Karistu Abela will soon be publishing an 85-volume, 8,500-page Maltese dictionary - the fruit of 20 years' work. Despite being hailed as a mad project by critics, the author tells Veronica Stivala that his passion for the language will not let him be deterred.
Karistu Abela, 47, is one of the calmest people you will ever meet. He once needed to get to Mellieha from his home in Rabat so he walked it. It took him two hours to get there.
Doesn't he feel he's wasting time in this day and age? Evidently not: "When you rush, you'll lose time," he says.
Perhaps his calm and collected nature has got him through the 20 odd years he has been working on Vokabularju (he started in 1987). For the past three years, he has worked around 16 hours each day, including Sundays and public holidays, and is aiming to complete his magnum opus by April or May.
He has calculated that he's put in between 90,000 and 100,000 hours of work.
The work will comprise around 85 volumes, each around 1,000 pages. To buy the whole set it would cost between €4,675 and €5,525!
Despite the hefty price tag and the huge amount of space the massive quantity of books would take up, Abela doesn't foresee a problem: "The books would only take up about four metres and the price is equivalent to 9.2 cigarettes a day."
He also argues that it is worthwhile to invest in his books as the value will appreciate in a few years: Abela could be in the running to break a Guinness World Record.
The author acknowledges that many think he's got a few screws loose, and understands that to undertake such a feat, "one would have to be mad", but his passion for the Maltese language is so strong that it seems to obscure all sense of reason.
Besides the normal information found in a dictionary, Vokabularju also contains every word derived from the root of the Maltese language as well as complete conjugations of every verb in every possible way that it can be pronounced or written.
The word which has produced the most derivatives is centru (centre): Abela has extracted 5,800 words which will take up - wait for it - 65 pages. Thankfully, ejja (come) has just two variations.
Lexicographer Joseph Felice Pace has criticised the project: "In my view, the exercise is a waste of time and, if printed, an enormous waste of paper. Anyone who buys it would be wasting a lot of money.
"Conjugating verbs, in any language, is a question of learning the rules. Once you do that, there are no problems...
"Can one imagine a student having to roam through 85 volumes while writing an essay at home? Such a dictionary would produce lazy ignoramuses."
However, Abela is not affected by his critics: "I completely ignore and am not interested in what people think."
Even though the paper will come from sustainable forests, doesn't he think the books are a waste of paper? "No... They are a need." he says. But why hasn't he gone for a more logical, economically and ecologically viable format - a computerised version of the book?
The man is afraid people will copy the programme and that he won't sell any copies.
Abela hopes to break even by selling 300 copies. So far, he has orders for 120 copies, although readers don't have to pay the full price beforehand, and will instead need to fork out €55 or €65 each month.
Abela has never studied Maltese. "The bulk of the course is literature," he says, "and I'm not interested in literature." He studied linguistics on his own. He has a BA in philosophy and economy as well as two doctorates - one in fontography, and another in economics, philosophy and politics.
Doing research is like having a baby, he says. Indeed, the book comes closest to offspring; Abela has no dependents and can live on relatively little. He explains that he has made some money from a tourist book he published and currently makes money from "other things".
His website, www.vokmal.info, from which he is currently taking orders, has a number of spelling mistakes ("Don't loose it (the opportunity)" and the Maltese translation: "Titlifiex").
Foreign universities and libraries as well as local private schools have already ordered the books. Abela explains he has found mistakes in school textbooks.
Just to complicate his life further, Abela is currently rewriting parts of the dictionary according to new language rules recently implemented.
In addition to the 85 or so volumes, Abela plans to publish an addendum - buyers take note, make space.