According to the EU, 88% of Maltese persons speak English. http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_243_en.pdf

[Daphne – Those surveys are based on self-reporting, David. You ask respondents whether they can speak English, and being Maltese and extremely presumptuous, they say yes. Respondents are not required to sit an examination in English, not even basic English. Experience of life in Malta should have shown you by now that very few people actually speak the language, though lots know just enough to get by.]

A second/third language means what it says. There is the first language which is the one uses generally, and then there is/are the second/third language used less frequently. English is a second language in India and the Philippines. French is a second language in North Africa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_language

[Daphne – David, listen to me carefully now. It is PEOPLE (not countries) who have a second language. Countries have official languages. The official languages of Malta are Maltese and English. The first language of most Maltese is Maltese. Some Maltese speak English as a second language, but not that many.]

German English is called English. Then there is Manglish and closer to home Maltenglish. Since most Maltese are bilingual, in my view English is the second language but not a foreign language in Malta. Italian to a certain extent can be considered the third language.

[Daphne – David, define second language. Most Maltese can’t speak English. If you can’t speak a language then it’s not your second language. It’s a completely foreign language.]

The correct version of English spoken in Malta is received pronunciation, because there are no regional English accents in a place this tiny, and among a population this small.

It’s a rare form of English, but not entirely unique. Gibraltarian English is very similar. So is the English spoken by Zimbabwean whites. You see the common element here: isolation.

It is unfortunate that many of the native English speakers that we interact with in Malta tend to be the working class type, with strong regional accents, who snigger at accents they perceive as posh. Let them laugh. The alternative is what? To put on a fake Jamie Oliver Estuary English voice?

Don’t get me started on this. ‘Slijsis, kari, plejers, penalti,’ the list goes on and on. I’m told that this is done with the blessing of the self-appointed guardians of the Maltese language. As the Minister of Health and Energy would say: “fenominali.”

Therefore it is not surprising that Maltese English, German English, Irish English, Scottish English, Malaysian English, Indian English and other types of English are different from King’s or Queen’s English. Canadian French is different from the French language in France. Swiss Italian is different from Italian in Italy and so on.

Now do you know what our forefathers used to call a nemnebus in Malta means in English?

[Daphne – David, dear, you are extremely confused.German English? Malaysian English? For a version of English to be described as X English, it has to be the national/official language, and not something that is learned by a few people. English is the (in Canada’s case, an) official language of the United States of America, Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada. English is also an official language of Malta, but unlike in the cases just mentioned, it is not also a national language. It has never been spoken by anything other than the tiniest percentage of the population. To 95% of the Maltese population, perhaps even more than that, English is a completely foreign language, and learned and spoken as such.]

That’s a very interesting comment.

Do you really blame the Maltese for using the word stage instead of bus-stop? Bus-stop must have sounded like a cure for flatulance.

Same reason why the word bowl as in fruit bowl, is by most people pronounced as “bawl”. You don’t want to be misunderstood as referring to urine.

I call it “Sliema English”, well, at least that is how my British relatives refer to it. In my opinion, most Maltese tend to either try hard not to sound Maltese when speaking English, BUT incorporate Maltese syntax, or the other way round… Just pop by university and listen to bizarre utterances such as : “your friend, second year he’s in?” ; “Your mate is sick? She’s still coming but?” (“But” makes me think of the British use of “though”). I just don’t understand why locals speak English to Maltese people…

A friend of mine was once chosen to play football for a youth national selection. At the end of the first meeting, the coach, a well known brute at the time, informed the players that for their first training session, all they’d need to bring with them were “flokk, knicker u slipper”. Since the young lad had very little exposure to Maltese in those days, the outcome was inevitable.