Nephews and nieces, grandsons and granddaughters
Dear readers, for today’s beach aerobics, repeat this exercise after me: grandparents, grandchildren, granddaughter and grandson; uncle and aunt, nephew and niece; grandparents, grandchildren, uncle and aunt, nephew and niece. Go on, jump up and down making X-shapes with your arms and legs and chant repeatedly: grandparents have grandchildren; uncles and aunts have nephews and nieces; nephews are boys or men; nieces are girls or women; the child of my son or daughter is my grandchild, not my nephew; the child of my sibling, or of my spouse’s sibling, is my nephew or my niece; grandparents have grandchildren; grandparents have grandchildren; grandparents have grandchildren.
What brought this on? It was a fit of steaming irritation at the way the Ministry for Social Policy has given official sanction to one of the most common mistakes made by Maltese people when speaking English: referring to grandchildren as nephews. It is not an insignificant mistake, because the meanings of grandson and nephew are entirely different and so are the familial relationships they describe. When this fundamental error is made in a question-and-answer booklet about the plans for rent law reform, issued by a government ministry, it is tantamount to giving the wrong information. A leaseholder’s grandchild does not have the same rights, or relationship to, the leaseholder as his or her nephew or niece.
This is taken from page 7 of the booklet’s English-language version, ‘Rent Laws, The Need for Reform – Sustainability, Justice and Protection’. Question: “I have been living with my grandparents for the past 10 years. Do I understand correctly that under the proposed reforms I will no longer be eligible for automatic inheritance to the title of the lease?” I’ll throw a tactful blanket of silence over the construction of that question, most particularly the hideous last phrase, and focus on the answer instead. Answer: “……As the nephew or the niece of the tenant you will not qualify as a beneficiary for causa mortis inheritance…..”
The reference to causa mortis indicates that the English version was written by a lawyer working from the original Maltese. Please, somebody tell me that I’m wrong about this, and that the translation was made by a sixth-former on summer work experience, who learned English as a third language. Otherwise, I will have to face up to the fact that there are lawyers running around in Malta, in full possession of a warrant to practise, who do not know that the English word for our children’s children is grandchildren and not nephews, and who are dangerously transcribing this error into important documents, thereby changing their meaning completely.
How is it possible to be a lawyer in Malta and not know the difference between a grandson and a nephew? How? How is it possible to live in a country where English is widely spoken and ubiquitous in its written form, and to never come across the words ‘grandson’ and ‘granddaughter’ and wonder what they mean, and if that meaning might just possibly be different to ‘nephew’ and ‘niece’?
You ask why I have written a column about such a minor matter. It’s not a minor matter at all, because it raises all sorts of ancillary issues, not least the two I have just mentioned: lawyers (and more worryingly, notaries) who don’t know the difference between grandchildren and nephews in the English language, and people from all walks of life, not just the uneducated, who have somehow managed to live for decades in an English-speaking country without learning the difference between ‘nephew’ and ‘grandchild’. I think it’s really amazing.
This nephews business has bothered me for so long that seeing the error enshrined in full glory in a public information document – issued by the ministry responsible for the family, no less – caused me to explode with annoyance. I have kept a polite and civilised zip on my mouth through countless cocktail parties and ‘receptions’ while an endless parade of men and women talked to me lovingly about the antics of their nephews. In the early years, I thought they were fond and overly involved aunts and uncles. Then I began to realise that they were talking about their grandchildren.
On the drive home from one such feat of endurance I asked my husband to help me decipher the mystery of why the word ‘grandchildren’ seemed to have gone missing from the Maltese version of the English language. “Isn’t it obvious?” he said. “There isn’t a word for grandchildren in Maltese. Nephews, nieces and grandchildren are all ‘neputijiet’. It’s the same with Italian. They don’t have a specific word for grandchildren, either.” Well, thanks – I knew that. But it isn’t an explanation; it’s an excuse. The mystery to me is why people who are able to hold conversations in English without difficulty, to read English-language books and newspapers, and to translate, as in this case, a document on rent law reform, firmly believe that English, like Maltese and Italian, has no word to describe the specific relationship between a person and his or her child’s child. I can’t, for the life of me, believe that they have never heard the word grandchildren, or that they somehow believe that this is an optional word which is interchangeable with nephews.
The refusal to use the word grandson, or even to accept that it has a meaning that is specific and not ambiguous like the Maltese and Italian ‘neputi’ and ‘nipote’, drives me to distraction. It speaks of the most obtuse pig-headedness.
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The words we use to describe the relationship between various family members are an indication of how family relationships were once ordered and organised in that society. Maltese, for example, uses the Arabic word for mother but not the Arabic word for father. Our word for father is a much later construction, a corruption of the French ‘monsieur’. This probably indicates that mothers were local girls, rooted in the island, but men came and went, so that fathers were more likely to be foreigners who were referred to with the respectful ‘monsieur’. This looseness of the relationship between parents might be why we commonly refer to our spouses as The Man and The Woman, rather than as the more accurate ‘zewgi’ (‘zewg’ literally meaning a pair, from which the Maltese word for marriage is derived).
Not having a specific word to distinguish between our relationship with our children’s children and our relationship with our sibling’s children could mean all manner of things – that the distinction wasn’t important enough to have a specific word coined for it, that people didn’t live long enough to accumulate grandchildren, that the only significant relationship was that between parents and children, and more particularly, between mother and child. Anthropologists might throw more light on this.
The knowledge that Maltese uses the same word for grandchildren, nephews and nieces came to me fairly late in life. I realise in retrospect that I never once heard any of my four grandparents referring to their grandchildren as ‘in-neputijiet’, but only ever as ‘it-tfal tat-tifla’ or ‘it-tfal tat-tifel’. That’s still how my own parents speak about theirs. I grew up thinking that Maltese doesn’t have a word for grandchildren, which is correct, ‘neputijiet’ being merely an Italian loan word brought in to fill the gap, transposing at the same time Italian’s lack of distinction between grandchildren and nephews and nieces.
Generations of grandparents younger than my own grandparents began to use the word ‘il-grandchildren’. While it sounds funny, and perhaps even affected, I can see what makes them do it. The relationship between grandparents and their grandchildren is a very special one, particularly in these times when so many people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s find themselves bereft of the pleasure of grandchildren, or perhaps with just the odd few, because their own children are not having any babies, or having just one or two when in their late 30s and early 40s. The relationship between Maltese people and their grandchildren has changed over the years. It has become one that merits special vocabulary, which it clearly was not in the past. And so the English word has been plucked out by some and transposed into the Maltese language.
So on the one hand, we have the vast majority of the population who don’t know that English has a word for grandchildren, and insist on speaking about “my nephews and nieces”. And on the other hand, we have a small minority who refer with determined pride to “il-grandchildren taghna”.
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When we were in primary school, working our way through First Aid in English, a blue book with a white cross on it as I recall, we were made to chant out: “I before E except after C.” “How do you spell ‘niece’, boys and girls?” “N-I-E-C-E.” “How do you spell ‘ceiling’?” “C-E-I-L-I-N-G.”
I doubt that there is anyone my age who went to the sort of school I went to, and who doesn’t put I before an E except after C. I bet we’re all still whispering the chant over our keyboards as we come up against ‘piece’ and ‘ceiling’. Back then, they taught us how to spell ‘niece’. Now, I’m afraid, they have to teach people what it means.
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Some people I know stopped reading the rent law reform Q & A booklet because it was too painful. I have to confess to being one of them. The very first question is enough to make you wince: “Will everybody be impacted by the Rent Reforms?”
Impacted? Impacted? How about affected? And why are the words ‘rent reforms’ given the proper noun treatment with those capital letters? Proper nouns – remember them? First Aid in English made sure in primary school that I would not grow up to write Managing Director, even though I went on to work for some clients who would cross out my lower case ‘m’ and ‘d’ and write them in upper case. Forget the capital letters – why is rent reform written in the plural as rent reforms? And is the translator – who, heaven forfend, is probably a lawyer – incapable of making the less than fine distinction between rent reform and reform of the rent laws? Landlords reform rents, usually upwards.
This is an official government document we’re talking about, part of a bilingual public information campaign. Those who are most likely to be reading the English version, rather than the Maltese, are the people who speak better English than Maltese. Yet the minute they come across something like ‘impacted’ instead of ‘affected’ or ‘nephew’ used for ‘grandson’ they are going to stop reading, because those errors undermine the perceived reliability of the information.
Repeat after me again: grandparents have grandchildren. Grandparents have grandchildren.
[This article is published in The Malta Independent today.]
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One can also notice the confusion between grandson/daughter and nephew/niece in Obituary columns.
[Daphne – Thanks for pointing that out. I forgot to mention it. “She leaves to mourn her loss her sons John and his wife Jane, and Joe and his wife Mary, and her nephews….”, and you know that what they really meant was grandchildren.]
Very droll. I before E except after C survived for a few years after your generation. It’s still a cardinal rule I use. One thing bothers me about all this. After your “eats, shoots and leaves” style article I have one question: “Where does this put us with ‘nepotism’?”
I have a solution. Since nepotism is not always limited to nephews and nieces we should have a new word: emmellpeeennism (read: MLPN-ism) . That way we cover all instances and the historical reasons behind such a phenomenon… and bob’s your uncle! (or aunt, or second cousin detached – woteva).
(ludendo castigat mores)
[Moderator – Nepotism is used to describe favouritism shown to any relative in conferring offices or privileges. It was used originally with reference to popes and their illegitimate sons, who were described as nephews.]
“How is it possible to be a lawyer in Malta and not know the difference between a grandson and a nephew? How?”
I know the answer to that question. Very very easy, just go and notice the attendance of the law classes during the scholastic year, take the names of those who are never in class, go back to the faculty at around the beginning of July and see who managed to obtain the best grades. You will be amazed.
The same people who somehow manage to get distinctions and second-uppers then through their network of connections, or shall I say through daddy, mummy, uncle and aunt, manage to get the top jobs. Easy isn’t it. And believe me this is the norm not the exception at the Faculty of Law, ask any commoner with a common surname how hard it is to get through the six years of the law course. Other faculties too use this system at times, but certainly it is not so prevalent as it is in the faculty of law.
No matter what anyone says I am sure of it, because besides the number of ex-students and students I know who studied/are studying law, I experienced it first hand. When an uncle was fixing a good grade for his niece giving the names of the three examiners and all the details through a phone call. I was shocked, mainly because this person seemed to be so used to doing these kind of deals that he did not even bother to be a bit cautious and was talking in that loud fashioned way to show how much power he had.
[Moderator – I wouldn’t know about all these details, but I do know – as do many others – that the Maltese A-level entry requirement was temporarily lifted to accommodate the grandson of a former president and ex-government minister, who then flunked the course in any case. And by the way, it’s an upper second, and not a second-upper. That’s another Maltese neologism. It’s short for upper second-class degree.]
P.S. Don’t blame the lawyers… it’s all downhill in that department. They might stick to reminding you that the Latin word “nepos” means both nephews and grandchildren. Which would not be much help for the general discussion, show a general obtuseness and lack of understanding of the finer niceties of the English language and generally avoid the point… as they tend to do.
[Daphne – Jacques, the new generation of lawyers knows no Latin at all.]
Artiklu ħlejju….imma ‘il-grandchildren’ kemmxejn imġebbda (minkejja li ili ‘nieqes’ minn Malta)…naħseb hija minoranza ta’ tnejn min-niesvli tgħidha…imma prosit…
…i am an occassional stickler/pedant too…how about Facebook status updates like ‘M. is looking forward FOR his holidays’ or even (pardon my French), ‘is fucken (sic) bored…’
…naħseb għalhekk favur l-użu tal-Malti jien…għax il-biċċa l-kbira jaħsbu bih u x’aktarx kapaċi jesprimu lilhom infushom aħjar…l-Ingliż mhuwiex ilsien kulħadd f’Malta, jew aħjar, hemm bosta u bosta livelli varji ta’ l-għarfien tiegħu…ergo, l-importanza dejjem tikber tal-Malti iżda wkoll tagħlim aħjar ta’ l-Ingliż…
@ Mod
You’re right, thanks for pointing that out.
Nephews, grandchildren, nieces and whatnot. Annoying, but not radically shocking.
But please do rush the anthropologists in to explain the mindboggling lack of a Maltese equivalent to the universally important ‘to make love’.
Maltese people can love, f**k, but not make love in their native tongue.
A fundamentally flawed people, there’s no doubt about it.
Daphne is quite correct and there is much confusion when speaking Maltese and have to tell someone that I have four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. One grammatical error made by many, including DCG in this article, is that I was always taught when making comparisons it should be “diferent FROM” not “different to”.
[Daphne – Both are now acceptable, but strictly speaking, you’re perfectly correct. This is another lesson I remember from my schooldays: ‘from’ implies distance and separation, while ‘to’ implies movement towards. Therefore it’s ‘different from’ and ‘close to’. And you’re right: it’s odd that there’s a word, albeit corrupted from the Italian, for great-grandfather (buznannu) but no word for his great-grandchildren.]
Alex: don’t write rubbish – law lecturers don’t teach English, they teach law. English should have been learnt earlier. As to the nepotism in grading, I have no comment: if you have evidence, spew it out.
Moderator: to the best of my knowledge, second upper is used as well, even by native English speakers. Of course, the cognoscenti use 2/1.
[Moderator: Actually, it’s not. It’s first, upper second, lower second and third – or 2.1 and 2.2, if you wish, but never 2/1. ‘Second upper’ would be short for what – second upper-class degree?]
Much fuss about nothing. The important thing is to understand the concept and not which correct word to use. Whether you use nephew, grandson or carrot, the important thing is to get the message through.
[Moderator: Let’s have more of these brilliant insights. If you have children, do encourage them to call you Uncle – or even better, Auntie.]
“I before E except after C.”
And after some weird exception.
[Moderator – Thanks for that. It should have been ‘I before E except after C and W, because there’s also weight and all the nouns and adjectives derived from it….and weir.]
John Meilak: Not at all. You can understand the concept only if you speak and understand both languages. If you only speak one or the other, then how can you tell that what you’re reading is correct?
I surely won’t encourage them to waste half of their lifetime quibbling over a word or comma. I leave that to you. Since you’re such an expert of the English language why don’t you apply for a lecturing post with the University of Malta? I’m sure the lecture hall would be packed with students eager to get in.
[Daphne – Kemm int antipatiku, miskin. Are you by any chance related to the person who translated the document, if not the man himself? The difference between the significance of the words ‘grandson’ and ‘nephew’ is as great as that between the words ‘aunt’ and ‘grandmother’. It’s hardly the difference between the absence or presence of a comma, though even that can make a significant change to the meaning of a sentence. You are symptomatic of the ‘u ejja, mhux xorta’ mentality.]
@Moderator,
“but I do know – as do many others – that the Maltese A-level entry requirement was temporarily lifted to accommodate the grandson of a former president and ex-government minister”
I know that but thought it was his granddaughter.
@John Meilak
English is the most important language in the world (even though only the second most widely spoken, the first being Chinese). It is also one of our languages, and lets face it, more important then Maltese if you wish to succeed in life. So it is unacceptable to have such errors especially on an official government document!
@Daphne
“How is it possible to be a lawyer in Malta and not know the difference between a grandson and a nephew? ”
Did you ever hear some (actually many) law students speaking in English? The question I ask myself is how on earth did they get their o-level in English!
[Moderator – No, the granddaughter is smart. It’s the grandsons who don’t appear to have much between their ears.]
Andrew, in my opinion someone who cannot write English after two years of sixth form and six years at university is evidence of nepotism. Mistaking grandchild with niece/nephew may lead to some serious consequences in law, or so I would think.
I would spew it out, I do have names. But that would mean going against the establishment. In any other country I would give the names with peace in mind that it will only do good and no harm to myself.
I understand and accept it if you see me as one of those who talk rubbish all the time and cannot back it up. All I can say is that the claim I made above is honest and I am always considerate to what I claim. I think writing it here was already a bit too much, since I gave my e-mail address.
[Moderator – We keep email addresses confidential. Come on, Dr Borg Cardona – as a lecturer you must see plenty of evidence that people who can’t string a simple sentence together are somehow graduating from our university. Take one of the deputy leaders of the Labour Party, for example. He graduated magna cum laude in law and he’s incoherent in both Maltese and English.]
@ Alex: ‘I know the answer to that question. Very very easy, just go and notice the attendance of the law classes during the scholastic year, take the names of those who are never in class, go back to the faculty at around the beginning of July and see who managed to obtain the best grades.’
That is an overstatement if ever I saw one. The best students in my law courses (the second ‘s’ is deliberate: irrepetejt l-ewwel sena, avolja nigi t-tifel tal-‘kbarat’; u bhali kien hemm tfal tal-kbarat ohra li m’ghaddewx mill-ezamijiet) almost always attended their classes and had great notes; unfortunately many lecturers did not pay them the same courtesy since urgent commitments to clients always trumped lectures that could be postponed or done away with altogether.
Some of the star students were also kind enough to share their notes with those of us who preferred to do other things rather then go to lectures, which explains how people who do not attend lectures scrape through, or better.
‘ask any commoner with a common surname how hard it is to get through the six years of the law course’
The people who got the best grades in my course(s) would fit this description as far as I know, and they went on to get good jobs too.
The law course is far from perfect, and it is quite likely that some corrupt practices exist, but the impression that Alex gives is just silly and unfair to some very accomplished students.
Moderator: how do you pronounce the “.” in “2.1”? Isn’t exactly the same as the “/” in 2/1???? I was referring to speakers, not writers, of Englandish.
Not sure you’re right about second upper or upper second, but hey, who’s counting…? Actually, I am: just for the record, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_undergraduate_degree_classification refers to Upper Second-Class, while http://www.llm-guide.com/board/31655 refers to Second Upper Class.
So the law isn’t necessarily as laid down by you….
One way to bypass the dilemma of upper second and/or second upper.
Its easy , just say Magna cum Laude.
Better still, avoid the whole issue and get a first and be a Summa cum Laude. At least that’s what it says on the piece of parchment I saw lying around the house somewhere.
smiles all round!
[Moderator – Unfortunately, Anglu Farrugia has tainted use of the description magna cum laude. Anything that might be shared with him, we don’t want.]
Alex & Mod – my point was only that law lecturers do not teach English – I am fully aware, and embarrassed by (and I probably got the spelling wrong) the poor command of English of many of my colleagues. The problem is, they were badly formed before they got into Tal-Qroqq and clearly didn’t have the intellectual capacity to notice it while they were there.
@JBB
I admit that the first post may have been an overstatement, obviously there are good hard working students in each faculty, so I apologise if I snubbed you and your colleagues. But you should also admit that irregularities are not one-off and rather common.
The phone call I overheard, involuntarily, named three examiners. To check whether the guy on the phone was simply bluffing I asked around if these names were familiar to the Law Faculty and I was told that they are involved. To my knowledge one or two of the examiners should be anonymous. So the fact that this person knew who the examiners were is already a significant infringement.
@Moderator,
Thanks for clearing that up for me. I have mentally apologised to her:)
One point – are you saying that if you don’t pass a Maltese A-level you ain’t smart??
Yikes!
[Moderator – No, I’m just saying that anyone who flunks the law course isn’t smart, given that it’s not particularly arduous nowadays.]
@DCG
The Maltese equivalent for grand-grandchildren is pro-neputijiet (pro-neputi and pro-neputija). Having said that, I’ve never heard anyone uttering any of these words, except on obituaries on the radio.
[Daphne – You’re joking, I take it. “Isma, Ganna, ha jkolli mmur, ghax gejjin il-pro-neputijiet.”]
Grandchildren – Neputi
Nephew – Neputi
The above matches with Italian (nipote).
Now if you guys wanted to go Really deep, you’d have to research Siculo-Arabic, which is a dead dialect..so Good luck.
@DCG
I know it sounds strange, but that’s because we [myself included] are not used to saying it.
U bilhaqq, sellili ghal-Ganna meta taraha! ;)
Some students at the law course did not know the difference between affect and effect, acceed and exceed and even president and precedent. I have written proof of this in transcribed notes. Once upon a time, it was impossible to enter university with this level of English. But then, the level of all popular languages in Malta has plummeted. Many who believe they speak Italian have no idea of the congiuntivo and condizionale and some have no idea of Maltese orthography either. Teachers are today much less rigourous than in former times and anything goes. Some graduate civil servants possess equally mediocre English. Many of today’s students are too preoccupied with other matters to study grammar and books like First Aid in English are never used today. They may be wizards with computers but many are linguistically challenged. The mentality of “kollox ighaddi” is prevalent in all aspects of Maltese life. Most of the population is painfully inarticulate and uncultured compared to that of other countries in relation to which some Maltese feel superior. Arrogance is one of the hallmarks of the modern Maltese. The image many educated foreigners have of the Maltese is that they are arrogant, uncouth and conceited.
@Moderator
“[Moderator – No, I’m just saying that anyone who flunks the law course isn’t smart, given that it’s not particularly arduous nowadays.]”
True enough, today unfortunately at Uni you pass if you study by heart!
@ freethinker
Although I agree with all you said, you also have to keep in mind that linguistics know-how is being lost in all languages all over the globe. I know that what I will say may sound controversial to those who have language skills at heart. But you have to realise that today’s technologies discourage the time one needs to perfect their language skills.
Take me for example, when I am writing a paper, I use MSword and sometimes I do not care of spelling something right because I’d rather write it quick and then the program will fix it for me. Even vocabulary wise, with the help of synonymous and online thesaurus you just need to know the basics and then by simply right-clicking you have an option of a number of colourful words to choose from, although you need to have some knowledge of course.
You may see it as being lazy or not appreciating the fundamental nature of a language and you are correct, but others who just use the language simply as a medium see at as an efficient way of getting something done. Since, in today’s top jobs being skilled in programming, math, stats, in depth software knowledge, amongst others, are by far more important.
[Daphne – The mistake you make it to think that attention to detail is not important, or important only in certain spheres – for example, when building a machine or programming a computer. Whether you pay attention to detail or not is a clue which others who need to read you (to offer you a key job or position, for example) will use to read you. A person who is slapdash with language, they will reason – usually accurately – is going to be slapdash in other matters, including manners and behaviour, general conduct, and so on, and might even be careless with important issues related to the job. Using careless writing and grammar is like going out badly groomed or with egg on your shirt, or not bothering to wash your hair. It’s all much of a muchness. Of course, being anally retentive is equally bad, but I would never offer a good job to somebody who writes as you describe, by throwing the words at the page and letting the computer sort out the mess. It indicates an ‘ejja halli mmorru’ attitude to life which is not exactly desirable. There’s a limit to how much sorting out of linguistic messes the computer can do. Also, if you have to check the spelling of lots of words before you write them, that’s already a problem. If you know a language well, there’s no pause for thought about spelling between mind and fingertips.]
@ daphne
Well I kind of expected that kind of reaction from someone who is so skilled in expressing herself, most especially in writing. You, yourself said above –“bet we’re all still whispering the chant over our keyboards as we come up against ‘piece’ and ‘ceiling’.” All I said is that our generation can get around these things more efficiently when using software. Although, it comes at a cost, that we tend to flop drastically when writing the old fashioned way, with pen and paper.
I believe that to a certain extent it has nothing to do with paying attention to details, because it is simply using a shortcut, if it works I do not see how one is slapdash. Obviously excelling in everything is optimal, but nowadays people have to prioritise. In short, the message I was trying to get through is that the priority of language skills may have lost some ground. Nevertheless, it is still an essential skill to posses, but tagging persons as arrogant or sloppy due these undisputable facts is a bit farfetched.
Alex: You’re talking about free writing followed by editing. There are different ways of working. That is just one of them. At least you recognise the importance of reviewing what you’ve written. You still need to know an awful lot, though, as computers can’t recognise misplaced words and don’t always recognise mashed up syntax.
The result of poor writing is inadequate and inaccurate information. It’s quite simple really. If you want to be understood, you need to say what you mean and mean what you say. You don’t get that done by saying ‘nephew’ if you mean ‘grandson’. And if there’s any remaining doubt about the power of a punctuation mark, try changing the decimal point on a cheque to a comma and wait to see what happens.
@freethinker – it’s “kollox jgħaddi” not “kollox igħaddi”. See point 4 of L-Aġġornament tat-Tagħrif fuq il-Kitba Maltija:
http://www.akkademjatalmalti.com/page.asp?p=9022&l=1
Mhux kollox jgħaddi.
Very probably there was a language “interference” – English – Maltese – Italian. In Italian, the word “nipote” means nephew, niece; grandchild, granddaughter; “i nipoti” means grandchildren, descendants. In Maltese we use the word “neputi”. The Italian “nipotino, nipotina” means grandson, grand-daughtrer …..
Moreover, according to Prof Guze Aquilina, the word “neputi” in Maltese means nephew,grandchild
Daphne sadly I don’t think it is true to say that English is widely spoken – at least not anymore. Furthermore, were it is spoken, the level has significantly deteriorated.
English is undisputedly the lingua franca of the business world. Back in 1947 Ghandi said that French was the language of diplomacy, whilst English was the language of the world. Due to the high level of English that was prevalent amongst the civil service and professionals, and to a lesser extent, the public at large, Malta used to have a significant edge over many other countries. We are slowly but surely losing that edge. English is now compulsory in German schools, other countries, such as Spain, give tax incentives to parents who send their children on English language courses. On the contrary here, we have been witnessing a surge of the Maltese language to the detriment of English. Year in year out a high percentage of first year B.Ed students at the University of Malta – our teachers of tomorrow – fail their English language proficiency test!
The Maltese language is important as part of our national identity, however, let us not kid ourselves, it is largely irrelevant beyond the shores of Malta. We have witnessed a surge in nationalism over the years. To uphold Maltese at the cost of the English language is deplorable.
Sadly some leaders of this country have, in their over-zealous quest to heighten the profile of maltese, contributed sigificantly to the deterioration of English in Malta. I feel they have been misguided in this.
The fact that both languages are national languages is endorsed in our constitution. It is understandable that one would speak one language more than the other. Yet many deride those who speak English as their predominant language as being ‘tal-pepe’ and are told off by being told “ahna maltin – nitkellmu bil-malti”.
We are meant to be a bi-lingual nation. The sooner we embrace that and see it for the advantage it is the better.
[Daphne – What they actually say is “Ahna Maltin, nitkellmu bil-Malti haqq il-Madonna, haqq ***xx il-l**ba.]
is that the closest I get to you saying you agree? ;)
actually correction re Ghandi – what he actualy said was “For international commerce, undoubtedly English occupies the first place…..”
[Daphne – Yes, of course I agree. There are further ramifications. Anyone who speaks only Maltese is by definition poorly educated, because he or she has no access to the works of fiction and non-fiction that make for the difference between a person with training and a person with education. And that’s quite apart from films, newspapers, magazines, and so on. Over a couple of months last year, I spent a total of around 24 hours in waiting-rooms at St Luke’s Hospital, and in all that time I was the only one reading. Everybody else was staring blankly into space and huffing and puffing. I suspect it wasn’t that they couldn’t read, but that they couldn’t read English, and the Maltese options are not exactly wildly tempting or interesting.]
All the confusion in the use (or misuse) of the English language is the result of the concerted attack by so-called defenders of our national heritage to downgrade our second official language and to glorify the use of Maltese to the exclusion of all other languages. Except (perhaps) Italian.
It seems to me that the Maltese Language Taliban are winning the day.
I’d like you to open your computer’s Control Panel, double click on the Regional and Language Options, and click on the drop-down Current Format. If you’re using Windows Vista, under English you should notice that there are no less than 16 versions of the English language, ranging alphabetically from Australian English to the Zimbabwe edition of the Queen’s own language!
Who are we to say that Belize, the Caribbean, South African and Indian English is bad English? Go tell the Americans that their American English is utter rubbish!
I will now make my point: in Malta we don’t speak the Queen’s English – we speak our own Malta English version, developed over a period of two hundred years in contact with the British. The majority of Maltese speakers of English formulate their thoughts in Maltese, and translate the MALTESE concepts into English. And that’s a fact.
Malta English has not yet achieved the status that the other ex-colonies’ versions of English have achieved, but in a couple of decades’ time, we might get there!
Let us for the time being enjoy the prestigious status that our Maltese language is enjoying in Malta, in Europe and in the cyberworld!
[Moderator – There may be many different ‘versions’ of English, but only one actual English language. Nobody is saying that American English is “utter rubbish”, but it it remains American English and not English. Color, anyone? Fall? Fanny? Purse? What you call ‘Maltese English’ isn’t a language at all. It’s a patois, incomprehensible to English speakers.]
Joe M: The evolutionary purpose of language is to understand and to be understood. National pride takes second place to that. And how does a defence of poor use of English segue into a gloat about the prestige of Maltese – unless you believe that Maltese speakers are poor speakers of English? Why speak gibberish when it’s possible to speak properly – in any language?
@ Joe M
Are you another one of those who cannot accept that Malta is a tiny, tiny island with a population of just over 400,000 people – comparable to a mid-sized town anywhere else in Europe? Get real, won’t you? Maltese is totally and completely irrelevant beyond our national borders! Having said that, it’s absolutely imperative that the Maltese remain (or better still, become) truly bi-lingual and not speak Malglish (Trid nixtrilek ice-cream hi? Ixrob il-milk!)
@all: firstly, I apologize for the spelling mistakes in my previous contribution which I’ve just re-read. Haste got the better of me.
Secondly, I agree with Daphne that, although there may be various versions of English termed American English, Australian English etc, there is only one called simply “English” and this is the version which is accepted in Malta. There is no “Maltese English” – this is just bad English. If bad speakers and writers of English could expect to get away with it by claiming that this is their version of English, then there would only be chaos.
I do not agree with those that blame the poor standard of English (and other foreign languages) in Malta to the emphasis on Maltese. My generation was compelled to study four languages in secondary school and many mastered at least three of them and some all four. What needs to be done is to instil in students the love of learning with patience. One does not fully master a language in a few weeks but along a more protracted period of time.
Free thinker: Your pseudo name suits you to a tea. You indeed are a free thinker, but one who’s also a logical and informed one.
In response to the lack of differentiation in the maltese “Neputi/neputija”, I bring this slightly off the topic enlightenment…
Since I’ve been married to my lovely Greek wife, I’ve discovered that there are many cultural similarities between Greeks and Maltese than I have ever been taught in school or by friends and relations.
All Greeks refer to any Greek person who is of their parental generation as “Thea” or “Theo” (zija/ziju)out of respect of course. They (the false aunties/uncles)in turn refer to these people as “anepsi” or “anepsja” (neputi or neputija). The fact that younger people refer to the older as zija/ziju or neputi/neputija (vice versa)actually means that any 40 year old (for example) will call any 80 year old “Aunty” even if he’s never seen her before in his life. Therefore, anybody within hearing distance would not assume that they’re in fact related, and if they really were related, the same would apply.
So if you (for example) met your neighbour(s) whilst taking a stroll in Athens on say a warm sunny afternoon in the middle of say a summer arts and crafts festival and you met someone as old as your parents and were to call them uncle/aunty (out of respect), a passer by would be none the wiser as to whether or not you’re friends or relatives.
The point I am making is that in Greece, there is no distinction between zijiet u hbieb and neputijiet u hbieb. I had absolutely no idea that Maltese mentality can be found in the Greek islands. Nor did I ever understand the term “min wara ‘l-muntanji” until I heard from Greeks that in the old days, education never reached villagers who lived behind the mountains and this is how they justified their sometimes very Maltese mentality.
Much of Malta’s superstition is actually found in Greek homes today, surprisingly not in the Italian homes! The evil eye is still talked about amongst most Greeks today. Here’s a small article which I found on the net concerning Greeks influences in Malta.
When the Roman Empire fell in 395 CE, Malta was placed under the eastern portion of the old Roman Empire, which was ruled from Constantinople. This change in ruling brought several Greek families to Malta, introducing various traditions, proverbs and superstitions some of which are still present in the Maltese culture of today.
Who knows, perhaps there’s some connection between Greeks’ reference to uncles and aunties and Maltese nieces and nephews!
PS. Ingravata, Karrozzi and tut(berries) are all current in Greek vocabulary.