English inroads into Maltese

One Maltese neologism that has been around only a few years is the word ħolistiku, an obvious derivation from the English word 'holistic'. No-one seems to have objected to its use, given its particular nuance, which is somewhat different from the Maltese sħiħ or komplet.

It's the same with words like vann, gass, garaxx, lift and jott, which have become part of the language and form the plurals vannijiet, gassijiet, garaxxijiet, liftijiet and jottijiet. And what about ittajpja, iċċekkja, ibbawnsja, iffajlja, strajkja and so many other verbs of English origin?

The assimilation of English words into Maltese was the subject of the second in a series of three seminars organised recently by the Council for the Maltese Language under the general theme Innaqqsu l-Inċertezzi.

Words I have quoted above show how easy Maltese can integrate foreign - in this case, English - words, a phenomenon that has been taking place since time immemorial.

We have never queried why we have accepted so many words of Italian or Sicilian origin into the language, and even given them our particular phonetic twist. Then, why query the entrance of English words?

There might be those who would ask: what about aircraft carrier, penthouse and weekend break? I would not find any problem writing them in English, since they cannot fit into the Maltese phonetic pattern. But those that can have a place in our vocabulary are welcome, if we need them.

There are those who would at first object to the replacement of vocabulary we have had for ages by English words. Take the case of immuvja (to move home/ house) instead of ġarr, or issijlja (to seal) for issiġilla. I agree that both are unnecessary intrusions.

But, again, we have had similar experiences, and these go back centuries, with emminni (believe me) from emmen, of Arabic origin, and ikkredini from Italian credere, or with jisgħob bija (I am sorry) and jiddispjaċini, or regħxtek (I have offended you) and offendejtek.

Maltese, as any other living language, has to respond to new concepts, and today these come about every single day. Take technical language, for example. So many English technical words are derived from Romance languages, and ultimately from Greek and Latin roots. They are similar to their European equivalents, which makes their mutual understanding by laymen much easier. And although we usually come across them in English texts, we can quite easily assimilate them through their Italian or French equivalents and make them our own, unless, of course, we have our own way of saying things.

Thus 'consolidated account' becomes kont konsolidat in Maltese, akin to the Italian conto consolidato, French compte consolidé and Spanish cuento consolidado. But then English 'real estate credit' has to make way for Maltese self fuq/għal propjetà immobbli. In both cases, examples abound.

The positions expressed by several of those who either submitted papers or who took part in the above-mentioned seminar, seems to veer towards acceptance of words which could fall within the parameters of Maltese patterns.

If a word could be adapted to the phonetics of Maltese, then it could be said that it qualified for Maltese status.

Some, possibly many, would argue that we would be opening the floodgates to words of English origin. The development of Maltese in the 18th and 19th centuries did exactly the same thing in the case of lexemes of Italian origin.

Having said that, I would suggest that we start making more use of the roots inherent in the Arabic and Italian elements in Maltese.

Recently we have seen the spread of the use of impjegatur instead of min iħaddem for English employer.

The roots of impjega were correctly used to create a word which fits perfectly into the Maltese pattern, -atur being a commonly used suffix in our language.