Editorial

When a language is spoken by a few hundred thousand people it is likely to be much more overpoweringly influenced more quickly by other languages and by media-induced verbal and idiomatic variants that soon become the spoken norm. This is because the filtering is so much less than it would be were there to be more users. This is all an essential result of the language being alive and in line with a society that is constantly developing, not least technologically.

It is quite the easy way out of any controversy to say that the language belongs to the people and that the people in their masses need to determine what language to use. The counter argument is that, again given the size, it is quite easy for valid, native words to be totally overwhelmed by loan words, converted to local language standards and used to the point of becoming themselves the norm. For many this is an abomination, sounding the death knell of a language that underscores the uniqueness as a nation and which is an integral part of the national identity.

So should some form of official control be exerted to safeguard the native word in the face of this persistent assault by loan words?

The Council for the Maltese Language, the body entrusted with making any necessary changes in the orthography of the Maltese language and deciding on spelling of, among others, loan words, has been prudent in its pronouncements on the use of loan words and has widely consulted with interested parties about the way forward. The opinions vary from the purist imposition of Maltese native words on the language to liberal acceptance of all that is said by the people. Any decisions that need to be made, if we are not to be left in a free-for-all situation that will be akin to a linguistic jungle, will not be easy ones.

In the introduction to the council's recently-published decisions on orthographic variants, it is stated categorically that Maltese orthography is and has always been a compromise among the different principles, each with its own importance, working together in an established hierarchy. And, if the quite non-controversial published document on variants is anything to go by as an indicator of decisions to be made, it seems that compromise seems to be the way forward. In a media-dominated society, in which very few media people are able to use the Maltese language well, it would be a daunting task to be categorical and control all incursions.

But final decisions, controversial though they may be, need to be made and the council has the expertise to be able to make informed, well-consulted decisions that, still, will most likely not please everyone, as with their resolution to emphasise the phonetic in the present document. The publication of the decisions in the Government Gazzette have made them final. The intention is primarily Maltese writing simplification.

But whether the changes made are accepted as the simple norm by the man and woman in the street, who, in the main, already find writing Maltese difficult, is another matter. Indeed, here lies the true test of any and all decisions made about the language, disheartening to the experts though that may be.