on at length, but this sad state of affairs indeed seems symptomatic of the lack of importance we assign to the three languages which are historically intertwined with our nation.

One should not exclude the other. Indeed we never seem to be able to value what we have and we have allowed our supposed bilingualism to wallow in abysmal depths when clearly, with the right educational framework and political will, we could be perfect trilinguals.

As for all those who think this is impossible, they should go and see for themselves how many people in Montreal, and other parts of Quebec, have managed to juggle French, English and Italian with considerable ease, and how English-speaking Toronto still manages to produce among its settlers trilingual speakers who are proficient in their native tongue, English and French. Could it be that our inability to seriously consider adopting Immersion Programmes, the tried and tested way to produce real bilingual and trilingual speakers, is at the very core of our problem?

Italian adopted as our third official language could, in the future, give us the edge if we are shrewd enough to make a whole business out of teaching the language like we did with English. Who would want to study Italian in Malta, one might ask? I, for a start, am one of those who teach Italian at a Canadian university.

Italian is a language with considerable appeal and is considered a language of culture. It is often an obligatory subject for students of music, history of art, theatre, restoration and modern languages. The interest in Italian is on the increase and it has become one of the most studied foreign languages in Canada and Australia, not to mention the completely untapped resource of Japanese and Chinese students, who are keen travellers and usually adore anything dabbed with a European brushstroke.

If English attracts the European market, Italian could attract the transatlantic and beyond... at competitive prices and an hour away from Sicily.