In The Business Times a few months ago, Martin Debattista for I-Tech announced the good news that a speech synthesiser for Maltese is in the offing.
The developer/s have a daunting task indeed! Easier said than done. The present state of our dear mother tongue is nothing short of alarming!
The very idea of embarking on such a worthy and necessary venture makes me tremble with apprehension, considering the numerous problems threatening its complete success.
In my opinion, the following points should definitely be carefully considered.
a) The team entrusted with this all-important project should be well versed in Maltese, especially spoken Maltese. They should avoid borrowed words from other languages, whether a Maltese word exists or not, such as: ovvjament, fl-aħħar tal-ġurnata, appuntat, etc... The old ones, like: skorja, kju, etc ... are acceptable. One must remember that in the case of idiomatic expressions, a direct translation is usually not possible.
b) The person whose voice is to be used for the audio part should be carefully chosen. He should have a radio voice (not a deep one); and clear and measured diction, avoiding at all costs the oh so popular (unfortunately) habit of lisping the q in front of every word commencing with a vowel, an għ, or an akka(h). It is hard to distinguish between qamel and qgħamel, qalla and qAlla, qagħda (posture) and qgħada (tomorrow) when these are spoken as they are now, by almost everybody, including academics who should know better!
We should all remember that the Maltese vowels are pure A,E,I,O,U,IE; not qA, qE, qI, qO, qU, qIE; and they should be pronounced as such; simply, a,e,i,o,u,ie. Have we lost the ability to do so? It seems that most people have.
Yes, I know, everybody is adding that cursed q; but that does not make it right. On the contrary, it makes a mockery of properly spoken Maltese.
What irks me most is the fact that these people make a special effort to pronounce the quite unnecessary q, by pausing just before.
To speak good Maltese and avoid misunderstandings and complications it is absolutely necessary to drop that confusing q. The synthesiser will certainly not be able to distinguish between the above examples shown in italics! For the benefit of the q addicts, I suggest drawing their attention to this problem at the beginning of the programme, asking them to please drop the added q when they speak. Being reminded so often will encourage them to drop it altogether in their normal speech, and thus learn to pronounce Maltese properly. Thus, the synthesiser will, in addition, function as a teaching tool.
c) As to the Lexicon, it is essential that the obnoxious q is not pronounced. Again, a note about this at the start is necessary. Naturally, when making an input, some q addicts will persist in using it. This will create a problem for the machine, and the developers of this wonderful project will have an added problem in trying to get around it.
I do hope they will find the right solution.
I wish the team every success in this very important venture!