Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1424528
8 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 31 OCTOBER 2021 INTERVIEW Why are we killing off our own language? In a recent interview on Xtra, you argued that the Maltese language is currently facing a crisis. Given that a recent Eu- robarometer estimated that Maltese is in fact spoken by over 90% of the population, I assume you were referring to a deterioration in quality, rath- er than an existential threat. Is that correct? And if so, can you give a few examples? More than a 'crisis' – which is, perhaps, a clumsy word - I would say that there are certain prob- lems facing the language today. And no, it is not a question of how many people speak Maltese; but rather, how well they speak it, and how broad their Maltese vo- cabulary is. One issue I already mentioned was that many of our children – and I stress children, because obviously that is where any dis- cussion about language has to begin – are not being brought up speaking Maltese. As a parenthesis, I would say that one does not learn Maltese at school. School only teach- es you the grammatical aspects of the language. But the way it is spoken – and languages are there, primarily to be spoken – is ideally picked up from home, and from the people around you. And this, I think, is where the problem starts. Today, many children are being exposed far more to English – be- cause of social media, because of all the aps on Smartphones, tab- lets, etc. – than to Maltese. And unfortunately, some parents only talk to their children in English, too. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this, in itself: except that it is happening at the ex- pense of Maltese, instead of in conjunction with it. All linguists agree that the ideal situation would be one parent speaking to their children in English, and the other in Maltese. That way, chil- dren would be brought up speak- ing both languages fluently. What is happening in practice, however, is that many children end up speaking only English well; but then, they learn only as much Maltese as they need to get by. This results in a major lack of vocabulary, which goes on to be reflected in their adult lives. As for examples, all you need to do is tune in to certain servic- es on the national station – not to mention other local stations, which are actually far worse: but let's talk only about PBS for now, because I expect higher stand- ards from the national broadcast- er. Listening to the TVM news, you will often hear even the most basic, elementary mistakes: sug- gesting that those people – de- spite being State broadcasters -- do not have the Maltese language at their fingertips, like they are supposed to… It is certainly true that languag- es are picked up mostly from home, rather than school; but it is from school that we learn our basic grammar. And yet, Mal- tese grammatical rules tend to change from time to time. Much of what I was taught, back in the 1970s, is now obsolete: how, then, can we expect chil- dren to ever learn the language properly, when it keeps chang- ing all the time? That's a very valid point; and if the problem were limited only to written Maltese, it would be a different story. But the problem is really with spoken Maltese, not written. To be honest, the stand- ards of written Maltese worry me a lot less: even because, God be willing, we will very soon have a Maltese language spell-checker – which we are calling 'cekkjatur'. Once it is in place, the issue with written Maltese will for the most part resolve itself… In reality, however, the actual changes that have been made, over the years, were mostly cos- metic in nature. The fundamen- tals of the language are still the same. To give you an example: it makes me laugh sometimes when I receive a message – and this happens quite a lot, by the way – from people asking me for the correct spelling of a Maltese word; because, they tell me, 'it has changed'. I laugh, because the last time the spelling of that word would have officially changed, was ac- tually in 1934! So it's not that 'the word has changed'… it's just that they themselves don't really know the grammatical rules of the language. I do, however, worry about the standards of spoken Maltese. When I listen to the PBS news – and I place so much emphasis on the national broadcaster, because that is where, all over the world, you would expect the very best levels of spoken language – what I hear is very often a linguistic mess. For instance: nouns which everyone knows are masculine, accompanied by verb conjuga- tions, or adjectives, that are fem- inine… These are the sort of mistakes that my grandmother - who had very little in the way of formal education – never made herself. Today, however, we are getting even the most basic aspects of Maltese grammar wrong. And it's because our children are not hearing proper spoken Maltese, as they grow up. They are hear- ing a mixed-up language. And as a result, Maltese is being weak- ened… Another threat that is often cited, when talking about the Maltese language, is the as- similation of foreign words. It is now estimated that almost 70% of the vocabulary in daily usage consists of loan words from (historically) Italian, and (increasingly) English. Do you agree that this is also weaken- ing the Maltese language? Let me put it this way: it doesn't bother me in the slightest, when we assimilate words for which there is a real need. If we are talking about words from the sphere of digital information, for instance: it is inevitable that we will end up borrowing from oth- er languages, because we simply don't have the required vocabu- lary in our own. The problems arises, however, when we start introducing loan- words without any real need. This is something I keep saying every year – and we're coming to the Christmas season now – but… look at how many people insist on using the [English] word 'Christmas', when we have a per- fectly valid word – 'Milied' – that Award-winning author TREVOR ZAHRA has already sounded a warning about the slow deterioration in the standards of spoken Maltese, especially among children. But he also warns that some of those children have now grown up, and may have carried those linguistic deficiencies into television and literature Raphael Vassallo rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt JAMES BIANCHI