Manglish
I agree with everything that Labour shadow minister Evarist Bartolo says on the subject of how English and Maltese are taught in schools, and why neither language is learned properly.
So I thought it unfortunate that he began his article about this, in Malta Today last Sunday, with a spectacular piece of literal translation from Maltese to (unidiomatic) English:
“We have thousands of children being brought up in families where English is not spoken regularly. We have thousands of children living on these islands whose first language is not Maltese.”
We have thousands of children? We have thousands of children living on these islands? Really? You don’t say.
English uses ‘there are’, and better still, avoids this altogether and lets the verb speak for itself, as in:
“Thousands of Maltese children are brought up in homes where English is not spoken regularly, while thousands more do not speak Maltese as a first language.”
But why am I carping? Bartolo has unwittingly illustrated his own point that languages are a bloody business, and so children need all the help they can get.
Did I say children? Adults need it too. The English written and spoken by Maltese grown-ups has long since parted company with anything that a native English speaker might recognise or understand.
Most conspicuous is the loss of the interrogative form. When did you last hear a Maltese person form a question properly in English? “You’re going?” “You’re staying?” “You bought that one?”
They think they’re speaking English and then wonder why the only people who seem to understand them are other Maltese people.
Then there’s the limited vocabulary. Even those who think themselves sophisticated butterflies in our tedious social whirl have ever fewer words at their disposal, so that conversations sound astonishingly like an adult version of those Janet-and-John books we read in Miss Tanti’s class in primary school.
‘John has a new car.’ ‘I saw John’s new car.’ ‘It’s really nice.’ ‘I like it.’ ‘I prefer the blue one.’ ‘No, black is nice.’ ‘I like black.’
If somebody at the university were to conduct research into the number of nouns, adjectives and verbs used by supposedly educated people when speaking English (perhaps this research has been undertaken already; if so, please point me in the right direction) they might find that it is roughly at par with the number used by the British underclass.
Even the supposedly sophisticated are unable or unwilling to take advantage of English’s vast lexicon without sounding like a third-world conference delegate reading a speech written by somebody who speaks English as a fourth language. Politicians on both sides of the house are the very worst culprits.
I can’t help thinking that this is because the Maltese mind can’t see the point of so many words and dispenses with what it thinks to be the surplus, making do with a serviceable core of basic words, retaining the functional and dispensing with the decorative and expressive.
The indigenous language is functional, and so we crop English to fit with what we know. And back we come to the tiresome question of whether impoverished thought breeds impoverished language or vice versa.
As Evarist Bartolo remarked, the source of our linguistic ills is a national curriculum which insists on a one-size-fits-all policy. It assumes, quite ridiculously, that all children speak both Maltese and English as mother tongues. If such children do exist, then they are in a minority so tiny as to be completely insignificant – less than a hundred of them, perhaps, if that.
Bartolo pointed out what is blatantly obvious: that thousands of children have to be taught English as a foreign language because they know little or nothing of it, while thousands of others must be taught Maltese as a foreign language because they do not use it at home. But our inverted snobbery and parochial obsession with ‘national identity’ does not allow us to acknowledge the latter situation, while our deluded belief that we are a bilingual people prevents us from seeing the hard truth of the former.
I would add that in between the extremes there are shades of grey which call for lessons of a different order still: children who know only Manglish and believe it to be English; children who speak fluent Maltese but whose general education is so poor that they are unable to understand how sentences are formed or why grammar is what it is.
Has nobody stopped to wonder why it is the very people who speak nothing but Maltese who spell and write it worst of all?
This article was published in The Malta Independent on Sunday today.
25 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
The Times of Malta reporter said the two injured men were taken “with a helicopter” to Mater Dei hospital. I am loathe to use another tragic fireworks explosion as an example but someone had one hell of a job packing two injured men and a helicopter off to Mater Dei.
[Daphne – ‘Haduhom bil-helicopter’; literal translation. BY. BY. BY. BY HELICOPTER. BY CAR. BY TRAIN. BY AIR. BY SEA. BY. BY. BY. BUT NOT BY WALK. brrrrr.]
I also agreed with most of Evarist Bartolo’s article last Sunday, in spite of the unidiomatic English, as you so well pointed out.
One of the main points of the article was about the insistence by the education gurus of these islands on keeping the Maltese Matsec as a combined language and literature paper. This is different from other language exams, including English, where language and literature are two different subjects, and one is at liberty to sit for the literature paper or not.
Including literature puts children who come from a predominantly English-speaking family at a gross disadvantage, because, although they might just manage to scrape through the complex grammar, they are totally lost when it comes to comprehending the heavy prose of Maltese literature.
[Daphne – That Maltese literature is a problem for all children, regardless of their linguistic abilities. I know one boy who speaks Maltese as a mother tongue, whose parents speak no English at all – literally, nothing – and who has just failed the Maltese O-level paper but passed in English.]
I have had many an argument with people at very high levels, including former Ministers for Education, but their mind-set is incredible. Little do they realise the hundreds of young people who are having to seek tertiary education abroad since the University of Malta insists on a pass in the combined Maltese subject.
These young people are doing so at great personal and financial sacrifice particularly of their parents, who feel badly let down by the whole nonsensical situation.
These people are being punished by their own country for having grown up with English as their main language. Of course most of these ‘exiled’ youths will probably remain in the country where they will graduate, which is a great loss to the country, though not necessarily so to themselves.
People who think they have what it takes to make it through university should be able to obtain a pass in any subject at O Level standard. Anyone with average IQ and who studies enough should be able to get a pass in any subject. If they cannot do that, maybe they should try pottery.
Entry requirements to 6th form and to University are already too low. I do not see it should be made easier.
Sa madwar ghoxrin sena ilu fl-iskejjel ta’ l-istat it-taghlim ta’ l-Ingliz kien wiehed dizastru ghall-ahhar. Dan nista nghidu jiena ghax dejjem skola ta’ l-istat mort.
Prattika ta’ l-Ingliz xejn. Lingwa qatt ma tista tipperfezzjonha minghajr prattika. Ghalliema ibghatu huma stess b’inferiority complex. Personalita’ ta’ xejn. Jisthu huma stess jitkellmu bl-Ingliz. (Ghandi d-dubju jkunux jafu huma). Il-lezzjoni ta’ l-Ingliz ssir bil-Malti.
Nispera li s-sitwazzjoni nbiddlet.
Niftakar fil-form 1 kellna ghalliema ta’ l-Ingliz li qatt ma smajniha tghid kelma wahda bil-Malti. Kulhadd kien accettha u maghha l-lezzjonijiet ta’ l-Ingliz kienu success. Hafna ghalliema jahsbu li jekk jitkellmu bl-Ingliz l-istudenti ta’ l-iskejjel tal-gvern ser iwaqqghuhom ghac-cajt.
Ghalliema tal-Inglizi qaltli It-TH spiccat mill-iskejjel ghal din ir-raguni ukoll minhabba dawk l-istudenti li jahsbu li l-lingwa ngliza hija ta’ min hu snob.
The problem, dear Daphne, is that we live on an island. You are right when you hint at linguistic depletion. It happens with genes too. An isolated population loses its genes, and its linguistic abilities.
The Maltese not only need to learn English as a foreign language, but also to travel a lot during their school years.
They need to understand that the world out there is much, much bigger than Malta.
It takes vision.
And I doubt whether Evarist Bartolo, or anybody else for that matter, really has what it takes.
He’s a fine one to talk, with his “Maria l-Maws”.
I don’t agree at all that ““We have thousands of children being brought up in families…” is “bad” English.
Just Google that phrase in “Advanced Search” and you’ll get a neat 82,200 results. I’m sorry, if it’s being used by a lot of people then it’s not bad English!
[Daphne – Really? On that basis, we should all begin speaking like Vicky from Little Britain. Incidentally, one of the first examples to come up was ‘we have thousands of children that…’. Children are WHO not THAT. Referring to people as ‘that’ is a vulgar and incorrect Americanism which is seeping into Manglish. I see it written everywhere here, including newspapers where standards are falling.]
“three children, two of which are adopted…”
Malta Today, yesterday
[Daphne – Yes, I noted that. Children are things, apparently. Manglish: the words ‘who’ and ‘whom’ do not exist. People that eat in restaurants, children which play with toys….]
The teaching of English in Maltese schools has been, for many years, an intriguing conversation topic in my home.
We had several funny episodes involving all my four children whose first language is English. Many a time they came home from school with corrections to their essays etc which they could not comprehend. The reason was that the original version was the correct one and the teacher’s amendment was wrong.
May I say that all four attended the top private schools at the time.
Having said all this I must now add that, subsequently, all my children ended up at prestigious centres of learning in the U.K.
On many occasions they were lauded for the high standard of their written and spoken English. This in spite of the efforts of their teachers of English in Malta !
My eldest daughter heads the legal department of a gigantic parastatal organisation in Britain with one and a half million clients.
The poor thing spends most of her evenings and a good part of her weekends gawping at her laptop at home. She meticulously goes through each and every letter that emanates from her office over her signature. Letters composed by her British staff, most of whom are uni graduates. She patiently converts their writings into plain, simple, intelligible English spelt correctly.
It seems to me that, if we have a problem with the teaching of English on our island, the problem across La Manche is even worse.
If anyone could explain this strange phenomenon I would be very grateful.
This article might be of interest: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&th&emc=th
I have worked in England for quite a while, and believe me the English (especially spelling) of young English university graduates is appalling. I was amazed at how apparently clever people lack basic English skills.
We Maltese tend to cringe when we hear other Maltese speaking English, but to the English ear, it doesn’t sound that bad. No worse than the Germans, French or Italians who speak English as a second language.
I think the problem in Malta is our perception that we speak good English. We don’t. We speak English as a second language. As a second language, our English is not that bad.
It’s limited in vocabulary, and we tend to literally translate whole sentences, but that’s very common in people speaking a second language.
We should perhaps start learning it as a second language. If we acknowledge the problem, perhaps we can try and improve the situation.
And don’t get me started on those families that insist on speaking only English at home. They perhaps think they are helping their children, but what they are doing is undermining language as a whole in the eyes of their children. They’re saying, ‘our own language isn’t important’, (and by extension, language isn’t that important) and then they proceed to teach their children ‘their’ version of English. Which in 95% of the cases is extremely poor.
In Malta, we don’t have a reading culture. Children are not read to by their parents. Children are not encouraged to read. I know adults who can count on the fingers of one hand the number of books they have read in their lives.
If you want to do something for your children linguistically, instill in them a love a books! They will learn better English than the pidgin English most Maltese parents insist on throwing at their offspring.
I don’t know what Evarist Bartolo takes for his Sunday breakfast. Whatever it is, he must have choked on it, yesterday. Your introductory paragraph was brilliant.
The level of both Maltese AND English has degenerated to a desperate degree. I have yet to see one letter or official document (not to mention contracts and other instruments) written in correct and idiomatic Maltese and I have yet to read one newspaper article which is not riddled with glaring mistakes.
Just one thing I have to say though: the problem is neither Maltese nor English. The problem is that children are being force-fed two languages from a very young age, when the parents themselves do not know how to speak at least one language well. The classic: “ghidlu bye lil man” is an example, but I can go on for hours if I start recalling all such examples.
Children are losing their love of reading, they are spending hours listening to “cartoon English” which is hardly correct or, indeed, English. Maltese on TV is horrible, and texting and chatting haven’t helped.
We have to instill more love for reading in our children, and, if necessary, bring back those old BBC productions: call me a snob, but as far as I’m concerned, that is the English I want my children to speak.
What I forgot to add is that any person from Nigeria, Canada, China or wherever outside the continent of Malta, can apply, and would be accepted for entry into our university, without a pass in Maltese.
So those Maltese people whose first language is English (one of our two national languages btw) are being ‘de facto’ discriminated against by their own high institution. Unbelievable.
Further to my previous post: It would take much more than average IQ and some study for a Nigerian, Canadian or Chinese to obtain a pass in Maltese.
The scope of learning English for the Maltese people should be to broaden their horizons not to become like the native English.
If Mr. Bartolo had to go to the UK and ply his trade there, his very venial mistakes wouldn’t impede him from having a brilliant career.
I know people with “basic” English speaking skills who have gone to the UK and still made good careers over there.
Only in a country like ours, with a deep rooted inferiority complex driven by our size, do we aspire to mimic in every aspect the language of a foreign nation.
[Daphne – If something is worth doing, then it’s worth doing well. And that applies to languages too. You might get a good job with basic English, but you’ll get a better one with perfect English – as long as you have the other skills necessary. Poor English makes for confused communication, and your first sentence is just such an example: scope doesn’t mean what you think it does, hence you have communicated something completely different to what you actually meant to. I understand you only because I am Maltese and know that Maltese people think that ‘scope’ is ‘skop’.]
I agree, when I wrote ‘scope’ I was thinking in Maltese and I also agree that Mr. Bartolo made some mistakes but my point is, how many French, Spanish and German people taking their size and our size in consideration, would come up with an article with that level of English (Mr.Bartolo’s), even though it has some minor mistakes?
[Daphne – They don’t have to. They speak French, Spanish and German, so English is just a bonus.]
We shouldn’t knock ourselves too much as a nation, we can improve, as you pointed out for my use of ‘scope’, but we are not that bad.
When I used to sit for my exams, our teachers (who were foreign) used to tell us that the pass rates of Maltese students were superior to countries outside the UK because we had the language advantage.
Ah, but countries outside the UK don’t claim to have two official languages. We hang on to the illusion of bilingualism by a mere thread, which means I can put “English (native language)” in my CV. But is it true?
I’ve been told that our level of English is abysmal by these very same French, Spanish and German people that you cite. It goes to show the true extent of the problem.
[Daphne – Marelli, Baxxter, you too? “People that…”. WHO WHO WHO WHO WHO WHO.]
English isn’t just our second official language. It’s our only lifeline to the world outside our tiny rock. Again, Vision 2015, anyone? Where we bank on offering an English-speaking workforce, our one and only (extremely marginal) advantage? If I were the PM I’d be waking up every night in a cold sweat.
There you go. I don’t speak English as a native language.
There are people like me who are more predisposed to succeed in subjects such as mathematics and others who are more predisposed to be strong in languages.
The Maltese persons who manage to obtain this “perfect” level of English usually fall within the latter group. But their choice of profession is then quite limited with the lack of analytical skills.
[Daphne – You couldn’t be more wrong, there, I’m afraid. Maths, logic and language are all dealt with by the same part of the brain. They go together in terms of ability.]
Should they decide to go to the UK to teach English they would still be at a disadvantage against their English peers because they can never compete against them.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/scope
This is the definition of “scope”. Please check out point 5 below:
1. extent or range of view, outlook, application, operation, effectiveness, etc.: an investigation of wide scope.
2. space for movement or activity; opportunity for operation: to give one’s fancy full scope.
3. extent in space; a tract or area.
4. length: a scope of cable.
5. aim or purpose.
[Daphne – Not used, I’m afraid. That’s why it’s at no. 5.]
I agree with liberal. First of all, there are other places where one can work apart from the UK. Another point is that a lot of large companies in the UK employ people from all over the world. Therefore one needs to be careful with any sophisticated use of language anyway.
I believe our faults are 2. Firstly, we think we speak English like the natives. We do not. We probably should learn English as a foreign language.
Secondly, there are many pseudo-elite people who insist on speaking some concoction of English and Maltese. It is simply awful.
@Baxxter – The French, Spanish and Germans would have some cheek to claim that our level of English is terrible. Older Germans can barely utter a word in English (the younger ones tend to be fairly good) whereas the French and Spanish are notorious for their inability to speak the language. Even lecturers in an English speaking University in France made plenty of translation mistakes and used grammar structures that made sense in their own language but not in English.
If I was to generalise, and we all know how dangerous that is, the average Maltese person’s English is way better (however bad it is) than the average French or Italian.
[Daphne – English is not an official language in France and Italy. Nor were France and Italy British colonies for 164 years, during which time they were literally overrun by people who spoke nothing but English.]
The Germans are slightly better, but not by much. The Dutch on the other hand, I would say are very good. So, as far as speaking English like a native, the Maltese fail miserably. As a foreign language though, I’d say we’re pretty good.
Then perhaps English should not be an official language in Malta.
Very good article, Daphne.
There isn’t much hope for the situation to change when even the independently-owned/run schools use “Maltese” comprehension workbooiks with worksheets entitled, for example, “Kif taghmel sendwic”.
There’s even less hope when one of the contributors to such workbooks (not for the “sendwic” passage, mind you), also happens to be in a top position at one such independently-run school, who also favours such expressions as “Titlef tern” (“miss a turn”) in her own books.
I am resigned to the fact that the people who lay down the official rules for Maltese are poles apart from many of us. How else would one explain the horrendous “Maltese” spelling as in “sendwic”?