It probably doesn’t reflect the social set-up as much as the habitual misapplication of imported words. But even that is symptomatic of other underlying causes probably. It is the need to impress with the use of foreign words without having the education to apply them properly.

On another note, I don’t think this can be a ricotta/rkotta parallel. Our family uses tfal tat-tfal and frowns on the rather derogatory kunjati but still uses l-irkotta. And I’m sure we’re not alone in this. So I can’t see a pattern there. But then again, each time I winced at the nephews/nieces mangle I never realized its use (misuse) was so widespread. What really gets to me in obituaries is the ‘adorable’ grandchildren (as opposed to ‘adored’) that the deceased would have left to mourn his loss.

{Daphne – Strange language, that has no word for grandchildren and the word ‘sir’ for father, but then a word for brother-in-law. Or maybe that should be ‘strange social set-up’.]

[Daphne – For the same reason that people in my family and my husband’s family and most of my friends’ families do, e-ros. Let’s not elaborate except to say that when people use ‘neputijiet’ for grandchildren they usually also say ‘irkotta’..]

Another Italian word which has been wrongly introduced into the Maltese language is the word ‘cognato’; this in its original language is used to refer to my sister’s husband. ‘Cognata’ would be my brother’s wife (sister-in-law) but has been incorporated into Maltese as ‘kunjata’, meaning my wife’s mother. Another case of the weakness of our language finding solutions which make it even weaker.

[Daphne – ‘Kunjata’ is used only by those who say ‘irkotta’. All others say ‘omm il-mara tieghi’. And even that is fascinating, because the use of ‘my man’ and ‘my woman’ to mean ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ indicates that formal marriage might not have actually been the norm. The Arabic word, which we have retained but hardly ever use, is ‘zewgi’.]

Also, it strikes me as interesting, but not entirely surprising that few distinctions are given to children (who are the least powerful in the collective), while extra distinction is given to elder matriarchs and and patriarchs (who are the most powerful). For instance, my mother-in-law Carmen is not frequently referred to “Carmina” and my father-in-law Martin was frequently referred to as “Martinu” before his death. Both of them had several names and titles within the family.

This is all speculation, of course, but it seems to me that language often denotes power.

Perhaps the lack of specific language for grandchildren indicates their lack of power within the traditional Maltese family collective.

Excellent, true and quite entertaining. Thanks!

The English Plural

We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

Let’s face it – English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;
Neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren’t invented in England .

We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes,
We find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,
And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write, but fingers don’t fing,
Grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?

Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend?
If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them,
What do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speakingEnglish
Should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.
In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?

We ship by truck but send cargo by ship…
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,
While a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
In which your house can burn up as it burns down,
In which you fill in a form by filling it out,
And in which an alarm goes off by going on.

And in closing……….
If Father is Pop, how come Mother’s not Mop.?

An Arab with some basic knowledge of English and Italian, can master Maltese within approximately six months.

An Englishman who spent over 40 years in Malta, could hardly hold a basic conversation in Maltese.

This proves that Maltese could be considered as a dialect of Arabic, but now it enjoys the status of a national and official language, with very rich literature for the number of people who speak it.

If French wasn’t in use during the Middle ages, then neither was Italian, for it didn’t exist back then. My own hypothesis is that “missier” came in much later than the Middle Ages, when the Maltese started crawling out of their caves and hovels into the newly-built cities, and kiddies could finally recognise their daddy from among the dark mass of cloaked women, siblings, goats and chickens in their communal cave.

Whatever the truth, it goes to show that the notion of Maltese nationhood from the earliest times, as propounded by heavyweights like Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, is a complete fabrication. If Malta is an independent state, it’s because of a quirk of history. The sooner we come to terms with that, the sooner we’ll shed our inflated sense national narcissism.

“It’s just that very many more people are now speaking it and writing it, without first having learned it properly.”

That’s funny. Most of them seem to have wound up in parliament, the civil service, the law courts, university and broadcasting.

@DCG: you do have a point but it is a fact that the standard of Englsih expected at secondary schools seems to be much lower than it was in my time when less than 50% of candidates passed their English language “O” levels — not because their level was lower than it is today but because standards were higher and obtaining a pass-mark more difficult.

The same may be said about Italian and French.

Some things do not even seem to be given any importance any more. Punctuation comes to mind.

I meet people in possession of post-graduate degrees who often use malapropisms, bad syntax, wrong pronunciation and have a general lack of awareness of nuance between one word and another.

As for Maltese, barbarisms and linguistic atrocities are constantly heard on radio and TV.

Old chestnuts like the idea that a word of Italian origin is not Maltese are still current.

Some serious scholars do not even classify Maltese with Semitic languages any more and claim that it is a language on its own, so much has the Semitic element moved away from Arabic.

When it comes to knowledge of history, especially Maltese history, one is amazed how ignorant most Maltese are, including some politicians, journalists and even highly educated people. It is such a pity when today there are a number of excellent books on the subject.