Luxembourgish is a national language in a country whose population numbers roughly 400,000, and……? I’m not sure what your point was.

As far as I am aware, people had been clamouring for clarifaction of certain rules or their update, before accession. As far as I’m aware whatever changes took place were discussed in depth by people who are truly expert in the field. My own gripe is that I wish the Akkademja would decide about how to write certain loanwords, sooner rather than later..

@ Antoine,

Rules are being changed to accommodate new lingusitic realities – or to correct anomalies we have become aware of in recent years. I do not think “pitlor”, “animilju” etc will become part of the official language. “Kanolla” on the other hand is dialectical variant which has been in use for centuries. It is not unlike ‘mania’ in Italian, which though originating in the Roman dialect is now considered part of mainstream Italian.

Rules and guidelines are, of course, essential and have to be followed but why are they being changed so frequently? The fact that Maltese is a living language is no justification for, as I said previously, other languages are just as alive but do not keep changing the rules as we do.

The Kunsill tal-Malti is an important institution and I have every respect for its members but, are they perhaps being too democratic? I believe Maltese should be the language, not of ‘the people’ but of the educated members of society. Variants born out of ignorance should never be accepted even if they are used by a large section of the population. At this rate it’s only a matter of time before ‘pitlor’, ‘animilju’ and ‘kanolla’ are considered correct Maltese.

Many years ago I was the secretary of a committee and the chairman was stressing the need for confidentiality. One of the members spoke out to support him: “Dażgur li m’għandu joħroġ xejn milli jingħad hawnhekk. Għalhekk għandna sigrietarju – għax kollox sigriet.”

Luxembourg’s population corresponds roughly to Malta’s population.

Wikipedia offers following:

[Three languages are recognised as official in Luxembourg: French, German, and Luxembourgish, a Franconian language of the Moselle region very similar to the local German dialect spoken in the neighbouring part of Germany, except that it includes more borrowings from French. So in principle Luxembourgish is a High German dialect with the status of a national language. Apart from being one of the three official languages, Luxembourgish is also considered the national language of the Grand Duchy; it is the mother tongue or “language of the heart” for nearly all Luxembourgers. ……]

Why is it that Maltese nationals on/in Malta wish to flaunt their Maltese to a higher degree than that to which the citizens of Luxembourg aspire for their Luxembourgish?

I have a nasty feeling that a “correct” Maltese is being invented on the hoof, one possible reason being provision and facilitation for the Maltese translators/interpreters now working for the EU.

I beg pardon because another reason could be that “little things please little minds”.

[Daphne – Have you had a look at the latest dictionaries? It’s as though the authors trawled through every village bar and mass meeting and listened carefully to how people speak, taking notes, then went home and gave us the results.]

Please note that so far, no decision has as yet been taken by the authorities with regards to the tidal wave of English loan-words that is steadily washing upon our shores.

As far as I know, the Maltese Language National Council has not endorsed the use in school textbooks of words you’ve mentioned – but I stand to be corrected on this.

The Council launched a project in April last year to examine the extent of the intrusion of English words in the Maltese language, appointed a team of experts to study the effects and make recommendations, and organised a seminar to which all who were interested in this project were invited to attend and air their views. So much for “bossily instructing”!

I have been involved, together with 25 others, in compiling for the Kunsill a list of English loan words being used by contributors to a particular daily paper. The different versions of the same English loan-words we found in the same edition of the newspaper were a clear indication that local publishers WANT to adopt these English intrusions BUT they do not have clear guidelines to follow.

And THIS is what the Council is about to give.

I admire your (English) linguistic prowess: the way you express yourself in the English language, and your impeccable use of orthography is extremely rare amongst Maltese writers of English. But please don’t insult those who make a big effort to write correct Maltese.

You can’t use two weights and two measures when dealing with our two beloved languages: yes, I feel insulted when on the one hand you insist on perfect English, and on the other you brush everything aside by saying “u iva, l-aqwa li niftehmu!”.

[Daphne – That’s just the point: there is no such thing as correct Maltese because it is being invented on the hoof. If other people can invent words, then why shouldn’t I do so, too? Also, I object to being told that I have to spell Maltese words according to the pronunciation of the working-class or peasants (and by that, I am being factual not insulting, as in people who work on the land). Imagine if Italian or English were to be spelled that way. And that isn’t just the case with actual Maltese words, but also with English loan words which, we are bossily instructed, must be spelled and pronounced ‘blEkborT and ticeRRRR.]

[Daphne – Not at all. Words are read in context. No reasonably intelligent person would conclude that Joseph Muscat has a sugar lump tucked away in any part of his anatomy….though of course, one must allow for any form of outlandish perversion in human nature. Similarly, were Joseph Muscat to begin wearing a rug as his predecessor does, one wouldn’t conclude that it had been woven on an Iranian loom to a thousand-year-old design.]

Without entering into the merits or otherwise of this blog, at least spell the Maltese word for the belly-button (iż-żokra) in the heading correctly :)

[Daphne – I asked around the room whether anyone knew whether there were two ks or just one, and nobody knew so we took a vote. Given that one can now invent one’s own words in Maltese, I find using a dictionary largely irrelevant. Spell it as you feel like is the message I’m getting from all around me. I find it amusing that whenever one of my Maltese words is missing a letter or has one extra, people write in. But nobody writes in to correct the huge number of spelling and grammatical errors that are all over the web, even on this blog. I catch a lot of them before they go past, because I don’t want my blog to turn into the kind of embarrassing mess that you see elsewhere. So OK, I’m going to remove the extra k. But I don’t do dots and crosses. To me, a z with a dot and a z without a dot is a ridiculous distinction for literal-minded idiots. You will notice that you read Maltese by word recognition and not by ploughing through the syllables carefully mouthing each one with your finger beneath it – and this because you learned to read in English (I imagine) and English words are recognised, not read, in the same way as Chinese and Japanese characters are. That’s why you can tell at a glance how to pronounce though, through, and tough. And that’s why you read the word in my title correctly as iz-zokkra, even though I didn’t put dots on the zs, and despite the redundant K.]