Oh look, a new Maltese word
Published:
January 5, 2009 at 7:41pm
The situation has gone beyond the ridiculous. Our passion for translating literally from English to Maltese and vice versa has led to some people writing things like this, taken from MP Owen Bonnici’s blog. Come on, Owen. You can do better than that.
December 20, 2008
Ili hames xhur ma nappdejtja dan il-blog u l-ebda blog ma jista’ jlahhaq ma’ dak li ghaddejt minnu minn kemm ili ma nikteb hawnhekk.
So what should he have written, to avoid the pitfalls and pratfalls of literal translation?
Ili hames xhur ma nikteb xi haga f’dan il-blog……
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Nahseb li kieku jien kont nikteb ‘blog’ b’Ge ohra.Bhall ma’tikteb ‘flokk’, ghax fi ‘blog’ l-O titkaxkar bhal fi ‘flok’.
Xi tghid ghal kelma “eskursjonijiet” flok hargiet?
Jew “in-nies ikkonkorriet” meta dak li jkun ,irid jghid “in-nies marret bi hgara”.’Concorrere’ tfisser tikkompeti sa fejn naf jien.
U l-ohra ” varjazjoni ta’ kuluri” flok mod tal-kelma “ghazla ta’ lwien”.
Ghall-kunsill tal-Malti qisu kollox jghaddi, huma tal-fehma li “il-poplu jaghmel il-lingwa”.
Kollox jghaddi Daph , jekk il- verb ‘apdejtja’ jibda jinkiteb , malajr issibu fi-dizzjunarju tal-Malti.Heqq x’taghmel , mhux hekk irid ‘il-poplu’?
[Daphne – Blog ma jinkitibx ‘blogg’ ghax ‘bil-Malti’. Jibqa blog. Din hija kelma universali, bhal ‘chat’ u ‘web’. Inkella jigi l-istess bhal ‘apdejtja’. It-Taljani u l-Francizi izommu l-kliem Ingliz preciz kif inhu, u nahseb li ahna ghandna bzonn naghmlu l-istess minnflok dawn il-kummiedji. Wara kollox, hawn Malta suppost kullhadd jaf l-Ingliz u m’hemmx fejn titfixxkel.]
Beyond ridiculous is right.
There’s Profs Friggieri on Bond+.
[Daphne – About as much entertainment value as double physics in a freezing classroom on a wet January day.]
I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Azanmig huh?
To my mind this is is amazing. I can read the paragraph really easily yet I struggled at first to understand what “nappdejtja” actually meant, till I read the word out aloud and then I could understand that it is a bastardised phonetic word for updating.
If this trend persists we are just going to destroy the Maltese language and I pity the children who have to learn Maltese as their ability to write proper English is going to head down the toilet very fast.
[Daphne – You, I and anyone else who learned to read for the first time in English rather than a phonetic language can read that higgledepiggledy paragraph with no trouble or pause, because English is read by recognition of words as a whole, as though they are characters in, for example, Japanese or Chinese. Even though the letters are jumbled, the word can still be recognised. In languages with phonetic spelling, like Italian or Maltese, children learn to read by following each syllable. Each word is actually read in parts, rather than recognised as a whole. If you were to jumble the letters in a Maltese or Italian paragraph, reading it wouldn’t be as straightforward as reading a jumbled English paragraph.]
Look on the bright side – at least he wasn’t writing it with a “bajro”, as junior school children are being taught. I’d better not get started….
To be fair, “appdejtja” is included in the Aquilina concise dictionary as the translation of “to update”. There is an ongoing controversy about the way foreign (English) loanwords should be written in Maltese. Here’s what the Kunsill Nazzjonali tal-Malti has to say about it:
QUOTE:
IL-KLIEM LI DAĦAL FIL-MALTI MILL-INGLIŻ – Kif se niktbuh?
Għal dawn diġà hemm regola, imma hija wiesgħa u vaga. Għalhekk sikwit naraw kitbiet dwar dan fil-gazzetti.
Kif se niktbu: boiler… jew “boiler”… jew bojler? Boxing tippreferiha minn boksing… imma mbagħad ibboxja?
Se nimxu sewwasew kif imxejna fil-varjanti, għax dal-metodu ħadem u ħadem tajjeb.
Ħriġna Stqarrija għall-Istampa, biex kulħadd ikun mistieden jaħseb magħna u jikteb fehmtu. Inti wkoll għandek fehma, tista’ tikteb u ssemma’ leħnek.
Il-ktibiet inġabru fi ktieb ġdid, li serva bħala Dokument għad-Diskussjoni u tista’ tarah hawnhekk.
Fit-12 ta’ April 2008 sar Seminar Pubbliku, li għalih attendew ’il fuq minn 300 ruħ.
Il-Kunsill tal-Malti qed jiżgura li ma jiddeċidix qabel ma jkun sema’ u wiżen il-fehma ta’ kull min xtaq jikkontribwixxi, biex id-deċiżjonijiet ikunu ttieħdu minna lkoll flimkien. Deċiżjonijiet tal-Maltin kollha.
UNQUOTE
We might have our individual views, but I fail to see why we should ridicule others with different views.
[Daphne – Because it’s funny, perhaps? That’s the trouble, that spelling in Maltese has boiled down to a free-for-all of personal views, including mine that dots are redundant and that they were devised on the premise that Maltese people are too inherently and genetically stupid for word-recognition.]
Issa bis-serjetà, kif tghid “to update” f’sens informatiku bil-Malti? “Taggorna”? (Din ohra, strictu senso m’ghandniex l-infinittiv fil-verbi Maltin, jigifieri suppost ghedt “huwa aggorna”. Digà qed nara thread (ehm… suggett?) ta’ hamsin messagg, u ahjar nieqaf hawn.)
[Daphne – You don’t. You find some other way of saying it. Even the word ‘update’ is nonsensical in the context of a blog. You don’t update a blog. You write something new. By transposing ‘update your blog’ from English to Maltese, you’re just transposing an error. The trouble is that there are too many semi-literates on the internet, using words erroneously. Ann Frank didn’t update her diary. She wrote in it. The same goes for a blog. You would update, for example, a returning spy on what has been happening in his absence. Or you could bring last season’s wardrobe up to date. Updating your blog literally means bringing it up to speed with all it has been missing while it was holed up in the intensive care unit, prison, or boarding-school.]
Agreed – foreign loan words, most especially technical words, should be kept ‘as is’, and not translated in a most ridiculous manner.
John
Ta’ min iżomm f’moħħu li l-Malti huwa ħaj u, bħal-lingwi ħajjin kollha, dejjem jevolvi.
Kieku ma jsirx hek, kieku llum m’għandniex l-ilsien li għandna llum. Kieku ‘l-Malti’ għadu Għarbi kif kien meta l-Għarab kienu ġew fi gżiritna. Kieku ma nkunux nistgħu niftaħru li lsienna hu għani u uniku għax imżewwaq bis-Semitiku, bir-Rumanz u bl-Anglosassonu.
Kieku missirijietna kienu jirraġunaw fuq it-Taljan kif qiegħed tirraġuna int fuq il-kliem Ingliż fil-Malti,kieku fil-kontribuzzjoni tiegħek kien ikollok tikteb ‘dizionario’ u mhux ‘dizzjunarju’. Kieku Daphne kienet tikteb ‘preciso’ u mhux ‘preċiż’ u ‘commedie’ minflok ‘kummiedji’!
[Daphne – Given a choice, I wouldn’t. But I came along when those words were established already. And now I have a question for you: why do you, and for all I know others too, spell minnflok with one n when the first syllable is pronounced minn and not ‘meen’? The same goes for zokra: given that Maltese is supposed to be phonetic, I used phonetic spelling, which gives a double k, not one. One k gives the pronunciation as zoh-kra.]
The general trend that seems to be developing is that recent loan-words should be spelt phonetically while older ones, especially of Arab origin, are spelt according to the grammar.
Thus ‘skond’ becomes ‘skont’ because that’s how it’s usually pronounced while ‘bieb’ has retained it’s last b even though it is pronounced ‘biep’. The reason given is that the root of the word is ‘b-b’ (hence ‘bibien’) and therefore we should ignore phonetics and stick to the traditional spelling. The same reasoning is put forward for retaining the silent h and għ (and, incidentally, for writing one k in ‘żokra’).
Quite frankly, I believe that this double standard is not helpful and is creating confusion. As Joe M says, the Maltese language is a living one but then, so are all the other languages spoken in Europe and yet they do not change their orthography every other year as we are doing.
Daphne
Contrary to popular belief, Maltese is NOT as phonetic as we make it out to be. If it were so, we would all be writing “lipsa” instead of “libsa”, “biep” instead of “bieb” and “taraċ” instead of “taraġ”. I can go on for ever quoting a myriad other similar examples.
Thus, since Maltese is not strictly phonetic, it is not necessarily required to write “minn-flok” as pronounced, but “minflok” as orthographically correct: just like how in English we write “although” when we pronounce “all-thoe”.
With regards to “żokra” (navel): I’m sorry, but I do not pronounce it “żokk-ra”. I pronounce it like “for-ka” (gallows). Can you perceive that there’s a difference in the way “żokra” and “zokkra” (sugar lump) and “kikkra” are pronounced?
Maltese orthography is a compromise between five key principles: phonetic, phonologic, etymologic, morphologic and visual. These five principles demonstrate that there’s more to the Maltese language than normally meets the eye. I would like to go into each one of these principles in some detail, but I don’t think that this would be of general interest.
I would recommend a visit to the kunsill tal-Malti’s website at http://www.kunsilltalmalti.gov.mt to read about the fourth course on Maltese proofreading that the Kunsill, in collaboration with the University of Malta is organising in the coming weeks. All these aspects of the Maltese language, and more, are treated in detail during this very interesting one-year course.
……eeeeee……..I think I LUV Daphne writing in Maltese as well !!…. I think it would be brilliant to have a translation to Maltese of each of your comments Daphne…. OK….. I’m asking too much…..
[Daphne – I don’t translate from one language to another. When I write or speak Maltese, I think in Maltese. I grew up in a household where both languages were and are spoken. That’s why there is so much poor writing – and thinking – in both Maltese and English in the newspapers here. You can tell immediately that people are thinking in one language and translating into the other, and this even in the Maltese political newspapers.]
Joe, int tghid ghani u mzewwaq; jien nghid creole language, bid-diffikultajiet kollha li dan johloq. Barra minn hekk, hemmhekk ridt tghid Sqalli, mhux Taljan, l-ewwelnett ghax il-Malti ha l-element “Taljan” kwazi kompletament mill-Isqalli, u t-tieni ghaliex it-Taljan, meta l-Malti beda jinkiteb, ma kienx jezisti; kienu jezistu biss il-lingwi regjonali, bit-Taljan bhala l-lingua franca tal-klassi intelletwali.
Jien ma nafx kif tippersistu tghidu li l-Malti tista’ tesprimi kollox bih. Biex tikteb Malti korrett, trid tbiddel il-hsieb originali tieghek, u finalment id-diskors johrog mod iehor, u jbiddel is-sens tieghu. Inkella jekk trid tghid ezatt dak li qed tahseb (u hawnhekk, iva, finalment ahna verament bilingwi f’dan is-sens), trid tuza Malti mfarrak, “imzewwaq” bi frazijiet u grammatika Ingliza, totalment inkompatibbli ma’ l-istruttura semitika.
[Daphne – Your last point: I agree completely. Languages grow out of a culture, and reflect the thinking and way of life of that culture. Our culture changed as the result of exposure to a new, English-speaking culture, and that’s why we have ended up relying so heavily on the works that grew out of that culture. It’s also the reason why translations from English into Maltese and vice versa just don’t work. The thinking is completely different.]
I don’t mind transliteration, if you ask me. Then again I barely ever read or write anything in Maltese. But the reason the Italians and the French adopt an English word into their language without changing the spelling, is because they are all Indo-European languages. Maltese is a Semitic tongue – our language would look ever weirder without any transliteration. We have been translating literally since the English colonised Malta, it wouldn’t make sense to suddenly stop now, otherwise there wouldn’t be any consistency.
@ John Schembri short of Professor is Prof not Profs . Profs is generally used In Maltese to insult someone as in aw Profs
@ Daphne Maltese spelling rule. minn = from , min = who
This happens in Swedish as well, I’m sad to say. “Web” (as in www, not the spider’s parlour) has become “webb”, “blog” has become “blogg” (with the added “blogga”, meaning “to blog”). Even E-Mail seems to have become simply “mejl”, instead of the more correct “epost”.
Sometimes I’m not sure what to think of it, as loan words have been added to the language endlessly in the past with changed spelling (toilet instead of toilette etc), but they still irritate me.
I just wondered how would one translate ‘dental floss’ ? Floss ta snin…?!
@david s: I didn’t mean to be sarcastic when I wrote Profs. Thanks for the good advice.
I think it is a good continuation to Ganado’s “Rajt Malta tinbidel”.
I will be reading his book; have to finish “The guns and gunners of Malta” first.
@ Joe M: veru li il-Malti huwa haj; tant kemm hu haj li kull fejn kien hemm laqgha jew programm fuq l-ilsien Malti, jew kitbiet, dejjem issib in-nies tikkumenta li l-ilsien Malti qieghed jigi mmexxi mir-radjijiet u t-televizjoni. Meta m’hemmx kelma ohra ghal kelma suppost gdida, hemm turi li il-lingwa hija hajja. Imma f’gieh kemm hemm, tghidlix li hekk indahlu ‘eskursjonijiet’ ser naghmlu l-ilsien Malti iktar ghani.
Antoine Vella –
In other words, a proverbial “hallata ballata”. If we’re not careful we’re going to look at Maltese some day in the not-too-far future, and we’re not going to recognise it.
Guido de Marco used to call toothpaste dentifricju in mass meetings. This was in the context that Mintoff was reducing the liberty to use toothpaste of your choice.
[Daphne – I see no problem with that. Those with an Anglophone heritage call it ‘tooTpaste’ and those with an Italophile heritage call it ‘dentifricio’.]
@ Charles Abela – To floss = thammel is-snin
So this year is the Year of the Ox eh…..? (totally out of subject but had to post it somewhere).
[Daphne – It certainly is. Isn’t that beautiful? Now a hundred people are going to write in to say that you left out the ghajn.]
Tiftahx kotba, Charles. Ghadni niftakar l-infami Denfil biz-zjara ghand id-dentist, bl-apparat snin 50 (fil-“berga” ovvjament, ha nibqghu Mintoff’s little children) u l-ixkupilja tas-snien…
Eh u ohra. Jekk “skond” saret “skont” (hmerija madornali din), mela “discount” se jibqa’ “skont”?
Issa, jekk tridu tqabblu l-Malti ma’ lingwi Ewropej, qabblu fatt wiehed biss: kif il-lingwi Ewropej evolvew mal-kultura u l-hsieb ta’ min jitkellimhom, allura l-lingwa tiffitja (sic. u nerga’ nghid sic.) l-hsieb, imma l-hsieb Malti evolva separat mill-lingwa Maltija. U meta nghid hsieb Malti, qed nghid “il-hsieb ta’ persuna minn Malta”, mhux “il-hsieb bil-Malti.”
Jekk qed nitkellem fit-tul fuq is-suggett, huwa ghaliex nibza’ li se nzommu lilna nfusna lura, kif gara fil-pajjizi Arabofoni (jew Gharabofoni, ghiduli intom), li minhabba lingwa limitata, spiccaw bi hsieb limitat, u xekklu l-izvilupp kulturali u teknologiku taghhom. U dan mhux jien biss qed nghidu.
@Moggy
“If we’re not careful we’re going to look at Maltese some day in the not-too-far future, and we’re not going to recognise it.”
Would you recognize the Maltese of 500 years ago? Just check out the Cantilena and see if you can make sense of any of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantilena
@ Daphne
So you’re fine with ‘dentrificio’ being transliterated to ‘dentifricju’, but you make a mockery out of someone who transliterates English loanwords?
[Daphne – The final ‘o’ and ‘u’ are interchangeable in Sicilian.]
“The final ‘o’ and ‘u’ are interchangeable in Sicilian.” What about the “j”?
[Daphne – I take it de Marco was speaking, not writing.]
[Would you recognize the Maltese of 500 years ago? Just check out the Cantilena and see if you can make sense of any of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantilena%5D
I am now totally perplexed. Thanks for the link.
[Daphne – Poetry and other literary forms of that nature are not the best indicator of how people spoke. Look at some of the poetry written in our own lifetime.]
There’s another non-Semitic word in the Cantilena apart from ‘vintura’ – ‘gueri’. It’s of Germanic origin (“garo”), and survives in French as “guère” (= “hardly any”). But this is by the by.
The problem with Maltese is that it is THE element of national identity, in the same way that the Arabic language defines Muslim identity. The result? A fossilised Classical Arabic, far removed from the myriad spoken Arabic languages. I’d rather say “dental floss” than go through the masochistic verbal contorsion of inventing the equivalent Maltese phrase.
La inlissen “nibbloggja”, ma jagħmilx sens nikteb “blog” bil-Malti. “Blogg” hija l-kelma korretta. Fil-waqt li naqbel li qegħdin nesaġeraw meta nitbu kliem bħal “woxingmaxin”, s’issa r-regola għadha dik, u jien, l-ewwel wieħed, nimxi mar-regoli, anke jekk ma naqbilx magħhom, ħalli ma noħloqx konfużjoni.
Ċerti kliem tant saru parti mil-lingwa li ma jidhrux strambi meta tittraskrivihim kif jinħassu: friġġ, kowt, kowċ, per eżempju. U ara ma taħsbux li aħna biss nagħmlu dan. U mhux fl-Isvediż biss. Agħmlu esperiment żgħir: iktbu “kompjuter” u “maws” fil-“google” u araw kemm siti barranin jitilgħu li juru li ħafna ilsna Ewropej dan il-kliem addattawh għall-alfabett tagħhom.
@ H.P.Baxxter
The word “gar” is still frequently used in German prose and in contemporary colloquial German.
Maybe I’m going off subject, but here’s an example of thinking in Maltese and writing in English:
This is a comment appearing under a timesofmalta.com item today:
J Camilleri Baron (2 hours, 56 minutes ago)
I think Vodaphone are right on this. GO are just spraying pepper in the eyes of their irate customers who have been experiencing very serious problems with their internet connection.
Veru BZAR FL-GĦAJNEJN!
It all boils down to one thing – That the people laying down the rules for Maltese words / spelling do not share the same cultural background (bekgrawnd?) as the people they aspire to teach.
How else, otherwise, would words such as “messu” (for “imissu” – “he should”) or “dahak” (as opposed to the “dahaQ” which most of us are accustomed to) worm their way (back?) into children’s schoolbooks?
And yes, “bajro” probably does beat the lot – Why not “pinna”, anyway? As for kuker, tajer, wajer, hiter, etc (of which, if you please, the plural is officially kukers, tajers, wajers, hiters), well, need I say more?
@ Leo : Interesting. I’m afraid I only speak tourist German.
@ Manuel: Indeed, but our Akkademja does things in a half-arsed way. How do you spell the plural of “tutbraxx”? Is it “tutbraxxijiet”? “Tutbraxiz”? See my point? Once you start transcribing foreign words phonetically you either go the whole way or not at all. And we still haven’t resolved the issue of whether “buz” is singular, or plural, or both. And what would you put on the Maltese language DVD of “101 Dalmatians”?
I have just heard the President of the Union of Teachers use the word “niwworrija” meaning ‘to worry’ when he could have used ‘ninkwieta’ or even better ‘nithasseb’. Need one say more?
Rather than pathetic candid shows, some production company should have a weekly programme about all the terrible use of Maltese and English language aired on Maltese media the previous week. It would be a shocker of a show.
[Daphne – My pet hates of the moment: ‘once’, ‘majtezwel’ and ‘just’, as in ‘once li ghandna din, majtezwel…’ and ‘Just ha naghmel din, ta, imbaghad nistghu mmorru.’ What are the odds that majtezwel will soon find its way into a Maltese dictionary?]
Grazzi Manuel,minn kliemek nahseb li taf xi tghid fuq dan is-sugget. Il-kelma “Strajk” drajna niktbuha bil-Malti,imma “waxingmaxin” jien ma’ nuzahiex meta nikteb, inhoss li ghandi nikteb “makna tal-hasil”. Il-Germaniz mimli bi kliem hekk. Inhoss li l-Malti kien thalla wisq ghal-riehu, issa qed isir hafna xoghol siewi b’risq il-Malti. Il-kunsill irid juri t-triq ,u ma’ jibqghax jitmexxa mill-‘poplu’. Allahares l-Inglizi jiktbu l-ilsien taghhom mitkellem. Kompli bbloggja Daphne – kultant imn’Alla tkun int ghal-ilsien Malti.
@ H.P.
The Akkademja is grappling with a constant flow of problems whichg present objectibe difficulties. We have to give it time to come up with solutions.
Here’s my take on the questions you pose. A caveat, though: I am not trained in linguistics, although I love Maltese (and English, and Italian) dearly.
1. ‘tutbraxx’ – ‘tutbraxxis’ (although “xkupilja/i tas-snien” is still in use among the older generation). Forming plurals by adding -s and -is to English loanwords is nowadays grammatically acceptable.
2. ‘Buz” is a tough one. Colloquially, buz is very widely used for a single piece of footwear, and ‘bwiez’ for the plural.
3. 101 Dalmata
[Daphne – I cannot believe that there wasn’t a word in common use for ‘boots’, given that this is a very old type of footwear commonly used by men who could afford it, and by every person in the military. All soldiers wore boots and still do, so what do they call them? And what did they call them in the 19th century? Surely there is somebody who knows.]
H.P. Baxxter; Manuel and others
The entity officially responsible for Maltese grammar and spelling is the Kunsill tal-Malti not Akkademja tal-Malti. The latter is an NGO while the former is a government-appointed body with legal standing. The old name for boot was the Italian ‘stivala’, sometimes shortened to ‘stvala’.
[Daphne – I thought it was, as I seem to remember the word used for our Wellington boots when I was a child. In that case, there isn’t any justification for dissing the use of the English word when the previous word used was Italian, except, of course, for the fact that those who use it don’t seem to realise that ‘boots’ is the plural and that the singular is ‘boot’. Fascinatingly, though, the same people use ‘it-trouser’ (trawzer?) for a pair of trousers, which is actually a single item, and then when speaking ‘English’ call it ‘a trousers’. I just love the confusion.]
H. P. Baxxter: 101 delmejxins
[Daphne – No. Wanhantretendwandelmejxin. Pity it isn’t 170 Dalmations, because we have a word for 70 in Maltese: seventy.]
Does “zarbun tat-tromba” refer to boots or to other type of shoes?
[Daphne – That’s another one from my childhood: it wasn’t used for long boots, but for lace-up ankle boots/shoes that came up to the ankle or just beyond it. In my experience, it was used mainly for sneakers laced all the way up to the ankle (‘tennis shoes bit-tromba’}.]
101 Dalmatians bil-Malti tiġi 101 Dalmata u tinqara mitt dalmata u wieħed.
[Daphne – Le, ghaliex bl-Ingliz modern Dalmatian huwa kelb tar-razza Dalmatian u mhux persuna mir-regjun ta’ Dalmatia. Jekk trid tirreferi ghan-nies, trid tghid ‘mitt Dalmat u wiehed’ (bhal mitt Taljan u wiehed, u mitt Ingliz u wiehed) jew ahjar minn hekk ‘mitt persuna mid-Dalmatia u wiehed’ u jekk trid tirreferi ghal klieb, tghid ‘mitt kelb ta’ razza Dalmatian (jew Dalmata) u wiehed’. Meta taqleb minn lingwa ghal ohra, trid taqleb il-forma tal-hsieb u mhux il-kliem biss.]
Er, my point was that the correct Maltese rendering would be “Mitt Dalmatian u Wiehed”. Now, how do you write that? “101 Dalmatian”? “101 Dalmatians”? “100 Dalmatian u 1”?
Interesting observation about boots in the military. Seeing as the officers were British, they’d probably have used the English term. Which is why there’s no Maltese word for “rifle” or “round” or “machine gun” or “magazine”, or for the rank of “Gunner”. Even in today’s AFM, parade orders are given in English.
I’m tempted to say “Akkademja/Kunsill eat your heart out”, but I won’t, because our language experts are precisely that – language experts who are unaware of the huge number of non-Maltese words in daily use. And it’s none of their fault.
(P.S., please, TVM and Net and Souper Wann, it’s “patrOl boat”, not “pEtrol boat”.)
[Daphne – Boots were worn in the military before the arrival of the British. Boots are standard army footwear and have been for centuries. Words acquired from the British in spoken form in the 19th century are pronounced differently to those acquired through exposure to written English – hence the word ‘skuna’ (from ‘schooner’). Nowadays it would have been ‘skuneRRRRRR’. Another example is ‘kitla’, which comes from an unsuccessful attempt to mimic the rapid syllables of ‘kettle’. Nowadays, the word is ‘ke-tiiiil’.]
No they weren’t. Soldiers would have worn normal shoes, or gone barefoot and those who did wear boots (riding boots for the minuscule cavalry squadron, or for officers) wouldn’t have been “Maltese”-speaking. They would have spoken Italian, or French, or Spanish. (Which is why almost all Maltese words for 16th to 18th century technology – tools, shipbuilding, etc – are of French/Italian origin.)
P.S. I’d rather have skuneR for schooner than “dghajsa b’velocità qawwija” for speedboat.
[Daphne – They may have been ‘normal shoes’ but they were still called boots. I don’t expect there was an Arabic (what the anything-but-Arabic people like to call ‘Semitic’) term for leather footwear that protected one’s feet and calves from mud and freezing cold, for obvious reasons of climate and style of dress, but the Maltese language must have absorbed a word for boots from a language other than English, before the arrival of the British. That’s what I’d like to know. We’ve had knowledge of boots for centuries, but we’ve only been calling them ‘bwiez’ for a decade. From my childhood, I remember ‘zarbun tat-tromba’ and the Italian ‘stivali’.]
Daphne,
Il-kelb li bl-Ingliż jissejjaħ Dalmatian bil-Malti jissejjaħ Dalmata (ara d-Dizzjunarju ta’Aquilina)
HP,
Il-frażi tinkiteb 101 Dalmata u tinqara mitt Dalmata u wieħed, l-istess bħalma 63 ktieb tinqara tlieta u sittin ktieb.
[Daphne – Mela Aquilina ma tantx kien jifhem fil-klieb, ghax kien zbaljat. Dawk li jifmu fil-klieb ma jghidux Dalmata imma ‘kelb tar-razza Dalmatian’. Kif qal x’imkien iehor H. P. Baxxter, meta taqleb mill-Malti ghall-Ingliz u vice versa, trid taqleb il-hsieb ukoll. Allura skond Aquilina, kelb tar-razza Alsatian trid tghid li hu Alsata? U nispera li muhiex Elsejxin.]
All soldiers wore boots and still do, so what do they call them? And what did they call them in the 19th century? Surely there is somebody who knows.]
The Maltese Ladybird book version of “Puss in Boots” is entitled “Il-Qattus fl-Istivali”, if that is of any help.
[Daphne – Oh dear god, a literal translation of Puss-in-Boots. ‘Il-qattus fl-istivali’ means that this must be a very small cat – and what’s more, a cat in two parts – or a very large pair of boots because the animal is inside them. And then we wonder why children are leaving school sub-literate. Imagine being in a classroom, noticing what’s wrong with that translation, and pointing it out to your teacher only to be reprimanded. I well remember how my respect for the authority of my Maltese-language textbook diminished when it occurred to me that the ‘l’ had taken the ‘n’s place in Id-Denfil, and that it probably had something to do with the same affliction that caused people who filled up my father’s car to ask him how much petlor he needed. And there it was, enshrined on a textbook cover.]
Then again, “Goldilocks” is “Nokklasaffra” …
[Daphne – And Cinderella is Sindirella, because the person doing the translating probably doesn’t know what cinders are.]
Daphne – “In my experience, it was used mainly for sneakers laced all the way up to the ankle (‘tennis shoes bit-tromba’}.”
Now don’t go confusing the people who insist on calling tennis shoes “slippeR” (in the singular). Which reminds me: maybe reporters should stop calling them bedroom slippers, because there is no other kind, unless they mean to distinguish them from defunct carpet slippers. Now, for nostalgia’s sake – and for Gerald’s too – here’s an example of what I mean: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20080207/general-election-2008/labour-promises-to-cut-red-tape-for-small-businesses
“Dr Sant was given a warm welcome on his arrival by ardent fans who had cottoned on to the news of his arrival. Some showed up wearing red tops, and a couple even ventured out in their matching red bedroom slippers.“
Regarding fairy-tales, it’s true that Maltese names seem strange to those of us who are used to the English version but we have to remember that ‘Cindirella’ is itself a translation from the French ‘Cendrillon’ and ‘Puss-in-boots’ was originally ‘Le Chat botte”.
The thing is that while most English people in the 19th century couldn’t speak any foreign language and needed the translations, most modern Maltese can at least understand some English so changing the names into Maltese might seem pointless.
[Daphne – That’s true, but there’s the other point to consider, which is that the English translations are grammatically correct, as in Puss-in-Boots (a person wearing boots is ‘in boots’, but in Maltese a person wearing boots is not in them but ‘with’ them, bl-istivali, not fl-istivali) and cinders, from which the fairy-tale girl’s name is derived, is the actual English word for what she spent her days cleaning up. Does anyone know what Snow-White has become in Maltese? The obvious would be Bajda Silg, but it doesn’t quite have that ring about it, like Bianca Neve, and I have a horrible feeling that it’s Zno (with a dot for the anally retentive) Wajt.]
Bajda borra would be a literal translation and I think it fits. Bajda silg is normally used for sick persons,like safra mewt. The Italians invent the words because they are not familiar to the English language so Cinderella becomes Cenerentola from cenere =cinders.
[Daphne – On the contrary, Italian come up with the right sort of words because these things are devised by literate, educated people, who know that cinders are cenere. It’s a safe bet that the people who came up with Sindirella don’t know that her name effectively means the ‘cinder-maid’ or ‘hearth-cleaner’. Equally, I imagine that those who are telling children at school that a ballpoint is a biro, and that it should be spelled bajro don’t know that it’s the name of the person who invented it. And if we want to use the English name for Cinderella, then we should use the correct spelling.]
Jekk Aquilina kienx jifhem fil-klieb ma nafx; naf li kien jifhem fil-kliem………
“Alsatian” bil-Malti Alsazjan.
[Daphne – Bla sens.]
Għaliex bla sens? Bla sens huwa li jkollok idea tal-lingwa tant angloċentrika li lanqas tirrealizza li l-“inkonsistenzi” qegħdin fl-Ingliż u mhux fil-lingwi l-oħra…..