More pitfalls in use of Maltese and English (5)

I share the concern often expressed in letters and articles in this and other newspapers about carelessness in the use of English and Maltese in the media (did you hear news items recently about il-Kavallier Spinowla and il-belt ta’ Ġesòlo for Jésolo?), but I wish to reassure Laurence Grech that the Kunsill Nazzjonali tal-Ilsien Malti’s aim is not to “add to the confusion”.

The board that examined problems arising out of orthographic variants was composed of a dozen members from various areas (linguists, teachers, journalists, translators, and so forth) and it adopted a careful approach, based on scientific principles. One of the most important criteria was the sifting of consistent and widespread changes from ‘mispronunciations’.

The rule applied to skond/ skont was the norm that distinguishes Maltese by which a voiced consonant at the end of a word becomes unvoiced: we write bieb with a final b despite it being pronounced p because when followed by a vowel (a) the voicing is restored, bieba.

In this way skond (from Italian secondo) is pronounced skont (with a t, not d) even when followed by a vowel: skonti, skontok, skont hu, skont int. This means there has been a regular change. The same principle was applied to irkoppa, which was previously spelt with a bb.

It is true that in this way no written distinction is made between the original secondo and sconto, but homonyms are found in all languages and in both cases the board considered that the phonetic rendering is preferable to the etymological one.

As to Ammen, it was already entered as such in Aquilina’s Maltese-English Dictionary (1987), which quotes Dun Karm Psaila’s (1936-55) and specifies “less commonly Amen”, which variant is attributed to De Soldanis and Vassalli, and is therefore archaic.