A grand old lady, a great friend of my mother’s, used to always quote, in Italian, that whatever one did one had to pay for it. “Chi rompe paga” was an admonishment delivered in a variety of situations and in as many vocal inflexions as the particular case required. I find the Italo-Maltese, as I call it, that is still used in certain circles, most expressive, even more so when it is peppered with English. It then becomes a patois that is so particular that it is intelligible just to us or so I had thought till many years ago when, PRO for Mid-Med Bank, I was present at the inauguration of the court library which the bank had sponsored. I was standing next to the director of the Italian Cultural Institute during a speech by the late Guido de Marco, who was then Minister of Justice, and asked Giuseppe Xausa whether he needed a translation. “But of course not Kenneth! I can understand eight words in 10!”
While Italian has always provided an acceptable safety net for the Maltese language, which is very odd, almost inexplicable in fact as we are talking about a harmonious blend of Latin and Semitic, English is not a language that works quite the same way. This always reminds me of an amusing clerihew penned by Nicholas de Piro, which goes as follows: People called Gatto/play scaccomatto/in their salotto. Others called Gatt/do just that/in their club or mess/and they call it chess. Of course, for the rhyme to work, Gatt must rhyme with “cat” and not the normal Maltese “gut”.
There was a time when I deplored this sort of thing. However, now that I am in my 50s, I am resigned to it for I know that nothing will ever change it. The patois we speak between ourselves is what it is. I can accept that. I can even enjoy and revel in it so long as I know that, when push comes to shove, the languages that we throw about with the gusto of a professional pizzaiolo can be spoken properly and, even more importantly, written properly too.
This is simply not happening. All three languages used locally, Maltese, English and even Italian, are being debased to such an extent that I shudder to think what the future will bring. I sometimes cringe in horror at the orthographical bloomers and the grammatical gaffes whenever I read anything written in English. I would imagine that the same goes for Maltese and even Italian, however, I know my limitations.
Despite that, I cannot and will not accept words like bejbis replacing trabi. That is not a modernisation or an enhancement but a linguistic abomination. Then there are those English verbs to which many people think become acceptable Maltese by simply adding a “jaw” at the end. Things like nippuxxjaw or nippromowtjaw make me grind my teeth with rage, especially when used quite glibly and liberally by media gurus on TV. The same applies the other way round with people thinking they are speaking English yet peppering their speech with what we used to call Maltesismi.
The media is the most influential means of shaping and honing a language.
This is where the problem lies, fairly and squarely. Today’s slip of the tongue becomes tomorrow’s buzzword, which is why I feel that anyone remotely involved in the media should have regular courses organised by bodies like L-Akkademja tal-Malti or L-Għaqda tal-Malti to upgrade the standard of written and spoken Maltese. I hope that the recently established English-Speaking Union will do the same for English.
This will not stop Minglish from being used as a means of informal communication. However, it will hopefully spruce up more the formal uses of both languages. While these people gabble on 19 to the dozen in this sort of mishmash, viewers, hearing a word or phrase or expression once too often, may use it as a matter of course and soon it will be written somewhere “formal” and, hey presto, will become grammatical dogma!
Fashion is so influential that one only has to just listen to a Madrilène speaking Spanish and realise that this peculiar lisp was made sycophantically de rigueur by the first Habsburg to rule Spain in the 16th century. Poor Charles V and his descendants were hampered by the hereditary protruding lip and lantern jaw that is still synonymous with the Habsburg family.
Oh, and by the way, this was the King-Emperor who spoke Spanish to God, French to his courtiers, Italian to women and German to his horse! The Spanish spoken in Mexico and South America has no such affectations.
That leaves an open question:What can one do to stop it? Are we too late? Languages change all the time; as we speak. They thrive in a state of continual flux. It is undeniable that, today, because of computerspeak, English is far and away the most pervasive of languages that has infiltrated even the legendarily strict French Academy strictures much to the fury of the Gallic purists. This, I feel, is unavoidable but by making no concerted attempt at all at damage limitation I am convinced that Malta’s linguistic standards are destined to plunge into further depths of ineptitude sooner rather than later.