Notes on Maltese English (1): DONNING
Malta Today’s Miriam Dalli, 1st left, donned a shiny black jacket for her close encounter with the prime minister’s chief of communications and the prime minister’s driver (who donned a red one).
Malta Today’s Miriam Dalli writes about the outgoing archbishop at the end of a press call:
Donning a peaceful smile, the Archbishop Emeritus now looks forward to return to his convent while remaining at service of his successor.
Where did the archbishop get that smile he donned, Miriam – the coat rack?
I can’t remember exactly when ‘donning’ entered the sort of Maltese English favoured by those who write for the newspapers, as a full substitute for ‘wearing’, but it was just a few years ago. It annoyed me so much – though not quite as much as the subs’ failure to notice anything wrong with it – that the word now leaps up at me from the page.
Aside from the fact that people like Miriam Dalli, in using ‘donning’, are breaking the gold-standard maxim that you should never use, when writing, words that you wouldn’t use when speaking – can you picture Miss Dalli walking up to Kurt Farrugia and asking him flirtatiously, “Hi, do you like the dress I’m donning?” – they haven’t even got the meaning right.
People like Miss Dalli, who grew up speaking a language with an extremely limited vocabulary (Maltese), in which one verb or noun must serve multiple purposes, find it next to impossible to adjust to the fact that English is possibly the most complex language in history, with a great number of words all of which have very specific meanings.
‘Don’ does not mean ‘wear’. ‘Don’ is the very specific act of putting on an item of clothing. ‘Doff’ is the very specific act of taking it off. In between, you are wearing it.
You don your hat, but once it is sitting on your head, you are wearing it. Then you doff it, and you are no longer wearing it.
Of course, nowadays nobody does anything of the sort. We put our hats on and we take them off. Nobody dons or doffs anything – and that’s where our newspaper writers fall foul of another rule even if they were using the word in accordance with its meaning in the first place, which they are not: never use antiquated words unless you are a past master of ironic usage.
Miriam Dalli’s mistake comes from her belief that ‘donning’ means ‘wearing’. It would have been perfectly correct to say that the archbishop wore a smile (though far better simply to say that he smiled), but ‘donning a smile’ is the stuff of amusement in itself.
To anybody who speaks proper English, the impression given is that the archbishop reached into a drawer, pulled out a smile from among a selection, and put it on.
The sentence contains another routine Maltese mistake, too, besides what I really hope is a mistakenly dropped ‘the’ before ‘service’, but this piece is about the peculiar way Maltese journalists use ‘donning’.
There will eventually be a separate post about the way so many Maltese people haven’t yet figured out, despite their newly found passion for the term ‘looking forward’, that this is followed by the ‘ing’ form of the verb. Surely they would have picked it up through watching films, mini series and reading books and magazines? But no, apparently not.
So, Miss Dalli, that would be ‘looking forward to returnING’ and never ‘looking forward to return’.
All of this would be entirely understandable and excusable, were it not for the fact that Miriam Dalli writes for a newspaper which is published in English. That makes her linguistic ineptitude unforgivable. When her mistakes (and those of others) go into print often enough, they are taken up by others and pass into general usage.
It’s a safe bet that Miss Dalli herself only uses ‘donning’ as interchangeable with ‘wearing’, and now even for non-clothing situations, because she’s seen the word used so frequently (and wrongly) in Times of Malta: “He went out donning a blue coat.”
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Dear authority on English language usage,
A quick search on Google reveals various references to “donning a guilty smile”, “donning a professional smile”,…etc, etc.
for example
http://sentence.yourdictionary.com/donned
Is this all the work of the lejberisti then?
[Daphne – I despair. I truly, truly despair. You do not learn English – and more pertinently, English usage, by scanning the internet in this manner. English is very, very precise and a minefield for the uninitiated. I suggest you read some proper books – there are some excellent novels – and even if you do not enjoy it, see it as professional training. There is no other way you will understand what you are doing wrong and how to do it right.]
It’s a pity that some people seem to expend so much effort in defending the indefensible.
Attempting, what in your mind you must congratulate yourself as being, a subtle insult, reveals from what stinking cesspit you fermented out of.
[Daphne – One must have some compassion in situations like this, Vanni. Their level of stupidity is such that they presume to contradict others on these matters, and what’s more, by using the internet as ‘proof’. I think I would know enough not to enter into any debates with a native speaker of proper Italian as to the correct usage of this term or that. This is a symptom of the ‘everything is an opinion, there are no facts, and all opinions are equal’ culture that now permeates Maltese society.]
You are too charitable, Daphne. I would have plumped for the more accurate ‘betters’ instead of your choice (‘others’).
But I suppose one must not fall to the level of these ‘lejberisti’
Calm down dear. From your OTT reaction, it is evident that you think I am a lejberist for having shot down your heroine’s assertion that the phrase in question is some Maltese hammallagni concoction. Angry bird-brained people like you are normally to be found in coffee mornings applauding Joseph Muscat and Co.
[Daphne – You were the one to bring politics into it. I most certainly did not. The problem is much too widespread for that. Incidentally, your Maltese is not that impressive, either: hamalli has just the one ‘m’. At least you spelt ‘heroine’ correctly. That’s generally how Miriam Dalli and her colleagues at Malta Today spell the drug.]
I thought you’d pick up on the “hamallagni” typo, in the absence of nothing of substance to add. It is touching how you stick up for your fans, even when they appear to be vicious trolls. Having lived here in the UK for over a decade, I find your delusional claim of being a “native English speaker” embarrassing.
Your fake British accent (which you might protest to be authentic “ethnic Slimiz”), combined with the aforementioned pretence, would make you the butt of jokes in the British media.
[Daphne – Oh dear, I see. You’re that Maltese individual living in Britain who every so often writes in to tell me, using one name or another, that I have a fake British accent (no, it’s the authentic Maltese accent of my social group), that I am not a native English speaker (of course I am; most people in my aforementioned social group, which is not the one you think it is, are native English speakers), and that I would be the butt of jokes in the British media. What a chip. Get over it.]
Your arguments may well be valid, but you are doing a very poor job at putting them across to those we need to persuade to restore the natural party of government. The sooner the PN gets its own media arm in order the better. Feel free to proof read.
[Daphne – “We need”, “natural party of government”. Don’t bother with the false moustache. I’m not here to persuade anyone to vote PN, and I am certainly not here to put logical arguments across to the illogical. I am here to remind the sane minority that, despite being a minority, they are sane. And I am also here to get up the noses of chippy people like you, something which I have been doing to great effect since I discovered their existence around 35 years ago.]
“…it’s the authentic Maltese accent of my social group”.
What social group is that then?
[Daphne – One to which you clearly do not belong, otherwise you would not have to ask.]
The one with pretend British accents? (yes, that is how you come across to native speakers) .
[Daphne – No, the one in which people speak proper Maltese and proper English.]
The one with token degrees in archaeology?
[Daphne – Chippy chippy. It’s a very good degree, actually. Takes lots of discipline and scientific thinking, which is more than can be said for, say, law. Charlon Gouder would never have got through, for instance.]
Give me the Maltese accents of Gonzi or Fenech Adami (famously described as a “village lawyer with five children” by your good self) any time over your tqanzih.
[Daphne – Fenech Adami took elocution training when he became prime minister. By the end of it, he gave a fair rendition of what you would call a fake British accent. Clearly, he was onto something you were not.]
As for “getting up noses”, you would find that it is I who raised your hackles (and those of your troll fan), judging by the hysterical reaction and name-calling.
[Daphne – Not at all. People like you make it your raison d’etre to be teed off by people like me. And you are to be found agitating in all three political parties. But people like me are not teed off by people like you unless you are armed with a pitchfork and torch, in which case you would present a very different sort of problem.]
As for “false moustaches”, I have always voted PN whenever I had the opportunity. Rumour has it that the same might not be said of you back in 1987 (I must admit I was very surprised when I learnt of this rumour – is your extremism a form of atonement?).
[Daphne – I wouldn’t boast about voting PN if I were you. The massive problems the party has faced over the last few years have been due in great part to its antagonism towards, and alienation of, People Like Me, by People Like You. The roots of this hostility lie deep: ‘fake British accent’, ‘what social group is that?’ & c & c. I suppose the irony of George Borg Oliver having come from that exact social group, and a few of his ministers and shadow ministers besides, would escape you. You would probably have accused him of having a fake British accent and asked him whether that social group is called ‘ethnic Slimiz’ as you just did to me. Of such great ignorance are great marketing messes made. Extremism? I hate to have to inform you that I’m the normal one, the one with the sane outlook. The fact that I am outnumbered does not change that. And the origins of my views about the Labour Party predate 1987 by a long while. But then, not sharing my social origins, you wouldn’t know that. I suggest you take a close look at the news reports of the last few days, and eventually you might work it out. ]
Funny thing is that the site you suggest does NOT say that ‘to wear’ and ‘to put on’ have the same meaning. The meaning of ‘don’ as a verb is ‘to put on’ as per ‘your’ site.
I have learnt a horrific fact today. Not only do many think that any dictionary will do as long as it is googleable but also that using any dictionary seems to be a challenge.
But then I am only an avid reader.
Even ‘donning a Joey smile’ would be wrong, Hanzira ta’ l-Erwieh.
‘Donning’ is the act of putting on something. In Joey’s case, donning would be wrong because he wears that sarcastic smile of his, in perpetuity. He cannot put it on, nor take it off because it is in his nature, sort of in his DNA.
And, with regards to ‘the work of Lejburisti’, all you have to do is look at four successive leaders, and you’ll get an idea!
Even worse -looking forward FOR ….
It’s everwhere!
‘Don’ and ‘doff’ are contractions of ‘do on’ and ‘do off’.
‘Doff’ is generally used in association with headwear, as in:
The Cambridge don doffed his cap to Don Juan.
I always understood the correct meaning of “donning a smile” as one who does so to mask his displeasure.
Hilarious. Writing by continously pressing F7 for the thesaurus. Reminds me of once reading a government report and a meeting was referred to as a tryst.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-10-19/local-news/Mgr-Cremona-resigation-Prime-Minister-can-appoint-Archbishop-if-position-left-vacant-for-15-days-6736123988
Joe Vella Gauci gej mela.
To be ordained by three bishops of his choice, of course.
May I suggest importing them from the State Church of China, seeing that our jo-jo is on such good terms with Xi.
Jibbrillaw……fl-injoranza imma.
“To anybody who speaks proper English, the impression given is that the archbishop reached into a drawer, pulled out a smile from among a selection, and put it on.”
Isn’t that just what Joseph Muscat does all the time?
‘a great number of words all of which have very specific meanings.’
It’s actually even more complicated than that, as you well know. Specific meanings in specific contexts is what they have.
You will find dons at Oxford, for example and sentences can be written or served. Never disregard context.
[Daphne – I would have been there all night trying to explain that. Reading anything written in English in Malta makes me desperately irritable, and not just because of the content when these are newspapers. The same mistakes crop up again and again, until they become rules of grammar in themselves in our separate language. Almost everybody who writes for newspapers, for instance, seems to believe that ‘would’ is the future tense of ‘will’. The most frustrating thing is that you don’t need grammar lessons to work it out. I never had any English grammar lessons to speak of, not any that I can recall, anyway. This is the sort of thing that you can pick up by reading and listening if you haven’t picked it up while growing up – which means that they are NOT reading and listening, or else they’re just reading and listening to each other. The most worrying thing is that limited language and restricted thought are caught up in a vicious cycle: restricted language restricts thought because thoughts are formed verbally even in our minds; and restricted thought means that the individual never seeks out an expanded form of expression because he or she has no need of it. ]
What on earth does ‘tapped’ in this context mean?
‘… Bishop Mario Grech ‘tapped’ by Pope Francis to be next …’
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-10-19/local-news/Gozo-Bishop-Mario-Grech-tapped-by-Pope-Francis-to-be-next-archbishop-6736123999
Perhaps they meant to say “tipped” although that’s still inappropriate in my opinion. It makes me think of horse races rather than archbishops…
Asked myself the same question about the word “tapped’ . At first I assumed Pope Francis must have given him a tap on the shoulder during the Synod. After reading the article, I conclude that the newspaper intended to use the word “tipped”
On another note, in a Times article last week, the word “new” was used when it was meant to be “knew”
You could tell the crew at Malta Independent that an Indian woman drowning is hardly a ‘mishap’ either. And that was in the title of the article.
I just love your lessons of the English language. Thank you, Daphne.
Is the man behind Miriam Dalli and Kurt Farrugia the Italian Mafia boss Sebastiano Brunno who was arrested in Malta?
Just an observation: the man in the back looks very much like the mafia boss recently arrested and facing extradition to Malta, doesn’t he? How unfortunate. Or…
Catastrophic use of a thesaurus.
Daphne is correct. The English language has constantly evolved and changed over the centuries. A word may have been used a hundred years ago and be found in a dictionary, but that does not mean it is in current usage.
The meaning may be exactly the same, but there will be a subtle message conveyed by using a word today. P.G Wodehouse could well have written that Wooster ‘donned’ his hat, but if I were to say that ‘I always don my hat after leaving the theatre’ I would be seen as being deliberately archaic in my speech and possibly implying a supposition of superiority.
To ‘doff’ your hat might be found in use today, as in a tenant doffing his cap to his aristocratic landlord, but that would be rare.
To say that someone ‘donned’ a smile has the definite meaning of a false and snide action, but an expression like that has not been used in England since about 1959 and you would get some very strange looks if you used it now.
I can honestly say that I have never had occasion to use either ‘doff’ or ‘don’.
It is only by reading English literature and experiencing our wonderful, baffling and subtly nuanced language in use that you can begin to understand it.
Yes to don seems to me to be an archaic word. Don in English is usually used to mean a university academic or a mafia boss. Any connection between the last 2 professions is purely accidental.
In any case, as has been pointed out, to don a smile seems to be used outside Malta. It is a metaphorical extension of the meaning of don which is to put on or to wear. One can also say “to don an angry face” in the same vein.
[Daphne – Mrs Perkins is English, David, and you are not. Do not presume to lecture her on usage in her own language. It is precisely this sort of arrogance that is incomprehensible and even ludicrous to anybody standing on the outside and looking on. It’s not just you who is guilty of this; the problem is rampant.]
I do not share the view that Maltese English is necessarily bad. Languages as customs, dress, laws and so on change with time and space. This is true even in our national language and naturally even more so in the English language. I am not surprised that there is Maltese English and would be surprised if we speak some form of perfect British English.
I recently heard an English person say the word often pronouncing the letter t. I also heard on BBC the expression “an historic”. I was surprised by this.
The official Spanish dictionary has accepted new words which now form of Spanish. One of these words is friki.
Surprised by “an historic”?
David, you need to widen your network and double-check its social positioning.
How old are you?
___________________
“As regards” drives me up the wall.
The two examples you cite illustrate another subtlety of spoken English which is only understood by using the language and cannot be adequately explained in a textbook.
Pronunciations are often affected by the proximity in a sentence of other words which affect the fluidity of speech. There is a reason why our language has always been so invaluable to poets, apart from its beautiful range of vocabulary. The sound is very important.
Clumsy phrases such as ‘a historic’ are adapted to create mellifluous speech. ‘Often’ can be subject to regional variations, but as a Londoner speaking what used to be called The Queen’s English, I use both pronunciations depending on the sentence.
I generally don’t pronounce the ‘t’, but if I were to say ‘often times’ for example, I would emphasise the ‘t’ to create a clipped sound underlining the alliteration of the two ‘ts’ in the adjacent words.
English is such a wonderful language but I fully appreciate how difficult it is. At this point I would like to say how much I admire the Maltese for being proficient in two or even three languages, unlike the vast majority of British people.
Those of the “non-speak proper English generation” use the thesaurus function on their computers like a magic wand, second only to that other phenomenon, “copy and paste”.
They think that all the words that come up are interchangeable. I have seen this too often in reports both internal and others intended for foreign/international institutions.
Rest assured that many of their authors are now teaching Maltese children English.
Blame it on the indiscriminate use of the ‘CTRL+F7’ function in MicroSoft Word. Lazy bums like Miriam use it, to give the impression their vocabulary is more far-reaching than it actually is.
Whilst you are right on the word ‘donned’ I do find your ‘attack’ on the Maltese language, and its limited vocabulary, a bit harsh!
[Daphne – Living in England as you do, you should have learned the meaning of ‘attack’ by now. Never confuse a factual description for criticism. And an attack is neither of those things. It generally involves some form of weapon, or failing that, fists.]
In the uk not England.. And places accross the 4 nations do attribute different meanings to certain words.
[Daphne – Not really, no; an attack is an attack is an attack, generally involving a weapon. In some case you might speak of a verbal assault or attack, but it would be an extreme case involving outrageous insults and very harsh words. And this even in Scotland, where I seem to recall your saying you now live. You use ‘attack’ in the Maltese way, a literal translation of ‘dik tattakka n-nies’. That doesn’t translate into ‘she attacks people’, I’m afraid.]
Are you saying the BBC is wrong here? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29505098
[Daphne – No, but explaining the fine distinctions of British-English usage to those who hope to conquer the language armed with a rule book is tedious and fruitless. That’s why the teaching of (British) English as a foreign language is ultimately an impossible task. The best you can hope for is English as an international language, or one of the several variants of Globish.
I can tell by the way you use ‘attack’ that you are Maltese because it is non-idiomatic. How can I tell you are Maltese (even if I didn’t already know?)? How is your use of ‘attack’ non-idiomatic? I can’t explain. It just is. I can look at a sentence that is, on the face of it, perfectly constructed and grammatically correct. And I can tell immediately that a Maltese person wrote it. Because there is something about the usage that is slightly off.
For example, when Maltese people use the word ‘attack’, it is an expression of disapproval for the person they perceive to be making an attack, just as it would be in Maltese. But in English, it is the other way round. When somebody is described as having launched a verbal attack on somebody or something, it signifies disapproval of the thing or person being criticised, and not of the person doing the criticising.
It is these subtleties that are so difficult to explain, because they don’t come out of a rule book but are learned through consistent exposure to idiomatic usage and the sensitivity to pick them up.]
Agreed now :) thank you!
Recently when I visited the Upper Barraka (?) Gardens I noticed that this was another project of EMBELLISHMENT.. surely embellishment means in every day language to exaggerate a story, and add bits and pieces to it!
Have a look at what happens when Socialist Marxist expediency meets Conservative rigour and correctness:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2785156/War-le-words-French-MP-fined-using-sexist-GRAMMAR-calling-female-colleague-Madame-Le-President.html
When comprehension of the depth and breadth of concepts is incomplete or insufficient, it is evident that there are a host of subtleties that cannot ever be taken into account.
We have, indeed, a situation of parallel worlds where we stand in one and observe the army of stunted amputees in the other, struggling with a massive deficiency of metacognitive process.
It is also like observing self-imposed Alzheimers in action:
Single-purpose neural nodes with insufficient link to normal associations within the neural network that one would make in logical and very basic reasoning.
No wonder we have administrative stalemates and “interminable discussions and differences:”
This is GI-GO (Garbage In Garbage Out) – an ancient business buzzword – in action.
It all starts with what one deliberately chooses as values (anything that creates an impact) and perception.
It is though these filters that we take decisions and observe life.
From time to time, they need an update:
Knowledge comes in over time.
Either way, on a different note. I must say that I truly admire your English writing skills and capabilities. At the least this blog serves as a good read to A level English sixth form students like myself. Whether one agrees on the argument presented or not, I look towards such a website with an educational approach.
Well done.
I suppose Sholokhov’s “And quietly flows the Don” could pass as “And quietly flows the Wear”. They’re both rivers after all.
Well said, Daphne. Using an Oxford or a Collins is completely different from reading a thesaurus. If only some could recognise the distinction. Listening to the the BBC would be a more beneficial than listening to Super One where language is concerned.