I never stalk the earth as manfully as when I’m striding purposefully towards a Berlin bathroom. I suspect it has something to do with how I acquired my little German.

It was many years ago and I never got beyond the nominative case; German speakers will know how dire that is. However, correct pronunciation was drilled into me, as were gobbets of fluent everyday conversation and what my textbook quaintly called ‘flavouring particles’, words which humanised otherwise mechanical sentences.

The result is that, while I can barely follow the news, I can navigate my way through any of those 20-letter words that a German likes to throw at you and get compliments on my pronunciation.

I can ask a waiter for directions to the restaurant’s bathroom with the same clipped authority with which Nazi generals used to pick up the phone – in the old films, at least – and snap: “Get me the Fuehrer!”

I cannot say I know German but I was taught something that is an important part of speaking a language. ‘Pronunciation’ doesn’t convey it. It’s really a physical stance, a shape of mouth and throat, a mental physiognomy that influences the way one interacts.

The actor Peter Ustinov, a talented polyglot, and Salman Rushdie, one of the great English-language novelists of our time, have both commented on this aspect of language use and mastery.

Ustinov said that no matter how fluently he spoke a language, he always spoke it with a slight accent when speaking as himself; but he spoke with perfect pronunciation when speaking it as a character in a film. To adopt perfect pronunciation in an interview would have required a determined effort that would have left him performing as something other than himself.

Rushdie has said that within three days of returning to India he begins to speak English the Indian way, pronunciation, mannerisms and all. It’s not that, either in the UK or in India, Rushdie is not quite being himself but faking it.

Rather, it would be fakery (for him) to use received pronunciation in India as much as it would be to speak in Indian English in the UK or the US.

In short, mastery of language involves mastering a range of social situations which arise in a language area. You can speak a language ‘perfectly’ in terms of pronunciation and vocabulary and still get it all wrong.

I speak from rueful experience. There was an occasion, during the period when I was still very new to the Libyan interior, when I was mistaken for a Syrian religious teacher.

A man had died and I made my preparations to visit his tribe and offer my condolences. I decided that first impressions were important. So, I wore my finest Libyan clothes – a long white soutane-like tunic, a silk embroidered waistcoat, and a low fez – and I practised saying some conventional formulas of religious consolation in sonorous classical Arabic, my only model for this being the garden-variety TV serials about the pre-Islamic era, where all the male actors dress up like Abraham on a Maltese Good Friday and speak as deliberately as Charles Abela Mizzi.

We’re particularly weak on teaching when formal language is appropriate

In the hall where the deceased’s menfolk greeted visitors, I shook hands with everyone, solemnly said what I had to say and then sat down at a place of honour I was directed to. Then something began to happen which I gradually realised was rather strange.

Men were taking turns sitting next to me. Invariably, they’d say something about the wonders of the Quran and its intricate patterns or the consolations of religion. And, invariably, since I felt I had nothing to add, I’d respond either with silence or with a resonant: “Indeed!” or “I daresay!”

It puzzled me that one man after another slunk away with an air of quasi-defeat, only to be replaced by another who upped the theological ante. It was only when one referred patronisingly to Christians as scripture-forgers that I slipped out of Abela Mizzi mode and became Eliza Dolittle, with a colloquial exclamation for: “Hang on!”

It turned out I had done everything so right that it was all wrong. Only religious sheikhs wore my combination of clothes and spoke in classical Arabic in such a situation and responded to attempts at conversation with silence or taciturn approval.

Language learning isn’t just about knowing how to construct sentences.

It’s about reading a situation right and knowing the context of gesture. It’s about mastering not just sounds but also silences, which in each language has a particular character.

I believe our current language debate – on whether the Maltese are bilingual or ignorant of any language – is missing this. Joseph Brincat is the only authority who has consistently weighed in to point out that register and context are all important to determining what’s right and wrong.

There is nothing wrong, intrinsically, with SMS spelling, or Maltese Anglicisms or ‘code-switching’ between Maltese and English. The problem is that people aren’t being taught how to read what kind of linguistic engagement is appropriate in which context.

We’re particularly weak on teaching when formal language is appropriate. This is a social and political failing, stemming from a lack of confidence to insist on formality when it’s called for and to harp bombastically on it when it’s not.

It’s a bigger language question than correct grammar and vocabulary since it shows us up as a society where many of us consistently misread the world we live in.

ranierfsadni@europe.com

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.