Pity the Minister of Education when an individual “broadly representative of proven, well-established and recognised scholarship and credentials in related disciplines – sociolinguistic, literary, historical and philosophical”, such as the transparently anonymous author of a public consultation document recently published by the ministry, manages to write two-and-a-half pages with over 40 spelling mistakes, thus necessitating the document’s withdrawal and re-presentation after the necessary corrections were made.
Pity the same minister when both our anonymous author and Henry Frendo (The Sunday Times of Malta, July 12) insist on distinguishing skont (discount) and skond (according to) while referring to Prof. Ġużè Aquilina’s lifework as “a priceless six-volume dictionary”, when the same dictionary treats the two as normal homonyms, as it should, and uses the same spelling for both.
Pity the same minister, intent on promoting equal opportunities for all in education, when both our anonymous author and Frendo persuade him to publish a document which would require children, even those with disadvantaged backgrounds, to know Italian to be able to write Maltese correctly, as implied by the fixation on ‘etymology’.
Perhaps it is because both authors are “established scholars” in a related discipline rather than in the core discipline of linguistics that they promote “etymology and semantics” as a criterion for orthography, without realising that etymology is the scholar’s preserve, while a writing system should be a democratic tool accessible to the largest number of individuals possible.
Should Frendo’s concern about “the preservation of Maltese as a recognised literary genre” (who challenges that I wonder; could it be the notorious National Council for Maltese?) be allowed to convince us that “equating the spoken with the written” should result in the “descent (of Maltese) into a pidgin”?
Hopefully both writers are not urging the minister to make us talk in literary Maltese, or to advocate a situation, where, as someone put it, one can say ‘nurse’ but write ‘infermiera’.
Indeed, this has certainly not stopped Frendo himself in his book Storja ta’ Malta (2004) from writing “assemblea għall-għalliema (why not ‘ġemgħa’?); “imantnu l-lingwa Taljana (‘iżommu’?); “lingwa frustiera (‘ilsien barrani’?), “teachers (‘għalliema’?) and “l-insenjanti” for ‘teachers’.
It seems our two authors have also convinced the minister that the National Council for Maltese is advocating the (“phonetic”) writing of words like ‘sordfixx’ (for ‘swordfish’) and ‘xawer’ (for ‘shower’) when the council has not yet published its document on the writing of English loanwords in Maltese. Believe it or not, the council is revising the 1984 rules which had sanctioned the writing of English loanwords “phonetically”.
Indeed, the council has not yet published its recommendations about the spelling of English loanwords because it has felt the need to have a wide consultation process and a diligent assessment of the issues at stake. Ironically, the committee discussing the matter was about to make its recommendations to the council and the minister.
Frendo concludes his piece with a quotation from Wittgenstein, who also said: “Whereof you do not know, thereof you should not speak.”