Comments on: Words have specific meaning and should be chosen carefully

By: Daphne Caruana Galizia

Daphne Caruana Galizia — Thu, 07 Apr 2016 15:50:00 +0000

‘Innocent victim’ IS a tautology.

By: Claude Sciberras

Claude Sciberras — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 20:42:00 +0000

In reply to Robert. Good one. OK, what I meant is most people who write as in journalists, but not only.

By: MarloweChris

MarloweChris — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 18:56:00 +0000

Then try to write a paragraph about any scientific or technological field using Maltese.

It’s a fact that Maltese does have a small vocabulary. I have no idea why people are so touchy about it. Part of the reason is due to how the verbs are inflected in Semitic languages. Another is being a colony of some power for as long as books have existed so anyone who was doing any scholarship did it in a lingua franca.

It doesn’t make Maltese any less of a language. In fact, it lends itself to a great many puns and mischief of language. Pity more people don’t play with Maltese as they should.

By: Daphne Caruana Galizia

Daphne Caruana Galizia — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 15:01:00 +0000

Eskimo is not a language. And quite frankly, this ‘the Inuit have a hundred words for snow’ business is hackneyed. It’s not as though this is some recorded fact or as though you can speak an Inuit tongue.

By: Daphne Caruana Galizia

Daphne Caruana Galizia — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 14:56:00 +0000

I don’t “dismiss” Maltese. But when you are able to write in two languages, it makes more sense to use the better one. And English is by far the better one. This is not a value judgement but a fact. It is better than any other language on the planet. The comparison to Maltese is pointless.

By: Daphne Caruana Galizia

Daphne Caruana Galizia — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 14:51:00 +0000

Try not to be insufferable.

By: Daphne Caruana Galizia

Daphne Caruana Galizia — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 14:50:00 +0000

Only the uneducated (I’m being polite here) speak that way, and it happens in all languages. The members of the British underclass are practically incomprehensible to others.

By: Deegee

Deegee — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 14:45:00 +0000

Perhaps, but what is the word for ‘casualty’ in German? We are talking about semantic fields and overlaps here.

One word in one language will take on many different senses but English often slices the semantic pie more finely than other languages.

German is totally irrelevant to this argument because we are discussing Maltese and English. However, perhaps Untergang would be an even better word – a fall, a disgrace?

Even English it would be my preferred word as casualty still does not allocate enough blame in my opinion. I direct this as a question to you, Katrin, as I have no German to speak of.

Those who say Maltese has the same vocabulary as English are mistaken. English has an historically unprecedented position and it is a unique language in this respect. It is hard to estimate the exact lexicon of a language but it has the largest lexicon of any language by all expert accounts.

To say that Maltese has the same size of vocabulary is frankly ridiculous and I mean no disparagement to Maltese, which is the native tongue of at least half my family, but simply a statement of fact given the respective histories of the languages.

Maltese will have words that do not exist in English – like the often-discussed ‘ lanzit’ – but this is not proof that the lexicon is the same size. It does perhaps reflect a perception of the world.

By: Joseph Debono

Joseph Debono — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 14:39:00 +0000

I am going with a Panama hat and a banana too. Is that fine with everybody? I am going to eat the fruit and deposit the skin somewhere prominent.

See you Sunday. Reminds me of the good old days in the 1980s.

By: Daphne Caruana Galizia

Daphne Caruana Galizia — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 13:39:00 +0000

In reply to FP@DISQUS.

I am a native speaker of both Maltese and English and therefore I know the actual, intrinsic meaning of ‘victim’ and ‘vittma’ without cross-reference between one language and another.

‘Casualty’ does not mean something other than an innocent victim. It is used in a context such as this precisely because it is emotion-neutral, unlike victim, which is emotion-laden.