Monday, 4th August 2008
Maltese makeover
Albert Borg: "Our only motivator is the love for our language." Photo: Matthew Mirabelli.
The National Council of Maltese has published a document aimed at modernising and standardising written Maltese. This was part of a larger project to revise the language as a whole. Christian Peregin spoke to Albert Borg, chairman of the committee responsible, to discuss the origins of Maltese, the proposed changes and the problems of funding.
The reason Maltese exists today is because when Frederick II exiled all Muslims from his land in 1249 many of those living in Malta converted to Christianity to continue living here as Arab Christians, Prof. Borg explains.
Archives dating back to the Middle Ages contain records of men baptised with the name Mohammed and Prof. Borg points out that the surname Mamo actually means Muslim and the surname Abdilla is a Muslim name meaning "slave of God".
"We have been going through a process of trying to deny what we are. This is why we're so racist against the Arabs... because we are so close," he argues.
This, according to Prof. Borg, is one of the reasons why, in the 1960s, the experiment to develop Maltese words failed. The experiment included creating words like miksaħ for fridge, mirmet for ashtray and mitjar for airport. But these did not infiltrate the language because of the unpopular harsh-sounding Arabic connotations, he says.
According to Prof. Borg, people generally prefer to use English words in such instances but the controversy arises when it comes to reflecting the spoken language in written form.
In the coming months the National Council of Maltese will be tackling the problem of whether to spell English loanwords in their original English form or with Maltese sounds.
Prof. Borg argues that, since the Maltese language has borrowed so much from other languages, there should not be a problem with adopting words of English origin that have become part of spoken Maltese and standardising them even in the written form.
It saddens him, however, that there is no creative process being carried out in Maltese. He explains that the word "shuttle" was lifted from an old English word referring to a part of a loom. In Maltese there is a word with the exact same meaning, mekkuk, which could have been used just as well to refer to a space shuttle.
The council was entrusted with modernising Maltese so that it can be used in all contexts.
Prof. Borg explains that Maltese is usually used with traditional aspects of life, including religion, history and culture. However, when it comes to prestigious aspects of life such as finance, science and technology, English is usually the preferred code.
Bilingualism, in its truest sense, means that a person can use two languages equally well in all areas of life.
"But in Malta we have complementary bilingualism, which means that we use English for some things and Maltese for others. This does not have the same benefits intellectually and it can result in a mixed Maltese-English that is generally looked upon negatively," he remarks.
In schools, students learned maths completely in English with the result that many have stopped using numbers in Maltese.
But Prof. Borg says that even a language as prestigious as English needed some prodding in the past, when it was considered unsuitable for philosophy, so there is still hope that Maltese can eventually be used comfortably in all areas of life.
The document that the council published last month dealt with orthographic (written) variants in Maltese. This was promulgated through the Government Gazette and, following a three-year period of grace, will become official in 2011.
The second document will deal with English loanwords; a controversial topic that has already received a lot of attention. In fact, over 300 people participated in the public consultation seminar held in April.
The third section will address phonetic variants, which includes problems of pronunciation that go beyond issues of dialect and accents.
In the first document, a panel of experts had to choose which variants to make standard and which to eliminate. One of the most controversial changes was the standardisation of the word skont, to mean both "discount" and "according to". The latter used to be spelt with a "d" at the end but this letter never featured when the word was conjugated, so it was replaced by a "t".
"When choosing between variants you are not choosing between right and wrong because both are right," Prof. Borg explains. However, standardisation has many benefits. For example, when using the electronic media, an online search would have to include all the variants otherwise it would not be accurate. The changes will also make life easier for journalists, proofreaders and translators.
The council tries to achieve maximum consensus in its workings, he says, and it worked for long hours on a voluntary basis.
"When it comes to the national language, as opposed to what happens in other areas of society, the politicians are not very forthcoming with the money," Prof. Borg notes.
He explains that the committee of 11 experts met regularly for 100 hours but, unlike other projects such as the euro changeover, there was no budget allocated by the government for such work.
"It's not even expected that you should get paid for this kind of work," he says in exasperation, while explaining that in other countries there were massive teams of full-timers employed to keep a language up to date.
The first document took some 18 months to complete and there is no deadline set for the other two documents.
The lack of funding is not only demoralising but it also slowed down the process, Prof. Borg complains.
"Our only motivator is the love for our language," he concludes.
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Comments
As for science, most graduates do not become scientists, i.e. never in their lives publish a line of international relevance. Things of scientific relevance happen at doctoral and post-doctoral level (where in other countries English is often used!) Those exceptional talents will not have problems with English anyway, but the rest will have with their own native tongue, something damaging their personal dignity!
Personally I must admit I have received not so few e-mails so far from persons with a university degree, but lacking the basics of Maltese grammar and spelling! A university always represents a country. Can it afford awarding degrees to people without an academic written level in the related language?!?
Research originating in other countries than the Anglophone world tends to be re submitted in Anglophone journals in a variety of ways. I am sure you can sometimes spot the same article in different publications under different guises even those stemming from British Universities and institutes. At least that is my own experience in neuroscience (I have a number of Dutch researchers in mind and they tend to be bilingual). There is hardly anything said in one language that can’t be said in another. I would not say that research unpublished in English goes unreported it simply means that monolingual Anglophone scientists do not get to know about it that quickly. You know as well as I do that different countries have different islets of excellence when it comes to scientific research. Science like language tends to feature on political agendas too. What your comments definitely highlight is the weakness of living in a monolingual context. Researchers from other countries at least have enough linguistic consciousness to publish their findings in their mother tongue because they have enough linguistic currency to do so and the tradition to inform their local scientific community first of their discoveries.
I do not know what your field is but in mine I used to find original scientific texts in Italian, German and, especially, French much more useful than a translation. Of course, I understand that in international symposia one needs to opt for a common ground in order to communicate. However, it is not uncommon for a paper to be presented in the original language and only an abstract is translated into the 'lingua franca'.
Unfortunately, many people on this island seem to be under the impression that the 'scientific sun' rose with the English language or that only English speaking countries can produce scientists. They are so wrong!
Somehow I feel certain that you do not belong to this category.
It doesn't take much staring to ascertain that Maltese people don't look precisely like Arabs. Neither like Germans, for that matter.
Please do not misunderstand me, but I do work in a scientific environment and it is really hard to collaborate with people who are not fluent in English; this being (for better or for worse) the lingua franca of the scientific establishment.
Nevertheless, I am very much in favour of doing something to halt the diminishing standards of the Maltese language. I just believe that the sciences at an advanced (University) level are not the key subjects to be tackled.
I have a question: where did the following words came: bonswa, bonosira, bongornu, bonasire, siggu, platt and all the loan words from Italian and French? But now hell is breaking loose, because someone is trying the instill some sense in the Maltese lamnguage.
Keep it up, Kunsill.
Recent research conducted under Uni aegis showed that the Maltese language, indeed, can be used in all kinds of contexts (I.T., etc...) and only those who have no love for the language or are too lazy to be bothered, do not use the Maltese language.
Not only that, but it's a great pity that there are those among us who do their best to try and stifle the further growth of, and love for, the Maltese anguage. They do this by frequent attacks on it, such as criticising the worthiness of Maltese as a compulsory subject for University entry.
In this regard, we have a foreign lady who is a shining light for all of us to emulate in this regard.
Allow me to point out that ever since the Maltese language became an official lang. of the EU., translators and interpreters employed with the EU institutions have been, and are being, very instrumental in ensuring that as much as possible the Maltese language is used in a great variety of contexts - audit, tax compliance, immigration, ... even scientific conferences.
One of the problems encountered by these new professionals is that unlike their foreign European colleagues, they did not find any basic terminology to work with. These past couple of years, an effort was made, thanks to EU funds and the effort of many, to ensure that such terminology starts being available to all who need to use it.
"As any person who studied the sciences (and Maths is a science) at a level more advanced than 'O' level would know that a large advantage is gained by being able to express oneself completely in English, which is the most widespread language that science is performed in."
Pray, tell us, in what language are the sciences taught in Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, Greece, Turkey, China, etc.,...? Are these countries not 'science literate'?
A hundred years ago, my grandfather published a hefty tome "Aritmetica bil-Malti u bl-Ingliz". He had no problems in dealing with "is-sistema tal-ghadd bil-ghaxra" which he said "tintuzu fid-dinja kollha minbarra fl-Imperu Ingliz". Nor did he have problems in explaining how to find the cube root of a number using arithmetical methods. How many people are able to that today?
@Martin Portelli
Re the Education Department, some time ago I was shocked to hear a "Department Head" form MCAST during an interview on Campus FM. He declared thus, "Illum, jekk ma tkunx highly qualified, bil-Malti, forget it!". How's that for setting a good example? This is worse than the usual hairdresser instructing listeners to "Zid il-kaler mal-likwid u immiksja tajjeb"
@ Martin Portelli: I admire your ability to understand French. I myself am hopelessly incapable of doing so. Nevertheless, there are several cases of scientific discoveries going completely unreported because a large percentage of the scientific population could not read the relevant papers. Plus, one cannot publish something in two journals just by translating the work; in other words, if a paper is available in French it most probably is not available in English. Yes, this does hinder the progress of science.
The silent letters as you know have a phonetic trace, if Maltese is introduced to a child correctly the għ & h should help in establishing phonological awareness provided the adult modelling the spoken form is a true fluent speaker. Maltese has a shallow orthography and very obviously syllabic. If you are creative and motivated enough, the high correspondence between letters and sounds should make written Maltese one of the easier languages to acquire & teach. That is why I cannot see any sense in the attempt to teach Maltese using a particular method for teaching English as is happening in a number of state schools. That is sheer lunacy , again underscoring a clear lack of policy with regards to Maltese. I am assuming you would want to speak and write the language fluently.
@ Andre Xuereb
I always enjoy reading French scientific papers in that particular language, their technical language is far from poor. I assume they do a good translation job when they publish the same papers in Anglo-Saxon journals. I don’t think the Poles or Russians would agree with you either I wouldn’t say their mathematical or scientific tradition is poor would you?
'The Maltese State shall promote through all possible means the widest use of the Maltese Language in education, broadcasting and the media, at the law ourts, and in political, administrative, economic, social and cultural life.'
However, the state itself is the greatest transgressor with regards function spread for Maltese. The Education division should be taken to task and its curriculum policy documents alluding to bilingual education should be digested with a pinch of salt. The very fact that at present we have not stepped up the initiative to produce more educational material in Maltese that will help spread function use for the language shows that there is no real commitment to that policy. The issue of mathematics should not only consider numbers but the fact that papers are also set in English. Essentially one isn’t only testing mathematical knowledge but English literacy. Other countries manage to develop technical language in their mother tongue so it must be a question of lip service rather than commitment.
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Be that as it may, in English and today ever increasingly in Maltese, words on the page are recognised more as images than as a string of sounds, a phenomenon which has had a considerably large impact on the way we read. If we were to begin writing "għasafar" as "asaafar", "tiegħi" as "tijaj / tijej", "hawnhekk" as "awnekk" and so on, it wouldn't be much of an exaggeration to say that Malta would have to learn to read again.
It's thanks to the system preserving letters like the għ and the h that the Maltese language is accessible for foreigners also. Doing away with radicals would make irregular most of the grammar! The only way to learn Maltese would be just learning by heart (but from where?!? as for Maltese there are no books of the type "1000 verbs fully conjugated"!!!)
N.B. As a foreigner studying both Maltese and English while living neither in Malta nor in England I find Maltese spelling way easier! Is there anything in the English language (spelling, idioms, extremely vast vocabulary, pronunciation, and the worst of all listening comprehension!) that can be considered easy?!?
@André Xuereb
There is nothing saddening me more in Malta than those so-called "experts" unable to speak about their work in correct Maltese. No, I can't see them as educated persons, to me they are illiterate. Code switching makes people pathetic caricatures, especially when they try to pass as superior to those preferring some "lingwa tal-kċina". N.B. Sorry... "literacy" is always about your own language. NATIVE English could pass as such, but the usual pidgin is worse than no English at all!
As any person who studied the sciences (and Maths is a science) at a level more advanced than 'O' level would know that a large advantage is gained by being able to express oneself completely in English, which is the most widespread language that science is performed in. By and large, we need to better the Maltese people's grasp on both English and Maltese, but to encourage the use of Maltese in the sciences would, in my opinion, be detrimental.
The fact that most people use numbers in English is a pity, but might stem from the "harsh sounds" of the words for numbers, which may encourage parents to teach young children "one, two, three" rather than "wiehed, tnejn, tlieta".
We are living in the 21st. century.
Please stop dreaming of the 13th. century!!!
Get REAL please.
VIVA MALTA.
I, for one, am looking forward to a rational and common sense approach to the language and hope that the review/s and outcomes will be totally objective and devoid of any vested interests which appear to have overshadowed the 'development (!)' of the language in recent times.