I write this column in English, obviously, because The Sunday Times of Malta is an English newspaper. However, I regularly get messages – in phonetical Maltese – from people who insist that I should be ashamed of myself for not writing in Maltese, and that this must surely mean I am unable to speak Maltese and therefore it’s the ultimate homeland betrayal.
These days I just answer with the international language of an emoticon: that yellow face rolling its eyes. Seeing that I have worked as a Maltese translator and now I work for a Maltese publisher, I can hardly have ‘Down with Maltese’ etched on my forehead. I happen to be a firm rooter for the language and believe it is crucial in making us who we are. Denying our mater lingua would give us an identity crisis, and God knows we already have enough of those.
Sadly, and no thanks to the British, who as part of their rule of Malta in the 19th and 20th centuries made English the official language of civic society and marginalised the status of Maltese, the language question in Malta is, a century on, still alive and thriving. And every now and then it pops up its ugly head.
Lately, it was in the guise of a proposal to offer weak students of Maltese the easier option of studying it as foreign language.
This seems to have been done to pander to certain quarters of society who use Maltese only to swear, and who when asked a question in Maltese look like rabbits in headlights. But, the pandering failed. Most were shocked: the proposal was a nothing but a dumbing down of our language.
Education Minister Evarist Bartolo, writing in this newspaper last Sunday, tried to draw a line under the whole mess, but alas, he was very vague: “We are saying very clearly that Maltese students will not be allowed to join the Maltese as a Foreign Language programme. The vast majority of students will continue to do what they do today.”
The vast majority? So who will be the exceptions?
The minister expressed concern that there were students “who are not getting any certification at the end of their schooling, and the Council of Europe report clearly states that we ought to look for solutions for these students through more varied options”.
Does “varied options” mean teaching 14-year-olds stuff of 10-year-olds? All I know is that the Council of Europe is made up of the foreign ministers of each member state, and therefore is mostly concerned about numbers and statistics. “Hoy! My country’s numbers are higher than yours! I can puff up my chest more!”
Achieving better standards in the Maltese language is not done by having match-the-word-with-the-picture lessons at Ordinary level. That is called fooling the statistics, and by so doing, fooling the people. It is done by ensuring an amor propio of the language at a young age.
How? The minister said that this is becoming increasingly difficult in a world of mobile phones. “If you look at your smartphones, you will find little to no presence of Maltese. Content we consume online is almost entirely in English. This creates a context where young people are growing up with less and less exposure to Maltese on digital platforms,” Mr Bartolo said.
First off, people don’t just live in a virtual world. According to the 2012 Eurobarometer poll, 98 per cent of Maltese people speak Maltese and 88 per cent can speak English. Compare this, for a minute, to Ireland: Irish is a main home, work or community language for approximately one per cent of the population of the Republic of Ireland. So Maltese is certainly alive.
Look at the quality of Maltese television and you weep
Secondly, digital platforms feed off other things: videos, television, art, drama, and so on. Look at the quality of Maltese television and you weep. What are we doing to promote Maltese literature and poetry? Literary works – fiction, poetry, drama, creative non-fiction – challenge readers to question, to notice details, to make sense out of a rich experience, and above all, to soak in the language. Here are the solutions, minister: do something about the quality of Maltese television and introduce Maltese literature in kindergarten.
The argument that Maltese is irrelevant in modern society because it makes us insular is totally invalid. Speaking Maltese doesn’t mean you can’t speak English or any other language to interact with people from other countries. More than 180 countries in the world would also be insular as they don’t speak English as their first language. What makes us insular is the lack of critical skills, the lack of being able to express ourselves properly in any language – which stems from the lack of appreciation of our culture.
When we settle for getting by, instead of instilling pride, in our own mother-tongue, then the long-term repercussions on society will be irreparable.
As I type this, a Eurostat news alert informed me that Maltese shopping is more than six times higher than other eurozone citizens. I know this is what makes economists rub their hands with glee, but it saddens me.
Increasingly, Maltese people fill their free time by going round the shops; which I suppose is the effect of living in country that functions as a city.
As the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus said: “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants”.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti