This website has a new rule
I have received a veritable river of comments in response to that cult video of Mrs Muscat’s speech on International Women’s Day, all talking about kids, kids, kids, kids.
Readers, the word is CHILDREN. They are CHILDREN, not kids. Kids, in idiomatic English, is a slang word used increasingly rarely and then only by certain kinds of people and perhaps in an occasional reference in a particular sort of magazine article, when it is generally used either 1. ironically, or 2. non-ironically by people of poor education for their equally poorly educated audiences.
The way the word ‘kids’ has been adopted with such dogged determination in Malta really fascinates me. It has replaced the word ‘children’ entirely.
Kids is not an amusing and casual way to describe children. It is increasingly old-fashioned and when used in unsuitable contexts it is pure ‘English as a foreign language’. Germans love calling children ‘kids’ when speaking English – that just about says it all.
I’ve started the ban already by wiping out all references to kids and replacing them with ‘children’. From here on in, ‘kids’ is going to get the smiley and exclamation mark treatment.
And please take this in the spirit in which it is intended. It’s really not encouraging to see Maltese English developing into a distinct patois – which it has already, I suppose.
It’s even worse when you hear the word actually spoken: ‘kits’, as in gym kits, because the ‘ds’ sound is seriously problematic for native Maltese speakers. “I have to leave to pick up the kits.”
Is there a problem with saying ‘children’? I mean, really, what is it?
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A ‘kid’ is a young goat. Enough said.
I think the increase of the word “kids” as opposed to “children” can probably be attributed to the influence of Americain culture. I have lived in southern California for 35 years and here the two words are used synonymously, with “kids” being, by far, the prevalent choice.
Certainly, in America, “kids” is not considered old-fashioned, used rarely or used only by “people of poor education.” Most of my friends are college educated people and more often than not, it is their word of choice when refering to their offspring.
I sympathise with your frustration with the decline of the word “children”and respect your perogative to ban the use of “kids” from your blog. The fact is that American movies and TV programmes are watched by everyone, worldwide and consequently have an effect on vocabulary.
[Daphne – The official language here in Malta, Linda, is British English. Also, American English is favoured only by Europeans who learned and speak English as a foreign language, and identifies them as non-native speakers immediately. So Europeans should make a point of speaking idiomatic British English unless they want to be taken for people who learned the language painfully at school or during a summer session somewhere like Malta (oh, the irony). Maltese people are not influenced linguistically by American films. They are influenced by each other and by our own media.]
You have to wonder, if with globalization sometime in the not too distant future, there will no longer be British English or American English, but just English, an integration of the two?
[Daphne – Not really, no, because usage, like table manners, is used for instantaneous sorting out of people and reading what they’re about. People love their differences and guard them fiercely. It is, in fact, extremely frustrating when lack of knowledge of a language and its accents leave you unable to work out what sort of person you’re talking to, forcing you to negotiate blindly in conversation unless you are willing to ask intrusive and tactless questions. We tend to take for granted just how much information we can pick up as soon as a person opens his mouth, if we are familiar with the language and its accents/variations in usage. I once introduced two Norwegian women to each other at a party, working on the assumption that, both being Norwegians living in Malta for some years, they might have lots to talk about. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The hackles rose immediately, and even though they spoke briefly in Norwegian, I could detect the dampened-down hostility. Later one said to me of the other: “She speaks like a rural villager; her accent is XYZ.” In other words, ‘please understand that I have nothing in common with somebody like her just because we are both Norwegian.’ Now if I had understood Norwegian and its accents, that awkwardness could have been avoided.]
I agree completely with the points that you made. I was thinking along more simplistic lines, as to whether some day in the future, we could have a common vocabulary.
Certainly the combination of a person’s accent, vocabulary and grammar gives away a wealth of information. My very British father has always said that in England, you could tell immediately, by the way a person spoke, their background and education.
Your story about the two Norwegian ladies reminded me of a similar experience my sister had years ago. There aren’t that many Maltese people in southern California. Someone at my sister’s work-place knew a young man who was Maltese and she passed on my sister’s number, thinking they would have a lot in common and might want to get together.
He did call her and when I asked her how it went, she said that he was nice enough to talk to but she could tell immediately that he was not of our kind of background and there was no way she was going out with him.
So my sister’s American friend made the same mistake you made with the Norwegians. She too thought that because they were from the same country, they would have a lot in common and they didn’t.
Language is dynamic and the English being spoken in Britain these days is heavily influenced by American English.
[Daphne – It really isn’t, apart from a word here and there. That’s a complete misconception. It is those who learn English as a foreign language who are heavily influenced by American English, whether they are European or Asian. Maltese people, oddly, are influenced by neither British English nor American English. Their English is influenced by Maltese.]
Also, this tendency to refer to the English spoken in England as British English, as though to ignore the many variants throughout the country, is to ignore the fact thatso-called British English is nothing other than the dialect that was spoken in the South-East later to be adopted by the rest of the UK as the standard English.
[Daphne – Again, another misconception. Standard English is not the “dialect that was spoken in the south-east” (have you heard some of the thick and heavy dialects in the south-east?) but the English spoken by the better-educated classes. This was not because posh people imposed their language on the rest of the country, but because posh people – in the years before compulsory education – were the repositories of proper usage and correct grammar.]
Now we know why Marsaxlokk cannot stop.
BWSC given to the Chinese who effectively get to use it to export electricity produced to the continent. Basically our smallish demand determines a higher price to justify their attention.
Enemalta meantime remains with the ‘right’ to choose where to get its electricity; A monopoly, paper tiger, depending on the new ‘strategic partners’ who get to produce another 300MW of ‘clean energy’ within EU borders.
And how, pray, does the other plant, the one proposed by Muscat, fit into all this, if not by rendering the interconnector the strategic partner’s (or partners’?) de facto exclusive property to use?
I see some major undercutting continental rates ahead. The problem with the Chinese is that they’ll change strategy but not the tactic.
Unrelated to the above but wonderful piece by Times of Malta today. They got so used to seeing John Dalli taking the biscuit that when the other John Dalli (the real PL one) got something they still put a picture of the John Dalli we’ve so grown to love :)
See Page 6 of the Times – Dalli appointed to harbour board
Kid is a young goat.
Nice one.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140312/local/former-libyan-pm-zaidan-in-malta.510251
Seems like Mr. Zaidan is in a habit of surprising Joseph Muscat with ‘unexpected’ visits.
I wonder whether Mr. Zaidan was in Malta last month discussing the acquisition of a Maltese passport and picked it up yesterday before ‘proceding to another European country’.
‘Kids’ is shorter. Easier for the lazy ones to write ‘kids’ rather than ‘children’.
I’m not sure which sounds worse, ‘kits’ or ‘chindren’?
Isn’t kits better than chin-drins? I suppose that that was one of the reasons people migrated from the former to the latter.
I agree with your assessment that usage of the word “kids” is endemic among people who speak English as a foreign language. But then again, isn’t that the case here?
Unfortunately English has become a foreign language in Malta. And this general trend extends beyond linguistics. Indeed anything not distinctly Maltese nowadays gets a “foreign” stamp and is generally rejected in our increasingly nationalistic society. I still suspect however that while anything foreign is frowned-upon it is still secretly coveted.
http://www.independent.com.mt/mobile/2014-03-09/news/investment-and-growth-mainly-from-government-4190601220/
Speaking about the children – have you read this piece?
“This time, the event was organised by The Economist (to which Prime Minister Muscat paid a fulsome tribute in his pre-dinner speech, even saying the magazine shares in his and his wife’s intimacy and is beloved by his two children).”
Seriously? Did he really actually say that?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Look up kid, kids, or kidding in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Kid(s) may refer to
Common meanings[edit]
slang for a child
slang for a young adult, especially a young man
engage in joking
Young goats
Goat meat from young goats
Leather (kidskin) made from the hide of young goats
small child
Linguistic extremism.
Finally, I find that I am not a lonely voice shouting in the desert. The tendency to adopt any gimmick to project an image of “up-to-dateness” is lowering standards, moral or linguistic, and is leading to perversity and confusion.
What is wrong with acknowledging that our sons and daughters are humans, children, and not the off-springs of goats?
The kids on this island are not the children.
I thought the Maltese shagged goats.
In the meantime: http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-03-12/news/libya-tanker-incident-could-deal-final-blow-to-maltas-diving-industry-4228972546/
Malta and LALA land: the tanker has been shot at, hit and still sailed away last evening. Shadowed by USS Bush and another italian ship, well away from Malta. At one point there were comments that a little Maltese one appeared too. The moment that ship sailed away, the plausibility of Malta acquiring oil or any of its products, diminishes.
Well done! I have been pointing this out ad nauseam. I usually tell people who refer to children as “kids” that they are referring to children and not young goats.
“Readers, the word is CHILDREN. They are CHILDREN, not kids”.
Thank you for this. If the children are kids, their parents must be goats.
Just for the record, I always say ‘kids’ and I am a native speaker. Yes, it is informal – that much is true.
And no, I am not ‘a certain kind of person’. But yes, in Malta it is now a flashy word.
In everyday English I can’t say the word ‘children’ without feeling I have a pole up my – well you get me.
[Daphne – Then you’re not a native speaker. All native speakers of British English routinely say ‘children’ not ‘kids’ unless they are or were from a disadvantaged background. I have never said ‘kids’ in my life, which is saying something given that for many years I was surrounded by them, and couldn’t say it if I tried because it sounds unnatural.]
I disagree. ‘Children’ used in an everyday context is pretentious and stuck-up.
[Daphne – Believe me, Albona, it really isn’t. On the other hand, it is those who have substituted, wholesale, kids for children, who communicate messages about themselves, and they’re not messages they would be happy with.]
Just thinking of my English, Kiwi, Aussie, South African friends and I will have to tell them next time I see them that in fact they are not native speakers just on account of them using the word ‘kids’ in a colloquial context as opposed to ‘children’.
[Daphne – That is not what I said, Albona. It is in Europe that the use of ‘kids’ in substitution for ‘children’ indicates a non-native speaker. Germans and Italians, for instance, say ‘kids’ doggedly, because they think it’s the proper word to use. English people who say ‘kids’: I could give you a sociological breakdown including the conversational context, but it will be taken the wrong way, so I won’t bother.]
By the way, yes, thanks for calling me a prollie. I’ve always been called a try-hard in that respect in my attempts at being recognised as one. Now I can show them proof of having been called one online. Lining up for the badge.
I would not take it the wrong way at all. There are different registers in most developed languages and I agree when you say that ‘kids’ is not the right register for this blog.
That register is more at home on the Times of Malta comments board. But to suggest that the use of the word ‘kids’ is the preserve of uncouth illiterates is to deny the importance of register and context in any conversation.
If I said ‘children’ at the pub, and this applies right across the UK and the former Empire, I’d be risking a kick in the mouth.
[Daphne – Wrong. Truly wrong. The very idea that somebody would kick you in the mouth for saying ‘children’ is so ridiculous I don’t know where to begin. On the other hand, you will be assessed on your use of ‘kids’ in anything other than a throwaway remark like ‘he’s just a kid’. Have you asked yourself why, when you’re lining up to board at a British airport, a request is made for “those with young children” to board first? Children, not kids. ]
I agree, it is complex and I know the many nuances associated with the word, do not doubt that.
Yes, register is the key word here. Kids is colloquial which is what I have been saying all along. In a formal setting, for example on a notice or any official document one would use children. In a spoken context one would use kids. In any case this whole business of needing to size people up on the basis of social class has been turned on its head. For years the BBC has made efforts to rid itself of the prejudice towards non-south east accents and people from higher class backgrounds go to great lengths to sound less posh. The Queen even attends classes on sounding less posh for her speeches. Bottom line, children formal, kids informal. Or we can do what we normally do and agree to disagree.
[Daphne – I am tired of this endless discussion. The fact of the matter is that yes, you can tell a lot about people who will always say kids when they mean children, and when they are neither American nor Australian. I hate to disappoint you, but learning how to ‘dumb down’ one’s accent when around or speaking to people who might get chippy or upset or feel alienated by what it says about you is actually an act of superiority: ‘I must learn how to sound less posh so as not to upset the proles, but when the chippy proles are not around, I will revert to the default position.’ Far from turning on its head “the need to size people up on the basis of social class”, changing your accent while temporarily in the presence of their social inferiors is one big act of sizing them up and behaving accordingly. In sum, if an English person with one of those accents which upsets you because of its ‘poshness’ talks to you in a dumbed-down accent, he is not doing it for reasons of fashion or democracy, but because your accent marks you out to him as socially different and he is, in his mind, going DOWN to your level. You have mistaken patronizing behavior for something else.]
So I assume “sprogs”, “saucepans” (saucepan lids, kids) and “nippers” are also not permitted.
“Nippers” is still used by Kenneth.
Funny you should mention him. He once referred to childrien as the little ” kiddies” . But then again, children should be referred to as children. I detest the word kids.
Kenneth is but one out of scores of journalists who think they’re being so hip and cool by going Full British.
Then they fall flat on their face.
A few days ago I saw a headline in Times of Malta, about some Maltese public official who’d died: “One of Malta’s foremost gents”.
Gents?!
Then you have the sports pages of Times of Malta and The Malta Independent, with their contrived Estuary and Merseyside English, again thinking they’re so hip and cool because they’re using tabloid language: “Birkirkara boot sorry Marsaxlokk.” “Rollicking Stripes sweep the field against Valletta.”
It’s terrible. It sounds artificial, is artificial, and clashes so badly with the rest of the paper.
There is yet another version of Maltese fake-British English which is Civil Service English, full of “Your good self”, “As per the below” and “Kindly” do this and that.
We may think it’s a harmless bit of national idiosyncrasy. But it isn’t. It’s extremely dangerous, because it’s cutting us off from the rest of the developed world.
At last!
There is however a big ‘BUT’! Try Google for a definition of ‘kid’ and I kid you not, you will not find any reference to ‘the young’ of the goat!
Then, on the same Google, if you ask what a young goat is called, the first page of many, gives the right definition of ‘kid’: A young goat is called a kid.
Whether it is pronounced as ‘kid’ or ‘kit’ is immaterial and unfortunately it is not just a Maltese trait to call their children ‘young goats’.
Excellent rule.
I’ve never used the word ‘kid’ to refer to a child. My impression (though I might be mistaken) is that it’s an American thing. Americans and those who learn English through films use ‘kid’ all the time.
If they want to use it, fine, but it’s not for me. I’m not sure how American words have managed to turf out some British English words in Malta. Our schools are supposed to teach British English, we get many British tourists and we are a former British colony.
When was the last time you heard a Maltese use the word ‘lorry’ instead of ‘truck’? And when did ‘aeroplane’ become ‘airplane’? I very clearly remember people using ‘aeroplane’ not so long ago. The word ‘flat’ is being chased by ‘apartment’, and where on earth did we get the word ‘lawyer’? How come we don’t use the word ‘solicitor’ or ‘barrister’ (I’m really curious about this one).
Thank you for imposing this rule, Daphne. I like it. Maybe you can save us from starting to use ‘wanna’ and ‘gonna’ for ‘want to’ and ‘going to’. Interestingly enough, some words still hold out. ‘Puschair’ has not been replaced by ‘stroller’ and ‘tights’ has not been replaced by ‘pantyhose’.
Many people today use a hotchpotch of British/American, formal and informal language. That is probably fine in Germany and the Netherlands but as a country which is supposed to have English as a main language, we should know better.
Daphne, I think you and your readers will enjoy this article about punctuation marks. Six writers make their case for a particular punctuation mark trying to convince readers that it is the best one.
One bravely argues that the exclamation mark is the best. It would be interesting to know which punctuation mark you have an affinity for, Daphne.
It’s published in the current edition of Intelligent Life. The article is in short sections so I have to post it in different links.
http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/rosie-blau/big-question-punctuation-mark
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/julian-barnes/exclamation-mark-best
http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/kassia-st-clair/ellipsis-best
http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/claire-messud/semi-colon-best
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/ali-smith/ampersand-best
http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/norah-perkins/dash-best
http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/johnny-grimond/comma-best
It is all the American film and tv influence. Proper English film and tv productions are next to non existent on laocal television stations.
All one has to do to get some general idea, one can watch ten minutes say of E! Entertainment or and ten minutes of BBC Entertainment.
They are less and less common right across the Anglophone countries. It is the result of cuts in funding. That is why most programming is now American commercial rubbish. Compare the programmes of the 60s right up to the 90s, even, if not especially, those from the US and see the difference in quality, wittiness, storyline etc and compare it to the dumbed down sensationalist crap we get today.
The UK, Australia, New Zealand produce close to nothing these days. Britain is still holding out, but barely. Probably France is the only coumtry still willing to publically fund quality programming.
One can always distinguish an idiot by his idiom. It is as imple as that, for those who do not think Maltese when they speak English.
When I was living in Malta at the turn of the century, life was hard and we had very few job opportunities. I was a poor goatherd, taking my flock across gholjiet musfara with nary a blade of grass. So like many of my fellow countrymen, I emigrated to America.
On our way from Southampton to New York, our ship struck an iceberg. Over the tannoy, the crew were ordering “Women and kids first.”
Now I live happily in Manhattan with Ritienne and our pet goat.
As my American daughter would say,”Baxter, you crack me up !”
Jack?