Legacies of the English

You may find it strange or even absurd that I watch football every four years. Football has never been my forte, much to the consternation of my father and his brothers to whom footie was a way of life. I watch the World Cup; and let me specify, only those matches in which England plays, out of a sense of loyalty to my father, a great England supporter, who died on July 31, 1966 which all you England fans out there know was the day after England won the World Cup.

My last and most indelible image of daddy is of him waving an enormous Union Jack out of the balcony in Għar id-Dud Street where we lived at the time, enjoying the carcades and the general mayhem that an English or an Italian victory traditionally unleashes in this peculiar little country of ours. Despite my complete and utter ignorance of what an offside is, every four years, much to my own surprise, I find myself glued to television watching England play. I still feel that I want England to win simply out of respect to my father's memory. Yes, old habits die hard and despite my initial lack of interest on Sunday I found myself trotting down to Spinola to watch the England vs Germany; a match that brought back all those 1966 memories, though without the happy outcome.

I sometimes marvel at how the English vs Italian divide, a relic of the language question of the 1930s, got translated into football and how it still survives. I am half amused and half fascinated at how even in local politics one knows almost instinctively that the majority of PN MPs side with Italy and the majority of PL ones side with England. My allegiance has nothing to do with local politics but to the fact that for generations my family were proud imperialists of the "more English than the English" type which has all but disappeared as the descendants mix and match their matrimonial, fiscal and cultural alliances. Since 1964, the process of becoming a sovereign nation has taken some curious turns but today we are a fully fledged microcosm of Europe within the EU fold; an achievement that is certainly not to be sneezed at.

Despite this I am concerned about the cavalier attitude that successive administrations have shown with respect to the English language. This was the most vitally important legacy of our colonial past. This is what has enabled us to become a services centre, a financial centre, a tourist destination and anything else we want to be. Our innate knowledge of English puts us head and shoulders above our friends on continental Europe who have to learn English as a foreign language which, believe me, is no easy feat as English is a constantly evolving language made up of a plethora of exceptions and few basic rules. Our knowledge of English should have been jealously preserved and fostered, yet this knowledge, over the past five decades, has been buffeted by capricious political winds to the extent that I sometimes feel myself to be part of a fast dying breed.

Charles V, whose international genetic mix was nothing short of mindboggling, used to say that he spoke Spanish to God, Italian to ladies, French to his courtiers and German to his horse. As this sad mega-monarch, who was captured by Titian at rest at his monastery in Yuste, sadly contemplating the vanities of the world, plied from north to south and from east to west in an attempt to homogenise his vast polyglot empire, he was in fact the first to acknowledge the political supremacy of one language over others.

As the Spanish Empire waned, French influence waxed and French became the political and cultural language of the civilised world from Madrid to St Petersburg. French remains the ultimate in diplomatic jargon with its charge d'affaires and notes verbales, however it was supplanted by English as the first global lingua franca as Queen Victoria's earnest and serious adventurers painted the world map red for the greater delectation of "she who was normally unamused". Malta was lucky enough to be an integral component to this painting process and hence here we are with a legacy like this, treating it as if it were a political curse instead of a blessing.

As the world struggles to get to grips with this language, we literally throw it away to the extent that people nowadays do not speak it or write it as they used to. At the root of this problem is Minglish which as you have probably guessed is Maltese English which bears very little resemblance to Maltgliz which is English Maltese. One is the Malteseification of English and the other is the opposite. We have ended up by speaking and writing neither language as it should be.

I blame the politicians for the first and the media for the second malaise. Politicians, for reasons best known to themselves, have eschewed the speaking and writing of English to the extent that one felt guilty speaking it in public; the PN because they are traditionally Italophile and the PL because they are jilted Anglophiles. The media, on the other hand, have set such terrible examples of hashed up Maltese (forget English) that the nonsensical examples that they set have become ingrained in everyday-speak.

The weight of responsibility on both groups is colossal. Both have shown themselves to be extremely short-sighted and irresponsible. We are rapidly reaching a stage when our own brand of English becomes so far removed from the mother language so as to be rendered ridiculous. The Indian invention of the verb "to horn" meaning to blow one's horn comes to mind as on the Jaipur Delhi road our jeep overtook truck after truck bearing the legend of "Horn Please" over its rear bumper.

kzt@onvol.net