The Maltese language is costing European taxpayers €30 million a year, we learnt last week.

Of course, the 500 million European taxpayers spread over 27 countries only don’t fork out money for the Maltese language – there are 22 other languages to provide for.

In fact, the EU’s translation and interpretation operation outstrips that of the United Nations, which only has six official languages, despite a record number of 192 member countries.

Roughly, the cost of all language services in all EU institutions amounts to around €2 per person per year. To be sure, that’s not a lot. For a mere €2 we get a multilingual continent where we can all hug and exclaim at each other in a multitude of national languages, Bienvenue! Willkommen! Dobre! Merħba!

On paper, this looks like a brilliant, functional-Babel approach, but in theory, what kind of boost is this major expense – which is mainly directed at the translation of legislative texts – giving the languages spoken on the streets?

Peter Agius, the longest serving Maltese official within the EU institutions, last week sounded a warning: the quality of the language being produced by scores of translators in Brussels and Luxembourg can be quite different from that used in everyday life.

Is the new terminology coined in the Benelux being used over here? I wouldn’t think so. How many of the legislative texts are read in Maltese? Most people whose job demands that they read these texts admit, off the record, that they tend to read the English version, as they are more familiar with the terminology in English.

It seems the growth of the language is really happening overseas, and not where it matters most – in the land where it is spoken. Which makes me think the Maltese language isn’t really evolving: it’s being pushed, prodded and forced at gunpoint into developing for the sake of keeping up appearances on the EU front.

In her column in the television pages, Tanja Cilia often writes about the abuse of the Maltese language in local media, which really ought to be the front-runner of evolving language.

Even if we just take a look at dramas on local TV – and God knows there’s oodles of them – the scripts are mostly unusable in everyday life. Who on earth goes round exclaiming: ‘Iskot!’ or ‘Tabilħaqq’?

We struggle, even with books. I would love to read to my daughter storybooks in Maltese with beautiful illustrations which reflect our land and culture. But such books are a rarity. Children’s books in Maltese tend to be pretty much in the vein of Peter and Jane (we just call them Jason and Maria).

Occasionally you do come across some sweet ones; the one we’re reading now, Patrick Sammut’s Ħolm Qabel l-Irqad, springs to mind. Mostly, though, it’s just ghastly storylines with even more appalling illustrations. Consequently, we are not nurturing a readership in our own language.

Even more worrying is the fact that I keep meeting students reading for a degree in Maltese who boast that the only literature they read is L-Antenna and Il-Gwida. These, please note, are the future teachers of the Maltese language.

The problem is that we don’t give our language the glory it deserves. I’ve just been to Ireland. Irish is much less widely spoken than Maltese – with the exception of those who live on the west coast, most can just about string together a sentence or two in the Celtic language. However, signage is bilingual everywhere – in airports, on highways, in museums; why, even on mere sugar packets, you get Irish sayings with the English translation underneath. It’s a good way of keeping the language alive.

In Malta, our signs – with the exception of street names – are mostly solely in English. (Incidentally, some of our signs are simply idiotic: ‘Door’, reads one sign at Mater Dei Hospital. Duh! Really, now?)

In London, the British Library has just set up an exhibition called ‘Evolving English’, exploring the life of the English language. The aim is to show how crude Anglo-Saxon dialect brought to southern England by the Vikings, in the sixth century AD has now evolved into today’s modern English, which is spoken by 1.8 billion people.

If only we could do something like that. It would be such a huge national and tourist attraction. Foreigners who live in Malta permanently are fascinated by the language and so eager to learn it. Sometimes they are more eager for their children to learn Maltese than locals are.

Our language is not an identity certificate to earn us an EU badge. It’s about time we appreciated how lucky we are that we are able to communicate in a language which is uniquely ours. And it’s high time we started doing something about it here.

krischetcuti@gmail.com

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