A new social group: the Irkotti
Published:
May 27, 2010 at 3:07pm
A couple of Irkotti
For some reason that I can’t really make out, the debate about irkotta/rikotta has captured people’s imagination. There are those who refuse to face the fact that it’s a purely class-based distinction, and why. They hunt high and low for some other explanation. The battle rages on.
I commented that it won’t be long before the term INR (Irkotta Not Rikotta) replaces NQLU (Not Quite Like Us), only to discover that I’d been beaten to it by a 12-year-old boy.
Now a grown man, he told me that his childhood word for the plum-crop-haired women who crowded the local grocer’s shop wearing cycling shorts and with purses in their armpits was: THE IRKOTTI.
Out of the mouths of babes…..
234 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
Hi Ms Caruana Galizia, The person who is signing as Andrew Azzopardi is either using my name or else is another Andrew Azzopardi. I disassociate myself completely from what he said. Best regards, Andrew
Dear Mr. Andrew Azzopardi, your name is not exactly unique. I know three people with that name.
Stop using my initials LG.
LG is an internationally registered trade mark. Either you’re using it without authorisation, therefore risking a lawsuit, or else you’re being paid to advertise the company’s TVs, mobile phones, etc.
Leonard, Life is Good.
I know what he is saying but will the real Andrew Azzopardi please stand up!
There were 19 Andrew Azzopardi’s on the APR 2009 electoral register.
Mark, seems that 2 of them are still around, and they are not happy about it.
Hi Andrew Azzopardi, you are evidently new to the world of computers and the Internet, so let me explain.
On the Internet, people are just names. Just by telling us that you, Andrew Azzopardi, are not another Andrew Azzopardi has not exactly clarified anything. For starters, we cannot be sure that you are REALLY Andrew Azzopardi.
Secondly, we cannot be REALLY sure that you are NOT the other Andrew Azzopardi. Thirdly, we cannot even be sure that the OTHER Andrew Azzopardi IS, in fact, really Andrew Azzopardi. The mind boggles.
But all this is merely a diversion from the serious business at hand – the great irkotta/rikotta controversy of the 21st century.
and if their sides are hanging out of their shorts, they become muffin babes…
[Daphne – Ahem. Muffin tops.]
Not “love-handles” presumably from Italian “maniglie del’amore” ?
Dan il-blog qieghed jaqa’ fil-banalita’.
Ma’ naqbilx miegħek. il-kummenti li qrajt (bdejt minn taħt għax ħsibt li se jkun hemm kotċ imbarazz u tħawwadt ftit…) belħuni għax kienu nteressanti ħafna u skoprejt storja ta’ Malta li jien ma’nafx. Għal raġunijiet varji, l-istorja tal-familja tiegħi hija nieqsa mil folklor familjari. Nanniet ma’kellix u maz-zijjiet m’hux li ltqajna ta’ spiss…
Darba messitni epifanija: iċ-Ciniżi huma ossessi bir-razza, li għandha raġunijiet ta’ reliġjon (ancestor worship) bit-tempju d-dar. Ovvjament dawk li jkunu ġejjin minn familja li għexu bix-xejn minħabba faqar jew żventura, ftit se jkollhom tradizjoni familjari.
Jew għall-estrem l-ieħor fejn ikollok familji nobbli li kien ikollom l-istoriċi personali tagħhom u mħalsa seww. Imbagħad ikollok dawk li jivvintaw storja biex jidhru bħall-oħrajn…u l-storja tagħhom issir vera…
Sorry for my Maltese, my approach to learning language has always been through reading and my youth was spent reading almost exclusively in English and Italian…
Translation for the benefit of those who not being mittlekless do not have a good enough grasp of maltese to understand:
The content of this blog is deteriorating fast.
[Daphne – That’s because you are impervious to the myriad and still-burning issues embedded in what, at first glance, appears to be a straightforward argument over whether to use irkotta or rikotta.]
‘The content of this blog is deteriorating fast.’
How exactly is it deteriorating? Rusting maybe? Wind erosion?
le milli jidher qraset l-arkotta
Deteriorating fast? I’m still laughing about that prosthetic beak. Funniest thing since a horny greengrocer was caught making an indecent proposal.
So sod off! There are loads of such fora/blogs like DCG’s Notebook for you to follow if this one isn’t ‘up’ to your standard!
I enjoyed the rikotta debate immensely. I don’t know about the word standing on its own, but we’ve always said torta tar-rikotta.
Nevertheless nofs ratal rikotta does not sound quite: it sounds like Maltese spoken by a foreigner.
[Daphne – That’s because two of those words are in fact foreign.]
I am not too sure that other languages do not corrupt words imported from another language. In Italy I’m constantly struggling with my son about his “new” English words which, believe me, are used by all classes of society – one which I believe is actually in the Italian dictionary is cingomma (chewing gum).
My son actually thinks I’m the freak who can’t speak properly. They call a lollipop a ciucpaciupa because the brand is chupachups, but the s on the wrapper looks like an a. There are countless others!
Finally I can’t agree with you more on the Maltese language/English language bit. I constantly correct Italians who also insist on stating “please find the text in the English language”.
Loredana, minn fejn qlajta r-ratal? Ma ndunajtx li ghal-zmien twil in-nies jixtru ejthundritgrems?
Been away for a while, but jolly glad to be back and welcomed by the rikotta debate on the home page. Brilliantly entertaining.
I do not think it is entertaining! I feel it is showing the divide that still exists among us. I say rikotta (because that is the proper word) but for some reason or other there seems to be a divisive thought – just to be divisive!
@ Loredana
Try: nofs artal rikotta.
My mother’s shopping list:-
Hbistejn tas-salib
Battejn friski
Zewg soldi kunserva
Flixkun zejt tar-raxin
Nofs tuzzana qrimec(biskuttelli)
BI tlett soldi sardin tal barmil
Nofs kwart butir fijn tal-landa
Nofsaltar laham tal buljut
Nofsaltar tal-qali.
U ghid lil Titta tiktibghom .
Hi Charles, you forgot to include (well, I’m 61years old), nifs, nifs kwart gobon tal-hakk.- ibza ghalieh iz-zarbun ghax dega fetah halqu minn sieq wahda – Ibza ghalieh il-qalziet ghax dega ghamiltlu pacc – Bezzjoni, Ma etc, etc, etc
Ibza ghalieh dak il fil flo ghax irrid isservik sajf.
Nahseb insiet tnizzel landa bulubif ta! :)
Did you ever go home with half an altar?
[Daphne – Brilliant! Nofs artal irkotta: half an altar of ricotta. And then they say that the Irkottas speak the true, correct form of the language and the rest of us don’t.]
@Scerri S – Oqghod iccajta! Minhabba cwiec li jinsistu fuq “Malti pur”, ‘bulubif’ (jew ‘bullibif’ – ma’ niftakarx) sab ruhu fid-dizzjunarju Malti.
Fejn irridu naslu izjed?
Jekk irridu niktbu bil-Malti, jeħtieġ li niktbu sew
Ħbiżtejn
Badtejn
żejt
Nofs tużżana qriemeċ
tliet soldi sardin
butir fin
Nofs artal laħam
Imma nsomma l-aqwa li nippruvaw nirredikolaw dak li hu tagħna, Poplu uniku fid-dinja kollha, ma ssibx bħalna fid-dinja kollha. Minkejja li ilna kważi ħamsin sena indipendenti, bosta minna bqajna bl-għanqbut kolonjali jifgalna ‘l moħħna.
i think that is right nofs artal rikotta. @tal one news – it was a comment that Daphne made, that she used to but nofs ratal rikotta
It is straightforward for you because you do not seem to have the language at heart. It is irritating for many to see someone come up with unfounded theories and express personal opinions whilst maintaining they are facts.
[Daphne – It is irritating only for those raised on a diet of myth, including the myth that there are no social classes in Malta except for ‘tal-pepe’ and everyone else who hates them. Myth No 2: tal-pepe people know little or nothing about Maltese, a language ‘owned’ only by those who can’t speak anything else. Myth No. 3: academics who study Maltese are motivated by a love of language when the primary motivation I detect in many is political (as distinct from party political). Myth No. 4: somebody who has no problems using a really complex language like English (me, for instance) cannot get to grips with a really simple language like Maltese (it’s the other way round -people accustomed only to a simple language like Maltese have serious problems mastering complex languages like English, in which an ‘ear’ for the language is more important than a rule-book).
If I notice that everyone from my sort of social background says ricotta and not irkotta and that everyone who says irkotta is from a different sort of social background however subtle the distinction, that is NOT an unfounded theory. It is an observation based on fact. People in your position cannot make a similar observation because you don’t understand what social classes are or how they are delineated. Now ask me again how I know that Olvin Vella comes from a working-class family just by reading his first name and without ever having spoken to him. Oh, didn’t you know that there are working-class first names and posh first names as well as totally neutral ones like those of saints? Read this blog, and you’ll learn something new every day. But not until you take off your chips and blinkers.]
With names one can have an educated guess of two things-period of birth, British or Italian sympathy and even political background.
The Sue Allens were born during the ‘Dallas’ and ‘Dynasty’ epoc. The Omars during ‘War and Peace’ after Omar Sharif, Natasha would be the daughter of a Labour hard-liner. Neriku would be nearing 70 and his parents were Nationalists and Geraldu’s parents no doubt supported Strickland.
The Raymonds must have had a difficult birth and their parents made a vow to San Raymondo Nunnato.
Strange thing is,unlike Spain and S.America, nobody names a child Jesus in Malta.
“The Sue Allens were born during the ‘Dallas’ and ‘Dynasty’ epoc.”
I can’t stand soaps but it’s still “Sue Ellen”
OK David,so its the Sue Ellens.
[Daphne – Marelli, Charles, learn the difference between its and it’s because I’m tired of correcting this and I’ve just decided to stop.]
It’s = it is
Its = its own etc. Elementary I know but I often not give it the importance it deserves. I’ll be more careful from now onwards. Sorry for upsetting you Daphne.
And Charles would be 60 ish – born around the time of Prince Charles
Olvin Vella and politics in the Maltese language mentioned in the same paragraph answer.
That’s perspicacious.
[Daphne – Yes. It’s my salient asset. I’m paid to exploit it, remember – in my newspaper column, that is.]
Can you give us two short lists of names which in your opinion are posh and working class please or better still write a post. That would prove to be more controversial than the rikotta wars. This request is motivated from a genuine interest in the subject.
[Daphne – No, you are just seeking to provoke another row. But given that I am not averse to that sort of thing, here goes. Working-class names in Malta: Olvin, Quinton Jo, Charlon, Ritienne, Redeemer, Svetlana, anything to do with footballers or singers, Nikita…I’m sure others will now join in. There are no posh names in Malta, not really. Posh people use simple names taken from the bible, the list of saints, ancient Rome or ancient Greece, and those tend to be class-neutral. Made-up names are always working-class, especially if mispronounced and misspelled because of mispronunciation – but that brings us back to arkotta.]
Denzel ..
My children’s names are simple Bible names, but I say “irkotta”. How would you define me?
[Daphne – I defined you around two years ago and you got upset, so I won’t do it again. Bible names are class-neutral. I’ve said so already.]
Dan l-ahhar smajt li tarbija semmewa ‘Santiago’.
Mein Gott, today I saw ‘Michael’ spelt as ‘Mykel’ on the KSU newsletter no less (under the Vox Pop section for those who want to check). Kill. me. now.
What about Genofeffa? Isn’t it posh?
[Daphne – No, not at all. Why would it be – because it has lots of letters in it? It’s no more posh than Jennifer, which is the same name.]
@ tat-TWO News. I actually know of a bloke who comes from a nice family with a Spanish surname, whose name is Santiago. His sis is a well known artist.
[Daphne – Yes, I know him too. He can really carry it off, but his parents matched it well to that surname. A not-particularly-attractive man called Santiago Zammit wouldn’t be quite as fortunate.]
Charles, George, Elizabeth, Philip, Anne. I don’t know about Daphne…..perhaps after Daphne Du Maurier.
[Daphne – Charles is not necessarily a smart name in Malta. Usually, it’s k/a for Carmel. Philip certainly isn’t a smart name in Siggiewi (did I get the patron saint right?). Elizabeth is smart only by default – very few Maltese people can pronounce it properly, and they’re the ones who tend to use it. Anne is my second name. I am certainly not named after Daphne Du Maurier. I’m one of four siblings: two of us have ancient Greek names and two of us have Latin names.]
Daphne, you got your patron saint wrong: Philip is for Zebbug; Siggiewi’s is Nicholas.
[Daphne – That’s right. I thought I did.]
“Philip certainly isn’t a smart name in Siggiewi”
that would be Nicholas, Nich, Lina, Kola, Kelina… for Siġġiewi and Philip, Lippu etc… for our arch enemies across the valleys in Żebbuġ
All smiles on this one Daph, I dare you to comment. What about the, ahem ‘tasteful names’ given to some homes in Malta…what do you think?
Dear Daphne
I agree 99% with what you say, I am very proud of you as a Maltese journalist, keep up your good work. I think Olvin Vella has a lot to learn from you!
Does anybody know how Olvin Vella got to teach Maltese with a first degree?
Does anybody know how Olvin Vella puts pressure on all those nice sheep of the Maltese Academy, who harmlessly pass their time in the grassland away, only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air?
I looked over Jordan, and I’ve seen things are not what they seem.
Wettinger thanked him not for his intellectual input but for his youthful enthusiasm in his Dictionary of Old Words. The succinct expression of gratitude of the old Professor tells a long story.
@ Nostradamus: Thank you for bringing this up. University lecturing staff are another category of Maltese society unfortunately plagued by such parasites and hangers-on that make their way up the ladder by enslaving themselves to a master and by playing power games.
I have first-hand experience of this as my first degree was in Maltese. They had (and most probably still have) quite a way of separating the wheat from the chaff in their own blinkered way. Their only intent is to groom their own set of elves. I am proud to say that I refused to be one and had therefore to seek greener and happier pastures.
Oh yes, DJ! Very well said! Their own set of elves.
The biggest elf – but still an elf – is the one who would believe only if he touches! Peace be unto him!
Daphne, we’re Maltese and, unlike you, English is our second language. This pedantic attitude of yours, as if having an ear to English somehow automatically translates to being a genius, is childish to say the least.
[Daphne – Oh stop being tedious, Kevin. I never said anything of the sort. I merely pointed out the obvious: that it’s ridiculous to think that somebody who grew up and lives in an environment where she is exposed to Maltese all the time ‘doesn’t know Maltese’ when she has so patently got to grips with a far more complicated language. Another point: knowing the rules does not equate with knowing the language. I don’t know the rules in either language, and I learned my Maltese spelling the same way I did my English spelling – through reading. The weaknesses in my Maltese spelling are the result of not reading enough, but then I would first have to find something fun to read, because I read only for fun, not as a chore. If I read as much Maltese as I read English, I’d be blowing a hole through the ceiling with Olvin Vella and his like, because yes, these things do come naturally to me, in the same way music comes naturally to others while I can’t being to understand it at all in any way.]
I’ve corrected all sorts of English written by academics whose first language is not English – Danish English, Hungarian English, Czech, Swedish, German English… they are all different, some worse than others, yet that says little about them except that English is not their mother language.
[Daphne – Ah, but here’s the difference. They almost certainly speak and write their own language perfectly and can formulate good arguments in that language – the language in which they received their tertiary education, wrote their papers and sat for their examinations. But here in Malta, home of the tiny minority language, tertiary education is in English, and the result leaves a great deal to be desired. It would leave far more to be desired – great chunks of the education process itself, for a start – if it were in Maltese. So you’re not comparing like with like. Worse still, lots of those students and graduates at the University of Malta who have a poor grasp of English tend to be weak at expressing themselves in Maltese, too. This is because thought shapes language and language shapes thought, and they have been denied exposure to thought-expanding means of communicating ideas, like books and films and documentaries and proper newspapers and journals and….and…. Take yourself, for instance. How much of what you know came through interacting in Maltese, and how much through interacting in English?]
And one other thing. Tal-pepe people may well understand and speak Maltese, but it clearly IS their second language, even if they believe they know the language well. I know the tal-pepe clan well enough on this.
[Daphne – What balls, Kevin. My parents are textbook tal-pepe (even though your quite brainless wife once mistook the foreman at my father’s company for my father and decided otherwise). Both speak Maltese as a first language and English as a second language, but if you were to hear them speak you’d say that Maltese is their second language because they speak clearly, enunciate each syllable, don’t say nofs artal irkotta and don’t mash their words together. But believe me, Maltese is their first language.]
Brainless? That depends on the meaning one applies to the word.
For me a brainless person is one that has no idea of the political realities surrounding us; no idea of who controls what at which levels, and no idea even of what is highly important and what is not.
For you, however, a brainless person is one that deviates from the beliefs, ethics and styles of the Maltese pseudo-Establishment, much of which is – yes – brainless!
Daphne, in clear, concise Canadian English–this guy bugs me.
Can you define “class” at this point then Daphne? What separates the classes?
[Daphne – Nothing. We live on top of each other, crowded onto a couple of rocks.]
It is obviously not wealth, nor is it education and neither professional status. IQ is not it either.
[Daphne – Now you’re beginning to understand. It’s a complicated, complex mass of intangibles and those intangibles are virtually impossible to explain. Americans, who live in a society where you differentiate yourself from others mainly on the basis of what you own and how much money you have, find the complex maze of European social stratification totally alien and impossible to understand. That’s why they’re so thrilled when a class of person comes clearly explained with a label attached, like ‘duke’ or ‘count’. Quote from an American woman about a British man: “He says he’s working-class but he lives in a mansion and he drives a Porsche. What sort of rubbish is that?” I suppose in a sense Malta in the 21st century is a microcosmic America, with its virtually overnight growth of a sizable new class of people with money but whose fathers and grandfathers were virtually in rags, and who don’t understand that the acquisition of money and possessions doesn’t move them overnight from working-class to middle-class, because money and possessions don’t change certain fundamental attitudes. Anyway, it’s all very interesting. I just wish more people here had the panache to say: “I’m working class” while driving off in a Porsche. That sort of attitude is so much more attractive than ‘Me? Working-class? What makes you think you’re better than me? Who do you think you are?” Chip chip chip.]
I am happy to live in a country where opportunities exist so that one can build a life, improve his status both educational and economic. I don’t really care about class structures.
I have come to know some very respectable, honest hardworking, polite and educated “low class” as well as some horrible high class criminals.
[Daphne – It’s not a matter of caring about them, but about acknowledging that they exist and how things work, because that makes navigating through life much easier.]
Yes Malta is full of new rich (thanks to the opportunities created in the last 25 years. It is true that classes exist though the borderlines between the different levels is in my opinion becoming less district (well use of rikotta could be one of the given benchmarks).
What I know is that I hated Mintoff rallying the klassi tal-haddiema kontra l-klassi tas-sinjuri u min ihaddem. In my opinion class create strife and tension between people, especially in an over populated country like ours divided.
[Daphne – In old societies there will always be classes, even if those classes shift and change over time. Class hatred is something else. It doesn’t have to exist.]
X’pajjiz…haddiehor jistrajka u hemm krizi shiha u ahna niddiskutu l-irkotta jew ir-ricotta?
Now that is a good point – what’s the news abroad? – possible demise of the euro – possibility of countries leaving the euro – the euro not being the same in 10 years’ time and some countries definitely out of it – austerity measures almost everyday from different countries in the eurozone – and not a beep from the political parties here. Maybe it will go away? It won’t. Surprising that the PL have not picked it up yet . Maybe they really are europhiles after all?
We’ll start hearing the Euro’s swan song when the local economy starts grinding gears and shedding workers… in the meantime it’s somebody else’s problem.
The Euro’s swan song is just a false echo. There’s no way the Euro can collapse! Eurosceptics beating this drum are simply playing into the hands of the europhiles to want more centralization…
Yes, Joesph A. Borg – it should collapse, but it will not be allowed to – at our expense. It has always been clear that a monetary union without fiscal union does not work – surely not on a promise, which is what the Stability and Growth Pact is.
To cut it short – this was foreseen and played upon, first through low interest rates which inflated the bubbles and extended the noose. And now, the introduction of ‘EU economic governance’ which, again, will not perform any miracles, but will lead straight to fiscal union and an EU Treasury. At that stage we’re done – the EU economic central planners will make us all perpetually poor, yet citizens of a ‘strong and powerful union’ (ask the Soviets how a powerful Soviet Union benefited them – and check also what is happening in the States).
So what’s being done to Greece today is like healing a heroin addict with higher doses of the same. This ‘bailout’ adds to Greece’s debt in a way that makes it impossible for the Greeks to pay it back.
Just ask yourselves these questions: where are all the interest payments going? Can the slaves produce enough wealth to cover the compound interest on money created through fractional reserve banking (that is, out of thin air and not through capital savings)?
Ricotta indeed.
It’s the Yanks and the Brits who are repeating the mantra that the euro is kaput because they are scared s**tless about the perilous state of the US dollar and sterling.
Who is the largest holder of US T-bills and US Treasury bonds? Yes, the Chinese – and they do not need North Korea to start the Third World War but all they need to do is to start dumping their US holdings.
The same goes for the Gulf states who also open and shut the oil tap at will. As for the UK, I am waiting for fresh-faced (or baby-faced?) George Osborne’s Budget on 22nd June. Look out for the FTSE and sterling heading ……
Anthony Farrugia – the dollar and sterling will collapse. The former, being the world’s reserve currency, will conveniently be replaced by a new ‘world currency’. The pound will of course be replaced by the euro. That, at least, is the plan where conspiracies are said to not exist at all and theorising about them earns you a tin-foil hat.
kev, the Bildeberg conspiracists will fry your brains with ghost waves. Better put on that tinfoil hat before it’s too late…
kev, what’s your problem? The world is moving towards big economic blocks. In 50 years’ time we’ll be bobbing in the big waves created by the big economies: the US, China and India.
Do you expect the EU should not be prepared for the jostling for survival?
China is buying all the African states for their resources, the US already has a lot of countries in its portfolio of client states.
Do you want European states to become clients of one of these powers?
Give me a break…
Some members of my (extended) family go as far as referring to “il-puliti”. Oh the shame. The trouble with this sort of thing is that there really is no way of changing it. Even if you move to another country and start a family there, at some point your wife/girlfriend will want to meet your family, and the full horror will hit home.
Life is what you make it? My arse.
[Daphne – ‘Il-puliti’. Now, is that less embarrassing than ‘Nafuhom?’]
Nafuhom? No, they never were social climbers. Sometimes I think we’d all be happier if we could stick to our own class. But we can’t, due to jobs etc. It angers me that I can’t cast off the shackles of my social status. As it weren’t enough, we’re the genetic equivalent of a turd pie.
[Daphne – Nafuhom is used by people who have nowhere to social-climb to (at least in Malta) and for whom mixing beyond the immediate circle of ‘people we know’ is just not to be countenanced. They may try to be democratic by throwing parties to which all sorts are invited, but if their son/daughter mentions the existence of a potential mate, the first question is – if the name doesn’t ring any bells – ‘Nafuhom?’ It sums up exactly what you said here: we’d all be happier in sticking to our own. Or if not happier, than at least you can somehow make it work.]
Well, they do stick to their own. But I can’t. Neither professionally, nor socially. One thing I tell you: I felt more comfortable when I was living abroad. No one knew who I was, and I lived in a country where the accent doesn’t determine the social class. Now I’m back in Malta and it’s the same old shyte. Stuck-up girls getting into intellectual duels and trading barbs in their nasal accented English. Men with five o’clock shadows and slicked-back yuppie hair going on about their business. And everyone going on about “rucola” and “limoncello” and tittering when I order a pink gin. Ignorant rabble. The whole bloody lot. They should just move to Sicily where they belong.
[Daphne – I’ve had a good 20 years more of that, so you can imagine how I feel about it. I am now at the point where I refuse to go out, and on the rare occasions when somebody does manage to prise me out of the house, stopping just short of attaching little wheels to my shoes and wheeling me out, or when I am obliged to do so out of duty and work and the like, I rush back home and shoot through the front door with impatience and relief. The only time I leave my house without a sinking feeling of dread at precisely the sort of situation you describe (but with the beginnings of wrinkles on) is when there’s a plane at the other end of the car journey. Off, off and away! Ghall-erwieh! No nasal accented English, no women in their 40s and 50s competing with their daughters and without a brain cell or an intelligent piece of conversation between them, no men who are at a loss as to how to talk to A Woman unless it’s in Stupid Flirt Format, no dead, stilted, rehashed ‘conversations’ among people who’ve known each other since they were four years old. You can leave Malta for five years, come back and pick right up where you left off.]
Thank god, then, for Bulgarian barmaids. You can have the most interesting conversations, with none of the snide remarks and the false British accent.
Why is it that Maltese girls (I’m talking about the under-30s) have to go on the defensive from the word go, and start firing their intellectual darts if they’re not attracted to you? I’m Mr Ugly, but among all the nations on this sodding planet, I have only met this attitude among the Maltese and the Italians.
[Daphne – It’s the same with women my age, rest assured, and I’ve lived long enough to be able to give you the explanation you need. Maltese women are programmed from birth to communicate with men in a social context only in terms of flirtation, the sole purpose of such interaction between the sexes being to secure themselves a mate. Men are trained by default to respond in the same vein.
This is why Maltese women have no interest in talking to a man they don’t consider to be mate material. It’s a waste of time and more than that, they don’t know how to talk to a man properly, without flirting, just for the pleasure of conversation. But they are not going to flirt with a man they’re not interested in because he’ll think they are interested. To make doubly sure he knows they’re not interested, they’re rude so that he gets the message. Once they have secured their mate, they will cease talking to other men – because talking to men means flirting. They will sit silently at supper parties, stick to his side during drinks parties and nod and smile where they think is appropriate.
This process will continue up to marriage and through it. Occasionally, when they have had a tiff with their husband or think that he’s losing interest and needs to be made aware of how attractive they are, they will talk (flirt) with men at parties. But if you eavesdrop on any of these conversations, you will understand that it’s all about trying to get these men to see them as attractive and has nothing to do with the passing the time in conversation.
When they decide to leave the husband/partner or he has decided to leave them, they will revert to behaving at parties in the exact same way they did before they settled down: picking up where they left off and not understanding why it doesn’t work at 40 and 50 like it worked at 20. Now ask me again why I hate going out.]
You have to wonder how their relationships function. It’s like Sex and the City every single day of your life. And they think it’s perfectly normal to drop in explicit descriptions of blowjobs and lapping up of semen in your conversation.
[Daphne – If you think it’s distasteful and inappropriate in women your age, just imagine what it’s like in women of around 50. Il-vera jahasra. They still think at that age, like they did at 16, that revealing to a man that you can talk about anything will put him off and he’ll run a mile. They haven’t worked out yet that it’s the other way round. ]
If these are the movers and shakers of this country, then I’m on the first spaceship to Mars.
It’s a bit unfair to drag Doctor Joseph Muscat in the ricotta debate. After all the Great Leader’s travels are attracting new followers and his movement is spreading far and wide.
This nanna progressiva is his latest fan. She lives in Sicily but she must eat irkotta.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDNtINNJSHU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4adaUUzYURE&feature=related
She must have got in contact with the Eggreggio Dottor Muscat (detto er Grande Capo) when he was photographed holidaying in Sicily some time ago.
Correction: “…she must eat ricotta.”
I am working class and proud of it!!! But I do know that the proper word is Rikotta.
[Daphne – Working class and proud! Gay and proud! I’m starting to get a little jealous here. Tal-pepe and proud gets rotten eggs thrown at you, and straight and proud gets you accused of being homophobic. Proud to be a woman sounds like Marlene Mizzi, and proud to be Maltese sounds like a membru tal-akkademja tal-Malti. So what’s left to me?]
Proud to drink Pimm’s?
The civil servants I know are not working class.
Eastenders fan and proud?
[Daphne – That’s right. The last two weeks were thrilling.]
Daphne,
Apologies for not contributing to the dominant conversation, but since you seem to still be a fan of EastEnders (which my upper-middle class-Canadian-educated at Oxbridge girlfriend has introduced me to)…what do you think of the Christian/Sayed storyline?
[Daphne – I think they are going to have to be politically correct and have him be true to his sexuality rather than honour his promise to his parents. I think it’s a great storyline which is particularly relevant to Malta, where there are so many similar stories. I was away a couple of weeks ago and so missed the episode in which the truth was revealed in that big row with all the screaming and shouting and drama, but my sister phoned and told me all about it. I was on a train and got so distracted that I missed my stop.If you’re a fan, there’s a weekly magazine called Inside Soap which discusses all the latest plot-lines of British soaps but mainly EastEnders (British schedule, about two weeks ahead). I got it at Tesco – it’s not available here, but maybe they do subscriptions: [email protected]. Because of the difference between schedules, it can be mailed over and still arrive in time.]
By the life of me I cannot understand how people with rational minds can waste so much time following soaps!
I’m not trying to be condescending. I simply cannot understand!
Please supply some data for me to parse!
Before Eastenders it was Ipokriti – Typical Maltese ‘teledramm’, but addictive nonetheless.
Try: Hamalla and proud of it
We say irkotta!
Till now i didnt realize that someone could identify my social class system skond jekk nghid Irkotta jew Rikotta.
I give up…..you’re a lost cause Daphne. And you make a hell of a lot of assumptions, which is never good if you are trying to construct a logical argument.
[Daphne – My problem is really that I’m too logical and operating in a system which prizes irrationality. ‘There are no social classes.’ ‘Just because you say irkotta it doesn’t mean you come from a family with a recent history of illiteracy.’]
I take it you are assuming that I come from a low class family, that my english is poor and the rest. I will not bother to correct your assumptions as it is irrevant to this argument and unlike your good self I do not feel I have to prove to the island who I am, nor do I derive my sense of worth from belonging to one particular social class as opposed to the other.
[Daphne – ‘assuming that I come from a low class family’. I don’t have to assume. I can deduce it just from that phrase. I never use the words ‘low’ and ‘high’ because that isn’t how I think. ‘Low’ and ‘high’ is how you think. I think ‘different’.]
Let us try and get back to the original argument shall we?
I refer to your reply.
1) Never did I state that social classes do not exits. Unlike you I do not deny the obvious
[Daphne – OK. You’ve admitted that social classes exist. So go ahead. Which ones are they? People with money and people without money? People who speak English and people who speak Maltese? People who went to university and people who didn’t? Wrong.]
“Myth No 2: tal-pepe people know little or nothing about Maltese, a language ‘owned’ only by those who can’t speak anything else.”
Again, I did not go far as to generalise in this manner. What I said is that from what you are saying about the ricotta/irkotta debate you seem to be lacking knowledge of the word-formation process of a language, implying you have close to nil knowledge of linguistics.
[Daphne – You may know linguistics (or think you do) but you sure as hell are useless with language. I learned highly complex, idiomatic English FROM SCRATCH and without any formal instruction. I still don’t know the rules of grammar and what the different verb tenses are called. Nobody can do that who doesn’t have an innate understanding of how language works and a finely attuned ear for it, SPTT. That same ear can pick up a legion of clunking horrors in Maltese spoken by those who think they know Maltese far better than I do. The arrogance is unbelievable. Why have you found it so difficult to speak and write idiomatic English when I haven’t? It’s almost certainly because you haven’t got an ear for languages – just a fixation with rules and English doesn’t have many of those, and they’re laden with exceptions. That part of your brain which deals with language is the same whichever language you’re dealing with, and a love of language is a love of language whatever the language happens to be. That’s why I am left completely unimpressed by ‘esperti tal-Malti’ who can’t speak or write English properly. ‘Hmmm,’ I thinik to myself.]
Your school of linguists is dubbed as Prescriptive as opposed to Desriptive linguistics. A quick look to any book on the subject will get you aquianted with the difference and the merits of the two and why one is considered dated and defunct.
[Daphne – I’m hardly going to take advice on linguistics from somebody who can’t spell or write.]
“Myth No. 3: academics who study Maltese are motivated by a love of language when the primary motivation I detect in many is political (as distinct from party political).”
Again this is out of the point. Irrispective of why academics choose to study a language the probability is that their knowledge of the subject is better than yours. Again labelling Olvin working class or whatever is totally irrelevant. He is a dedicated lecturer and his knowledge and love of the language undisputed by all those who know him or have had the pleasure to attend any of his lectures.
[Daphne – Shame he doesn’t bother to learn how to speak English then. What’s his problem? Too difficult for him? Too few rules to guide him? What does he do when he travels to international conferences on linguistics – wow them all with a heavy accent and broken English? It’s so easy to learn English in Malta – there really is no excuse. But then you must have an ear for languages and Olvin Vella clearly doesn’t. He has books of rules.]
“Myth No. 4: somebody who has no problems using a really complex language like English (me, for instance) cannot get to grips with a really simple language like Maltese ”
This is the cherry on the cake Daphne and I do hope you’ re ve realised what a gaffe you have just made.
Now comparisons are odious but if you had to compare the morphology, syntax and evolution of the two languages it is very much obvious that Maltese is more complex than English not the other way round.
I rest my case.
[Daphne – Unbelievable. Really, truly unbelievable. And that, my dear, begs the question: if English is so much less complex than Maltese, why in God’s name are you unable to master it? If your ability to learn a simple language like English is so very weak, how did you succeed in learning so much about a complex language like Maltese?]
This post is riddled with spelling mistakes, bad syntax etc. It was painful to read especially knowing that SPTT was trying hard to impress us with his/her knowledge of language. Oh dear.
Find them for me, dear, that I might learn from your expertise. If you are referring to lack of punctuation, I wasn’t proof-reading what I wrote.
Olvin Vella’s knowledge of the language? Must be joking!
The man is a lackey, a social climber, an arriviste, a political animal. And what’s worse, he’s got such a high opinion of himself, he makes you want to cry.
[Daphne – I wouldn’t know about the rest because I have yet to meet him, so let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, but I have to say that I certainly don’t think he’s a social climber, because if he were, he wouldn’t say irkotta. He’d know enough to switch to ricotta so as to smooth his path through society. But then his idea of society probably isn’t mine. Maybe he thinks people called Quinton Jo and Byon are society.]
But does Olvin Vella ever attend international conferences on linguistics?
Moreover, he was employed as a university lecturer in Maltese after obtaining a masters degree that took him ages to finish. This while the really smart – and I mean REALLY smart – Maltese PhDs languished at the Junior College for years on end.
I can’t understand how a university in dire need of a better international profile continues to employ bad pieces of work with a mere Masters degree and no publication record to speak of in the rank of full-time lecturers. Theatre Studies is another vile and outrageous case – as are several other departments.
Are you 100% sure Olvin was not lecturing before he got his Masters?
I am not saying employed full-time; I am saying lecturing.
To my knowledge – but, of course, I stand to be corrected – Olvin used to lecture BA students when he himself still had just a BA.
Your comment on really smart PhD-holders I cannot but agree with 100%.
It is a real pity.
Olvin Vella might be a great secondary school teacher, but for goodness’ sake – what’s he doing at tertiary level?
@ SPTT, you wrote:
“[OV] is a dedicated lecturer and his knowledge and love of the language undisputed by all those who know him or have had the pleasure to attend any of his lectures.”
Balderdash. I have attended a number of his lectures and find him to be crass and much dedicated to the initiation of elves into the cult of the New Akkademja.
I dispute his chivalric servitude to the great cause of the Maltese language.
Very adroitly said, DJ!
You know the scene inside out.
Not too sure about the ‘background’ argument. ‘Background’ is not heredity. It can be, and usually is, manufactured – to say otherwise would be blatant elitism. I personally know ‘irkotta’ people who flipped the first two syllables the minute they got their law degree – and never looked back. Of course, this works in favour of Daphne’s point (a rather obvious one actually, as she’s said all along) that this particular usage is very much class-linked.
Another thing. It’s sometimes the case that the ‘puliti’ version is actually the corrupted one. As in ‘Gharghur’, for example, or ‘Teeny Beach’. In this case, madly enough, mispronunciation is thought upper-crust, since it shows an inability to speak ‘proper’ (i.e. Semitic, according to the influential purists) Maltese (like softened ‘r’s and such). Very post-War Malta I think.
[Daphne – Ahna nghidu Hal Gharghur u t-Tigne (Tin-Ye) u l-MaRRsa. But there you go. My teeth are set on edge by those who say (about the club) the Mah-Sah, but that’s for the same reason that my teeth are set on edge by irkotta.]
How about Spinola!
The correct pronunciation is in Italian, SpEEnola, rather then “spinOWla”.
[Daphne – Only mittilkless people say SpinOwla.]
Spin-oh-la is a leftover of the presence of British servicemen. Like Siggy-wiggy for Siggiewi, perhaps.
I say SpinOwla, because I don’t fake accents. Maybe some Maltese pronounce it SpEEnola, because it’s the only way some people can impress others.
[Daphne – No, it’s because Spinola is the correct pronunciation and that’s how we always said it. I’m old enough to remember SpinOWla entering the idiom among my peers and wondering why so many of them had suddenly begun to pronounce it that way. I tried it for a while, but it felt fake, and I ditched it.]
So do bus drivers
My current favourite is “Figura” (Fgura) pronounced fig-urah, heard on a bay radio advert.
My all time favourite has to be Santa VenDra
How about FURDULIS for Fleur-de-Lys?
Hmmm… “Teeny Beach” for Tigné..?
Actually I think I may have put the wrong accent on Tignè. Not sure.
Class debates and dairy products aside, aren’t there plenty of other words that have, over the decades, been imported into Maltese from Italian and Sicilian after having been given the local consonant treatment?
Take ‘gvern’, once ‘governo’ in Maltese, as one example. I’m sure there are others. As with ‘irkotta’ (which I’m not saying is correct – it isn’t – but then again ‘gvern’ almost certainly wasn’t either at first), it’s actually a case of a vowel being dropped as opposed to letters being switched around. Either way, it was adopted, mangled and then accepted into mainstream Maltese.
I guess the question is whether to accept that adoption of foreign words into languages can and often does change them over time, or simply to take a snapshot of Maltese as it stands today and refuse to countenance any further change – in which case, once we’re at it, we should use ‘ricotta’ with a ‘c’. You can’t have your cassata and eat it too.
Not necessarily. Parlament, verament, gvern, statut could very well be the influence of Catalan. The Norman language s of the same family of languages.
MEdina became Mdina.
RIcotta became Rkotta.
Could one say “ir-rkotta”? I doubt it. The i tal-lehen has to come in, and it become i+rkotta.
Just like I+mdina.
I don’t think it’s lower-class. Actually, rikotta is a case of hypercorrection.
[Daphne – How can you hypercorrect something that is correct to start with?]
Well done JP Bonello , I think you gave us the right explanation. This is like the word ‘ilma’ , the Arab word for water is ma(ja) we Maltese put the article ‘il-‘ to the word ‘ma’ hence ‘ilma’.
And BTW Daphne, no one asks for ‘nofs ratal rikotta’ , it’s sort of child language. Mr Buttigieg from Mellieha wrote the same as I wrote: it’s “nofs artal irkotta” .
[Daphne – Child language? It’s clear language. But I’m glad you brought this up. The Irkotta Speakers make the mistake of thinking that the Rikotta Speakers can’t speak ‘proper Maltese’ because their words are clearly, deliberately and plainly enunciated. Their minds interpret this as ‘childlike’ when really it is the way that social class of people speak – and this not just with the Maltese in Malta. Listen to the way David Cameron and Nick Clegg speak, for instance. It probably has its origins in the great literacy/illiteracy divide (you’re more conscious of the ‘shape’ of words when you can picture them written down), but anyway, that’s the way it is. Those debates on TVM, Super One and NET with everyone talking over everyone else and no clear words or sentences really highlight this: the overriding message I pick up is ‘working-class’, ‘uneducated’, and strangely enough even ‘not quite literate’. I’ve worked out that I’m getting these messages not because of the shouting and the talking over each other (though that too), but mainly because of the mashed language and the way words are so poorly enunciated. The participants can have all the university degrees in the world, and still I pick up that message.]
For once I agree with Mr Buttigieg and am in complete disagreement with you.
You have many valid arguments about our language, but not this is not one. Maltese is not your forte.
[Daphne – ‘Maltese is not your forte’. The last resort of those who are losing an argument. Let’s agree to differ: tal-pepe Maltese is my forte. Rahal Maltese is yours. But I will never accept that rahal Maltese is somehow superior to tal-pepe Maltese. This is like saying that the people on Eastenders speak better English than their queen, because there are more of them.]
Tal-pepe’ Maltese is not formal Maltese,and rahal Maltese includes many dialects.
[Daphne – Tal-pepe Maltese is definitely formal Maltese because it’s the language preserved by the only class of people who were literate en masse, as opposed to individually like priests from village families. Literacy reduces the likelihood of, among other things, liquid consonants moving all over the place. Problems with liquid consonants are linked directly to that class of people whose families were illiterate until very recently. People whose families have been literate for generations have no problems with liquid consonants. This is not to say that all people from families with a recent history of illiteracy have problems with liquid consonants, but I have yet to meet somebody from a family with a long history of literacy who lets liquid consonants slip here and there. True, when tal-pepe people say things like ‘allavolja’ in the company of the Irkotta Classes, they can feel uncomfortable and different and they know they are being classed as ‘people who can’t speak Maltese properly’, because the rest now say ‘avolja’ – and this has happened within our own lifetime – but so what? It’s not going to persuade me to say ‘avolja’, that’s for sure.]
In your dictionary you have arjuplan instead of ajruplan.
I would be writing formal Maltese when I write ‘nofs artal irkotta jekk joghgbok’, which in rahal Maltese would be ‘tinoj nofs artol irkutta’. and tal-pepe’ erroneously would ask for ‘nofs ratal ricotta (cheese) please’.
[Daphne – Nofs ratal rikotta is perfectly correct no matter how odd it might sound to you. And only the mittilkless say ‘please’ after a request expressed in Maltese. The real tal-pepe say ‘jekk joghgbok, and they put it before the request, not after it. This is because to ears attuned to the polite forms in languages, ‘tini nofs ratal’ is not a request but a demand which translates literally to ‘give me’. In English, however, a request for cheese would be formulated like this: ‘May I have half a kilo of cheese?’ or ‘I would like half a kilo of cheese.’ You don’t walk into a shop and say ‘Give me half a kilo of cheese, please.’ ‘Give me’ is a demand, and sticking please on the end doesn’t change that. People who know that they shouldn’t walk into a shop and say ‘give me….please’ cannot bring themselves to do it in Maltese, even if uncouth expression is considered acceptable, so they soften what is clearly a demand to them by putting ‘jekk joghgbok’ before it, ‘Jekk joghgbok, tini….’. Or they would phrase it as a request ‘Tista ttini….jekk joghgbok’ even though this is very irritating to people who know the difference between can, might and would and that ‘can you’ is wrong in this context but Maltese doesn’t allow for ‘would you’.]
Here we’re not arguing whether we should accept EXTRAY, CHICKEN TIGHTS, PUNCTURE (instead of PERFORATOR) and SQUEEZER (instead of Squeegee).
Yes…let’s agree to disagree, but in this case the right way to say it, is still one: formal Maltese.
[Daphne – Formal Maltese is not tar-rahal Maltese. It is Maltese AS DISTINCT FROM tar-rahal Maltese. That’s what makes it formal. What are chicken tights?]
A woman from the government flats asks for ‘chicken tights’ because her husband likes ‘il-koxox tat-tigieg’.
[Daphne – Yes, that’s right! I’ve heard them called that too.]
Well, have you ever heard of ‘next of skin’?
PS: I meant ‘letters’, not ‘syllables’.
Although it still works … my oh my …
Ahem … no it doesn’t. ‘Letters’ it must be.
Haha now you’re saying that I can’t spell or write? Are you the only one who can Daphne, my dear? You seem to have some serious issues here.
[Daphne – It’s not ‘just my opinion’, SPTT. Read through what you’ve written. It’s all over the place. You’ve already told me that I don’t know anything about Maltese. What now – don’t I know anything about English, either?]
SPTT’s humour and facile reactions remind me of Olvin Vella.
Shallow, inflated-ego arguing.
why would you not publish my earlier kumment?
Ghamel a research ta sura taninias daphne?
corrupted word are trabixu, petlor and cumingam… then silly words like kejk and is-slipper (running shoes, do not see the link with papocc) peeve me off no end!
Why are you so infatuated with social class? The only other person I know as infatuated as you is left wing feminist Mary Darmanin. I remember her getting very flustered when an undergrad student dared voice her opinion that she did not think there was any socio-economic class distinction in Malta. However like you she is a Sliema woman who speaks Maltese with a particular accent by for example making the ‘r’ sound too soft.
[Daphne – Mary Darmanin is from the exact same social class as I am. She is from the same family, too: my husband’s first cousin and my third cousin once removed. The difference between us is that she feels a pressing need to get on down with the working class and I don’t. Apparently, this has something to do with being a socialist. But she still feels different and she knows that she’s different and all the things I know she knows too – but even more of them because she’s a sociologist and I’m not.
The fact that she’s from Sliema has nothing to do with it her accent. Sliema is chockful of chavs and the lower social orders (how I loved saying that). Neither Mary nor I are ‘infatuated’ with social class. We’re just aware that those classes exist and we’re also aware of what distinguishes the one from the other.
Mary would have become flustered in that situation, yes, because unlike me she is embarrassed by the fact of social class and likes to pretend that everyone can be friends and get on famously, by consorting with all sorts and mixing with Partit Laburista delegati. She sticks out like a sore thumb and they don’t know what to make of her – another recipe for disaster.
Mary’s way of speaking (both Maltese and English) is not the result of her social group – and I would know, as that’s my social group – but the result of her particular voice. It cannot possibly have escaped your notice that she and Astrid Vella have a near-identical way of speaking. But they stand out even among their own social group.
The soft R is the accent of our social group. It is not an indication of poor Maltese, but a different accent. It’s the accent of that class of people – different classes of people have different accents. My parents speak with a soft R too, and Maltese is their mother tongue.
The problem with Mary’s way of speaking Maltese is that it’s too try-hard, too studied, and sounds completely unnatural. She uses words, expressions and sentence constructions that no member of her social group would ever use naturally. The combination of a posh accent and the sort of Maltese that the Irkotta Classes tend to favour rings false – because it IS false. She’d be better off speaking as people of her social group do but she’s too fearful of being mocked as ‘not Maltese enough’. Astrid Vella makes the same mistake. They should both learn how to tell the Irkotta Classes to b***r off and mind their own business, but then they both have something political to sell and I’m free to do so because I don’t.]
Remember that every time you go on about class division you are disseminating a socialist construct used to make people with little or no capital envious of their betters.
[Daphne – Rest assured that a great many working-class people have more more capital than I do. The strange thing is that I am not envious or resentful of this fact, but they appear to be extremely resentful towards me. Perhaps it’s because I refuse to do public penance and wear a hair-shirt for not saying things like irkotta. Class hatred is sown from the bottom up, and not from the top down.]
Meanwhile I like what you said about Americans – a people with no history to speak of. Only the other day I was in the house of a Maltese man with an interesting family and he showed us a beautiful 18th century piece of furniture inlaid with carob and olive wood. An American person in the group asked if it was ‘second hand’.
[Daphne – Beautiful.]
Yes, her Maltese is too studied, at least when I hear her speak on TV, In any real life situation I have only ever heard her speak English.
The class distinctions you speak about are interesting in a way because you are making me think of my own family. At home my father always said ‘irkotta’. I have fond memories of Saturdays for example when in the morning I would go bird trapping with my father and in the afternoon when the pastizzi man in his van with tray upon tray of delicious pastizzi my mother would send me to buy ‘rikotta pastizzi’. The man in the van would tell me ‘nofs tuzzana tal -arkotta boi?’
You see my mother and father come from what you would call a ‘mixed marriage’. But before now I had never thought about it that way. My mother and I often spoke English as I did with my maternal grandmother (who introduced me to English literature before I was 10 as she was an avid reader) but it was pure Maltese with my father. In case you are wondering my mother and father are very happily married.
When I occasionaly talk with what you would call bottom rung working class people, I can see their confusion :-) They somehow detect that I am not like them and they even change the way they speak but they are then confused when I speak about hunting, stone dressing and other such subjects using words which no tal ‘pepe’ man has ever heard of.
So you see I think that you’d have to dig really hard to distinguish between classes in modern day Malta.
Ah yes now I remember something else that further complicates matters. I have this one memory of my father and friends taking a break from their shooting and trapping to have a pen knife throwing contest (throwing at a target). As I was not allowed to throw knives I sat down and started reading an Oscar Wilde story (the Selfish Giant) that my grandmother had given me to read.
I feel much richer to have experienced in my childhood several social classes and I never asked myself what social class I belonged to.
Quote “Class hatred is sown from the bottom up, and not from the top down”
That interests me because in England it is the other way round, particularly the upper class attitude to making money through industry, let alone the poor folk who actually do the work.
[Daphne – How is capitalism class hatred? Class hatred is the sort of sentiment that led to the public humiliation and murder of an entire social class of people in the French and Russian terrors, and closer to home, to the ransacking of the homes of ‘is-sinjuri’ during the bread riots in Valletta. Class hatred isn’t even related to material possessions anymore. The last 25 years have seen the grandchildren of beggars and barefoot labourers acquire relative and actual riches, but they still despise the ‘tal-pepe’ – many of whom now have less than they do – simply for being what they are. They don’t even know ‘what they are’, or how to define it – yet they despise it.]
Daph, I cannot agree with you here. The documented deaths of the ‘terrors’ do not compare with the suffering and dying of the poor that never makes history… maybe the obscenely rich don’t hate the rest, they simply show contempt but then again, the parvenues are making the same mistakes that brought so much suffering in the past.
Today we see the benefits of a more representative society, where the poor have a bit of a say because those terrors shocked the rich who cared out of their complacency and do what’s right.
[Daphne – There is an ocean of difference between murdering people because they have committed the crime of having material wealth when you don’t and deaths which occur because the Age of the Welfare State (and of the Capitalism Which Makes That Possible) has not yet dawned.
Britain did all that and better without killing its aristocratic class and removing its royal family and other similarly hysterical theatrics and drama. It didn’t have to go on any bloodthirsty purges or turn itself into a republic to become the world’s first parliamentary democracy or a thriving satirical press which pilloried politicians, kings, queens and other figures of the public stage. In fact, when Oliver Cromwell tried a spot of that kill-the-king-become-a-republic behaviour, he didn’t last long. Imagine banning Christmas – what was he thinking of?
It was the same with us. The post-1987 governments did more to better the lot of the working class through peace, prosperity, education for all and restructuring the economy than Mintoff ever did in 16 long and miserable years of hatred, antagonism, and class wars.]
If you look at the US, the ultra rich advocate less taxes on higher income, no social safety net for the middle class and the poor, no regulation on businesses, no union rights etc… The rich don’t care about the money, they care about power and power is gained by making life difficult for those on the lower rungs.
With little or no middle class, their purchasing power becomes immensely great and we’ll end up like the dysfunctional 3rd world countries were you can buy children for peanuts.
[Daphne – The US is a liberal economy. Safety nets have no place in liberal economics. The fact you overlook is the US is a society/economy created by the very people who left Europe to create something in their own image, so to speak, and that is what they chose to create. The idea of a nanny state is alien to the American mind and that is why they will not be killing the president, the senate, and the denizens of Fifth Avenue to get it any time soon.]
I bet the British monarchy and aristocracy survived thanks to India. They stole its wealth by force and managed to keep the poor sort of supplied. Their only redeeming factor was their capitalist economy, as you said.
To be fair the biggest contributor to the quality of life for the lower classes has been science and the advent of very cheap energy. But that could as well not have passed. It would have been easy for western empires to keep the price of energy high and the poor under control.
I fear the republican ideals in Britain are alive and well and they will eventually lead to the demise of such an anachronism in this, the 21st century…
It’s not fair to blame the 70s on labour: there was the oil crisis and a downturn in the world economy that saw Carter being sent off and the advent of the actor-president with Parkinsons… What did the Maltese state offer to its destitute citizens, and there where many, before Mintoff barged through with his socialist programme?
The US is a liberal economy only when it comes to citizens’ quality of life. It is very interventionist when corporations and large financial institutions hit difficult times or their interests abroad are being undermined by some pesky socialist governments…
Daph, skills and intellectual property weren’t protected before. That’s why guilds were created and that’s why the states that had a strong merchant class prospered: the turds controlling the state couldn’t control the merchant’s source of wealth as that relied on a wed of trust and dangerous shipping lanes spanning the globe.
That resulted in a distinct lack of innovation because the local lord would appropriate himself of the fruits of your labour even if he had to stake you on trumped charges.
Il marchese del grillo says it best…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ_ewZ7JRmg
Another truly classical word – bowl.
Having said that I still remember a programme on Xandir Malta – I believe it was called “Il- Mara”, where the presenter was cooking something and said “poggi il-biskuttini gol-bowl”.
Had she been speaking English bowl would have sounded fine but in Maltese?
Like pipi and pipa?
Was it the same programme in which Olvin Vella said he’d vote Labour if George Abela won the leadership race?
Thank God my examiners never seemed to think so Daphne. But probably none of them had a good grasp of the language right?
[Daphne – Yes, right. And those who speak idiomatic English, and I know several of them, are prone to despair at the poverty of the writing and language in examinations, papers and essays, and have decided to just let it go, let it ride, because they can’t fail everyone and they don’t know where and how to draw the line, even though they know it is scandalous to confer a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree on somebody who can’t put a sentence together properly or express him/herself coherently and use logical arguments. Fortunately, there is only one university in Malta and the brilliant, the bright, the gifted and the ones who can write go there too, and this means that a degree from the University of Malta is not automatically devalued by the existence of large numbers of graduates who can’t write or spell. If you lived in Britain you wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of getting into one of the better universities and even if you did – by some amazing stroke of luck or act of cunning – you would have been weeded out at the first sorting exercise called examinations.]
Daph, irony apart. You have a particularly irritating habit which some readers might find endearing, I don’t. When someone is trying to present a decent argument, what you do instead of putting forward a counter argument is attack the person. Either they are chavs, or else they can’t spell, or whatever. Sad….
[Daphne – I don’t attack the person. I react (negatively) to personal attacks on me. When my arguments are clear, consistent and irrefutable (they sometimes are, and this is one such case – though it’s not always so), people give up on the counter arguments and begin attacking me instead – completely irrationally. ‘What do you know, you don’t know Maltese’ is one such irrational argument. Who says I don’t know Maltese? The Labour Party? Maltastar, which butchers languages on a daily basis? If you were to sit down and think about it sensibly, you’d see that this couldn’t possibly be true: I’m obviously sharp, I’ve lived in Malta all my life, I grew up in a Maltese-speaking household with parents who still speak to me and to each other in Maltese, and I’m obviously bloody good at picking up languages because my English is perfectly idiomatic and nobody taught me. I worked it out on my own. So how could I possibly not know Maltese? I might not know any of the rules – I’ll give you that – but then I don’t know any of the rules of English grammar/syntax, either, and nobody can say I don’t know English.
If you’re going to rush at me and call me a snob who doesn’t know what she’s talking about just because I pointed out that there are social classes and that irkotta is a word used only by the working-classes or those a generation or two away from the working-class, and that people who come from families with a long history of literacy – I’m going to use literacy rather than anything else, because it’s safer – say ricotta, then I’m going to react by remarking that if you say irkotta then it’s obvious that your family hasn’t had a long history of literacy. It’s something that I would never have said otherwise, as I know these sorts of things can cause offence – heaven knows why, as there’s nothing to be ashamed of unless you’re busy pretending otherwise – and can be considered rude by those who don’t take it as part and parcel of the discussion.
The thing is that in reality I don’t give a damn what people say or how they say it, but I do object, and most strenuously at that, when I am told that I should immediately stop pronouncing a word as members of my social group do and start pronouncing it as members of the working classes do because that is the ‘correct and real Maltese’ way, especially when I know that it is the fruit of ignorance and illiteracy among their grandparents’ generation. This problem arises because the situation is still in flux, with the two versions coexisting unhappily. It does not arise when the mispronunciation has become part and parcel of the language and because of that, class-neutral.]
But now excuse me, Daphne. While I do not want to detract an iota of what you’re saying to this Olvin Vella fan, may I ask you whether in your opinion:
1. “iffoka” is correct for “to focus”? Shouldn’t it be: iffokalizza?
2. “parti integrali”? Why not “parti integranti”?
3. “massiva”? Why not “massicca”?
4. “xjentist”? Why not “xjenzat”?
[Daphne – I’m struggling, but I can’t work up any interest.]
Having lunch with you must be an experience! I’d choke with laughter! Your sense of humour is something!
It is. Entertaining, memorable and mesmerizing. Don’t know how she put up with me.
Really?
Hmmmm….
But that would mean giving up my real identity!
“The thing is that in reality I don’t give a damn what people say or how they say it, but I do object, and most strenuously at that, when I am told that I should immediately stop pronouncing a word as members of my social group do and start pronouncing it as members of the working classes do because that is the ‘correct and real Maltese’ way…”
That is exactly the point. No-one is telling you to stop pronouncing “ricotta” or whatever. What we’re saying is that the “standard” way of writing it in Maltese is “irkotta”.
That’s the beauty of Maltese, a language spoken by less than a million people, but that has so many varieties, variants and idiolects.
Daphne, I find it truly amazing that after all the tiresome tosh that has been written over the last few days you can still put forward your argument with such ease as you have in that last paragraph.
@SPTT: you wrote – ‘I will not bother to correct your assumptions as it is irrevant to this argument’.
You have shown us your socio/linguistic baggage. Your strongest language may be Maltese and Minglish but not English.
Għal min jimpurtah, dawn huma ftit mill-kliem li l-ilsien Ingliż ħa mill-Għarbi u addatta għalih
Alcohol (al kohl), Admiral (amir al bihar), Algebra (al gabr),
Almanac (al manakh), Ammonia (amun), Arthichoke ( al xurshuf), Assassin (hashshashin), Checkmate (shah mat)
Chemistry (alkimija), Divan (diwan), Giraffe (zarafa), cake (kak), cafe (qahwa), Magazine (makhazin), Mummy (mumijja)
Orange (narang), Safari ( safar), Sofa (suffa), sugar (sukkar), Tariff (taqrifa) Zero (sifr)
Tgħid l-Ingliżi injoranti u ta’ klassi baxxa wkoll għax ikkorrompew dawn il-kliem? Għalfejn dejjem naqbdu mal-Malti?
Prosit.
Prosit – Now that is the word which sets my teeth on edge, M Pace. Whenever I see it written (or used to hear it on radio – prosit tal-programm (sometimes spiced up with the revolting ‘hi’ ) I get the impression that the user could not be bothered to think of something more appropriate to use.
Vanni ħanini take it easy. Prosit is a perfectly appropriate word. It’s actually Latin and is also found in Germanic languages.
I simply wanted to say that I found N Schembri’s interesting if for nothing else because it is based on facts and not impressions, prejudice and emotion.
M Pace:
I was not having a go at you per se, but your use of that word reminded me of my pet hate.
Anyway, great to see that you are familiar with German. However I am slightly puzzled as to why you saw fit to drag German in to shore up your argument. You do know that the German ‘prosit’, and this holds true to the more widely used ‘prost’, is the German equivalent to our cheers, a toast, and is not used in the same easy manner as by some.
Naqbel mieghek fuq li qieghed tghid, sa certu punt. Jien izjed insegwi stazzjonijiet ta’ televizjoni Taljana milli dawk Maltin. Nista nghidlek li anke dawn bil-lingwa romantika li ghandhom, jikkorrompu kliem Ingliz ghal l’istil ta’ lingwa Taljana.
[Daphne – Brian, this comparison is false. When Italians borrow from English, they borrow from a completely alien language which only a few individuals can understand or speak. Italians across all social classes and all levels of education find English incomprehensible. When Maltese people borrow from English, they borrow from a language which is in constant, parallel use in the same society, and with which they are familiar. If some of them are unfamiliar with English and make mistakes, then there are enough people around – certainly the official body that polices these things – to set them straight. Yet instead, the official body colludes, because its members despite English and are only too happy to see an English word corrupted, mispronounced and misspelled as heavily as possible.]
Pero, nahseb li Daphne, peress li hija Maltija, izjed qeda tirrifletti w konxja fuq l’-uzu tal-kliem Malti milli dak iehor barrani. Nghiduwa kif inhi, nigi nitmellah kif barranin juzaw il-lingwa taghhom.
Is-sabiha hija din, ‘blogs’ ohra jaghjruha li Daphne Caruana Galizia ghanda imniehera inxammar ghax tal ‘pepe’. Biss jien nghidlek din….. DCG jkollha ragun, u ta’ spiss.
You mention first names – what about double ‘baron’ surnames.
[Daphne – Only the Irkotta Classes think those are smart and a sign of social superiority. Not all toffs have two surnames and not all people with two surnames are toffs.]
Debono Grech, Spiteri Debono, Coleiro Preca, Sceberras Trigona come to mind.
[Daphne – Come to mind as what? Two of those are smart families and two of them are patently not, though one of them is very nice.]
I agree with you: it’s not the two surnames which make people better or worse than other people.
“Two of those are smart families and two of them are patently not, though one of them is very nice”
And one of the ‘smart family’ ones is not nice at all!
a useless aside: seems like all the high profile assassination in the US where committed by red necks with double barrel surnames. It was one of those pieces venturing too much into hypotheticals but captured by interest nonetheless.
Dear Daphne, yours and other rikotta comments, besides being interesting, are ample proof that you have a sense of humour, and, also, that your writings can be of a laugh/cry nature.
Somebody else sarcastically commented that you thought that you were an ‘expert’ in all matters. A sort of a superwoman.
This same person, and your opposites, fail to understand that it is your ability to be versatile in various subjects that makes it possible, from studies, research work, and other benign gifts bestowed upon you by mother nature that make you more equal than others.
To give you an example: when I judged dog shows, overseas in championship shows, although successfully, I was very often criticised by the Maltese canine fraternity for being a ‘pruzuntus’ because they could never understand that it IS possible to know about all the breed characteristics of about 200 various breeds.
Breed characteristics, according to the breed standard of pedigree dogs
Daphne, when do you have the court hearing this month with Consuelo Herrera?
[Daphne – 1 July]
Charles, hadd ma jsemmi Jesus imma Redeemer hawn imsemmijien.Mur il-Hamrun hdejn San Frangisk u saqsi ghal dan il guvni jismu Redeemer.
Jien naf lil xi hadd jismu Eemer. Il-veru miskin,
Never liked the stuff anyway. As a true Maltese I’ve always gone for gbejniet.
On another matter: I am watching a discussion on One TV about the power station extension. At one point Godfrey Grima questioned what will happen if the filters fail.
This is one of the arguments why, he says, the proposed extension should be rejected. He then suggests that Malta should go for a small nuclear plant. He worries about faults in filters and yet he does not worry if there is an accident in a nuclear plant which is within a few hundred metres from residential area.
He is making my stomach turn with his sweeping statements and accusations on corruption. According to him, for example, the only explanation for cost overruns on roads is due to corruption.
[Daphne – Godfrey Grima. Il-mejda tal-qubbajt tal-Partit Laburista. Ma, xi dwejjaq ta’ nies. If only you knew what I do and am too discreet to say.]
Too discreet to say – hohum
U ejja Daph, some of us have exams and we need a diversion….Consiegate was a godsend during the last session of Assessments…Go on, don’t be shy. Spill.
apart from Grima worrying about the filters, I have to say that the new technologies in small nuclear power generators seem to be very promising.
People are kicking up a fuss over emissions notwithstanding the use of filters and guarantees that emissions will satisfy stringent EU standards.
How do you think they would react if a nuclear plant is proposed within a few kilometres from their home? What happens if there is an accident? No amount of guarantees will placate people. Get real!
If government were to suggest a small nuclear plant, Godfrey Grima would be the first to say that government has lost its senses. More than that, he might claim that someone in government is in collusion with some company supplying nuclear plants. In yesterday’s discussion on One TV, anything government says or does was interpreted as a sign of corruption by Grima.
I was shocked by the amount of rubbish and bias coming from someone who likes to project himself as being fair and impartial.
Incidentally Italy decided to build a number of nuclear plants. Where to locate them is becoming a hot potato.
France gets 80% of its electricity needs from nuclear. they had taken a decision long ago to be independent of other countries.
It’s ironic that the Italians who have overwhelmingly voted nuclear out for so long ending up buying their electricity from the french across the border. They could have had cheaper electricity for a lot longer.
When the cost gets right, we will be getting a nuclear plant … or two. We need lots of cheap energy to build a bigger economy. We how do you think electric cars and an underground system will be powered?
if the filters fail on a nuclear power station, our energy worries would be solved for good….. in fact, all our worries would be solved for good…..
Godfrey Grima should keep quiet on the subject of corruption. His brother was a minister in the Labour government pre-1987.
This idea that the social classes are so sharply distinguished is another thing which confirms our Britishness. In no other country in Europe is such a fuss made out of class-distinction as in Britain.
Classes do exist on the continent, of course, but they are not such a great cultural phenomenon as in our British way of life. The French revolution, from where the continental mentality was born, made sure that those who are at the very top have their wings clipped a little. Britain, and hence we, evolved differently.
No, Albert.
What about the cafoni? The viddrani? The coatti?
Italy is full of social distinctions.
If you’re in Italy and someone calls you “cafone” or “coatto”, they’ve just told you you come from the hoi polloi, the scum, the riffraff, il-karfa in Maltese.
In Sicily the term “viddrano”, coming from the same Latin term from which “villano” in Italian derives, means “farmer”. But it also means low-class people.
Villano means “spreg. v. rifatto, contadino che, pur arricchito, è rimasto rozzo”.
There you are. It is not just Britain. Italy too.
Talking about “cafoni” is something else…not class distinction. Like the Maltese “hamallu”, it is not identical with associating someone with the working class..though admittedly there is some implied connection.
“Hamallu”, “cafone”; these are rather labels which categorise BEHAVIOUR, rather than BELONGING, which is what the British, that is our, class distinction is all about.
In fact, this British class distinction lacks any clear definition of how the classes can be really distinguished, and yet the distinction in the minds of we who are educated the British way is very clear.
And I am not saying that there are no class distinctions in other countries. I am saying that in countries of the British tradition like us, this distinction is very much made to be apparent.
Then the class system you are referring to would seem to me to be the feudal system. Do you really think Malta has a feudal system?
My own impression is that, like Sicily, we have certain aspects of the feudal system, particularly the concept of the lord-vassal relationship and the idea of private justice.
But I cannot see a society which does not allow mobility.
[Daphne – You’re confusing things here. We’re talking about a class system, not a caste system. Of course there’s social mobility in Malta, and there has been from day one. Each one of us alive today is proof of that. Most of us are descended from slaves and sailors and jobbing workmen and itinerant tradesmen. A huge majority of the population today – 80% at a rough guess? – had grandparents and parents who were ragged, barefoot labourers, living 20 to a room. A hundred years ago there were thousands of children abandoned in orphanages. The poverty was hideous, and it was general. Those desperate people surviving in squalor didn’t just disappear without progeny or emigrate – though lots did. Their children and grandchildren are the ones who make up most of today’s population. There’s social mobility throughout Europe, because the European class system is liquid and allows for change over time. And thank heavens for that. It’s the reason for Europe’s growth and development on all fronts. If this were not the case, we would all still be frozen where our distant ancestors where, as was the case in Imperial China and India.]
If you will agree with me that social mobility is possible in Malta, then you will agree with me that our situation is closer to Italy’s, where calling someone villano (“spreg. v. rifatto, contadino che, pur arricchito, è rimasto rozzo”) does not imply the existence of feudalism.
[Daphne – It’s not close to Italy’s at all. The comparison you should make is to a specific region – the ‘heel and toe’ of Italy, particularly the heel, and Sicily. There, the social culture is virtually identical. There is, however, a major difference – the crucial one which changed things for us: we were a British colony for almost 200 years and were effectively little more than one of the most important ports in the Mediterranean.
This caused a significant shift in the development of different classes of people and, indeed, in how they were ‘classified’, with great distinctions between urban and rural culture, for a start. Yesterday I read an article by David Agius in The Times. He wrote about parents’ ambitions for their children and what children want to be when they grow up. He said that it was normal up to recently for mothers (note the emphasis on that one parent, which is important) to decide (ditto) that their sons should become doctors and lawyers because of the prestige and status this would confer on the family, and if there was a spare son he would become a priest. David seemed to think this situation was common practice throughout Maltese society. It certainly was not. It was an Irkotta thing.]
Daphne, what so you exactly mean with this point?
“David seemed to think this situation was common practice throughout Maltese society. It certainly was not. It was an Irkotta thing.”
[Daphne – Exactly that. The mothers who urged their sons to become doctors and lawyers to confer status on the family (or more specifically, on them) and who pushed left-over sons into the priesthood were the kind who said irkotta. Families which had status already did not push their sons to become doctors and lawyers, because they didn’t see status as something that could be acquired through joining the professions. If their sons became doctors or lawyers, it was because they needed some way to earn a living, and because they wanted to, or because they followed in their father’s footsteps, or because they wanted tertiary education and chose law – or whatever – but not for status. As for the priesthood – in Maltese society it was usually a case of the higher the status, the lower their respect for the priesthood. Now I had better explain this really carefully.
This does not mean they were irreligious, not at all, but they were far less reverential and certainly not at all in awe. This probably had more to do with higher levels of education among high status families than anything else. It probably also accounts for one of the reasons why supporters of Lord Strickland, who came mainly from high status families (and please know that I use that term because it’s more accurate than ‘class’), did not take the attacks of the Catholic Church as seriously – or worry about them as much – as did supporters of the Labour Party with their own crisis a few decades later. Of course, there were many priests from high status families – one assumes it was what they wanted, more so because they had to give up all rights to inheritance, or have their possessions/inheritance rights pass to the religious order they joined (vow of poverty, etc).]
Man, do not start. Gbejna friska tqattar ix-xorrox maghmula minn baqta friska ..beats arkotta anytime
(Fr) David ilu ma’ ta’ l-irkotta!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9j8UkDSIks
Min jaf x’jghidulhom tal-pepe’ l-pastizzi ta’ l-irkotta Spir?
Pastizzi tar-rikotta?
[Daphne – Yes, of course. What else? Pastizzi tal-arkotta? God forbid.]
Arkotta is also used .
And who remembers the Maltese song ‘Krismiss Fader tini pupa, Krismiss Fader tinsinix’ ?
Good one, Anne – you made me laugh.
I admit that I am not sure whether it is irkotta or rikotta, and I was never a fan of it. I grew up with pastizzi tal-hashoo jew tal-pizelli.
Call me hamallu but I say pastizzi ta’ l-irkotta not pastizzi tar-rikotta…
[Daphne – Nobody’s calling anyone hamallu here, if only because I won’t allow it. Hamallu is something else entirely. It does not equate to working-class and it certainly does not mean somebody who says irkotta.]
There’s hamallu in all of us.
[Daphne – Exactly. It’s part of the human temperament.]
Brilliant!
Tal-Pepe’ saying, there’s a hamallu in all of us!
This deserves the Comment of the Week accolade!
Did anyone bother to look up the word in a dictionary? Both Rkotta and Rikotta are correct.
Pastizzi ta’ l-irkotta (the “i” being il-vokali tal-leħen) or pastizzi tar-rikotta.
Aħjar ma ngħid xejn. Vera m’għandnix x’nagħmlu.
[Daphne – This is not about what the dictionary says, but about the wider significance of each of those words.]
The wider significance of pronouncing or not pronouncing the ‘i’ between the ‘r’ and the ‘k’? In that case we have a hell of a problem with Mdina and L-Imdina.
[Daphne – Look, if you don’t like it, just butt out. Nobody’s forcing you to follow this exchange.]
Is-Santa Maria. Just an observation.
Dear Daphne,will someone explain why Joseph Muscat and his wife were involved in this ricotta debate?
[Daphne – Because that’s how they say it.]
Mela jien mal-partit ta’ l-irkotta jew ‘ahjar’ tal-irkotta!!
Regarding ricotta: In Qormi I often hear the work Arkotta.
It’s me again. Imma sorry tafx, il-futura first lady (ovvjament fl-immaginazzjoni taghha) x’ghandha x’taqsam mal-irkotta/arkotta/rikotta?
A teacher once told me that they were referring to Humpty Dumpty as “Bajdu Bajdollu.”
Bajdu Bajdollu tela’ fuq il-hajt
Bajdu Bajdollu waqa’ ma l-art.
Sounds cute.
Sounds vulgar to me but then I have a bit of a hamalla in me as Pepe’ so brilliantly put it
We had a history teacher at the Lyceum who we used to call Bajdollu – we really loved his lessons, may he rest in peace!
Sometimes I wonder whether this (and similar other) blogs are ever visited by a good psychiatrist who, in plain Queen’s English or pure Maltese (if ever is such a thing) explain the complexities of the minds of so many so intrigued by the use or misuse of one simple word such as rikotta, aka ricotta, aka irkotta.
The silly thing is that if two people go to the same grocer one asking for a kilo of irkotta and the other asking for a kilo of rikotta end up either not being served or served with two different cheeses!
[Daphne – No. They’ll both get exactly the same thing: rikotta made in Malta. If you want the Italian variety, the way to ask for it is ‘rikotta ta’ barra’.]
What is a language, after all? Is it not a means of communication, developed over time and mutating into different dialects and with time, different languages? Latin > French> German> Spanish and so on and so forth? So why all the fuss regarding the positioning of an ‘i’ in a word which either way serves the user well?
Why bring ‘class’ into it? Is this not parallel to ‘poetic’ licences or to the use of dialects prevalent in many countries and especially so in Malta? So someone who pronounces ‘tieghi’ as tee-eee as opposed to tee-aj or even tee-ej, is a better bred higher class than the latters?
[Daphne – Sociolinguistics. You can’t study that without reference to class.]
I don’t for one moment expect someone buying half a kilo of irkotta (as opposed to rikotta) as assuming the burden of observing linguistic rules and correctness just in case Daphne is within earshot.
So for Daphne, it is ricotta or rikotta depending on whether she is in the company of some Italian aristocrat or rikotta if she is accompanied by some learned Maltese language specialist who, in all probability has accepted both versions of the spelling as correct. So, I say, to each his own and live and let live..
[Daphne – Oh come on. Honestly. One class of people says rikotta and the rest say irkotta. That’s the way it is. Instead of challenging it, accept it. Social class is definitely a part of it because the social class with the longest history of literacy is the one to which irkotta is alien.]
As someone mentioned in the previous blog, if rikotta or irkotts is such a hot topic, all other worries about daily life in Malta pale into insignificance.
And in case I have been careless about syntax, spelling and punctuation, .I am not proofreading this ’cause it’s late, I’m tired and best of all, I don’t give a rat’s a***.
I think we tend to adjust our pronunciation to the context as a subtle form of good manners.
[Daphne – I never do. I think it’s offensive and patronising and people notice immediately when it’s done and feel patronised: in the same way that I get annoyed when people assume that they have to speak to me in English even for simple instructions and attention over a shop counter.]
You’re right. I notice they do that to me if they overhear me speaking to my son in English before I reach the counter. Then I flip to Maltese because it’s obvious they’re struggling and they insist on carrying on in English. It’s awkward.
As for the courtesy aspect: our linguistics lecturer had told us, many moons ago, that when a married couple have different dialects, the wife adjusts hers to fit his when she addresses his family and vice versa. I’ve never had an opportunity to observe this phenomenon, partly because I can’t tell one dialect from another except for Gozitan
May I remind that the same happened in the English Language. The British used to hear “Ax Xeikh Met” in Arabic which means The sheikh is dead and they have adapted it as “Checkmate” in their language. This is only one example.
Any one can access the internet and look for Arabic loan words in English and check for himself. Other examples include: traffic, cake, chemistry and loads more. The same can be said for other words, example the word “beautiful”, in which beau is in French and the rest is in English. No language is absolutely pure and this also applies for our beloved Language.
[Daphne – Funny how my patience doesn’t wear thin. The essential point is that Arabic was a completely alien language to the English – both in its written and spoken form – and illiteracy was widespread in any case. Now, in 2010, we have absolutely no justification for mispronouncing and misspelling loan-words, more so when the loan-words come directly from two languages that are part of daily life anyway: Italian and English. And I don’t know why you felt the pressing need to translate ‘ix-xih miet’ for my benefit, spelling it ‘English’. Maltese is basically Arabic, remember? So when a Maltese phrase is devoid of Italianate constructs or romance words, like ‘ix-xih miet’, it is pure and simple Arabic.]
I love the origin of “pumpernickel”. Legend has it that this originated from Napoleon’s exclamation when he first tasted German bread. He said “c’est pain pour nikel” . Nikel was his horse’s name! Whether its actually true or not, I find it very amusing, as is this discussion on rikotta and irkotta!!
@ Charles J Buttigieg, sorry for upsetting you Daphne!!
It’s getting a bit creepy- I can write what ever the hell I want as long as I don’t upset Daphne!! Il- Lallu kemm int careful.
Interesting, I am learning quite a lot about myself.
“The wider significance of each of those words” is not really wide at all. It subsists on a substratum of social class distinctions – which necessarily exist in some guise or other across all cultures throughout history. Which is why, incidentally, communism and similar egalitarian policies were doomed from the word go, as they are ideas that nature itself abhors.
That the classes will not look too kindly upon each other is quite to be expected for obvious reasons, not least because of “tribal kinship” to borrow a phrase. Escalating these differences into class wars, I think, is solely due to pride and envy.
I’m from what would be the loose equivalent of the British lower middle class. I would definitely look gauche and uncouth to anybody from a higher echelon, but that doesn’t make me less of a person than him/her. And this is precisely where the problem with class distinction lies, for me.
[Daphne – Reuben, nobody’s saying that you’re ‘less of a person’. This is a discussion about how certain words are social signifiers, and how the people who say irkotta are adamant that it does not communicate a wealth of information about their close links, in generational terms, to illiteracy. If it weren’t for the fact that illiteracy was linked to one class and literacy to another, it wouldn’t even be about social classes. If you meet anyone who you might think is tal-pepe, and then hear them say ‘irkotta’, you will know for a fact that this person has been born to a family which has only recently become literate. Literate people do not move letters around in words, because they know what they look like on the page. If you know that ricotta is spelled that way, you will never begin to pronounce it ircotta.
The mistake is then fed down the generations. When the people who make the mistake achieve literacy, that is how they write it, because that is how they know it. There are a lot of them, so the mistake goes into the language. Sometimes it is actively promoted – as with irkotta, by the producers who need to distinguish it from the imported version, particularly with a view to registering it as a traditional food.
Words are so powerful in their implicit meaning that you didn’t even have to tell me that you are lower middle class. I had gathered that already from the few things you wrote here, and you didn’t even mention irkotta. How did I know? I couldn’t be specific, but there is a wealth of signals which I picked up on immediately. The fact that you felt the need to describe yourself as such means that you don’t grasp just how powerful those signals are, or how easily they can be read.]
Some “upper crust” people seem to think that because they possess more sophisticated manners – which they do, it must be said – they are in some way superior as individuals.
If this irkotta/ricotta business is indicative of this then I say to each his own and it’s foolish to impose “class identifiers” – which exist – beyond the shadow of a doubt – on members of other classes.
I say “irkotta” you say “ricotta” we’re different so we have to deal with it. If I feel I have to inject some inexistent objectivity into a pronunciation/idiom characteristic to my class then that’s an entirely different matter altogether. It means I’m embarrassed to admit my origins. Symptomatic of deep psychological issues.
However, I am still not convinced that irkotta/ricotta is purely a class identifier. Danger in Spanish is “peligro” but we all “know” that the correct word is “pericolo.” Likewise Dinamarca – bear in mind that vowels are important in Romance languages …
[Daphne – If you’re a linguist, then I can’t believe you are – deliberately? – missing the essence of the argument. We KNOW it is linked to class because the two words – irkotta and ricotta – coexist in the present and it is possible to research usage through observation. We can see who uses which. Irkotta is used in families with a recent history of illiteracy. Those would be working-class, lower middle class, call it what you will. They definitely do not come from the very small percentage of the population who were wholly literate three or four generations ago. A literate family does not mean one in which a privileged son got to go to school, or in which a priest-uncle could read and write, or in which the men could write a bit and the women couldn’t at all. A literate family is one in which every member – mother, father, all grandparents, great-parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, the works – can read properly (books, that is, not simple instructions). Count back, and try to work out which generation in your family was the first to have two literate parents and four literate grandparents, and this on both your mother’s side and your father’s.
The Spanish situation you mention is not at all comparable: once the mistake is embedded in the language, everyone has to use it because that’s the official word. That’s why everyone, regardless of education, has ended up saying (with a sob in some hearts) ARTAL for altar. Again, if you’re a linguist this should interest you instead of putting up your defences. And if you’re a linguist, you should know that it’s ‘non-existent’ and not ‘inexistent’ – a very basic error specifically made by so many lower middle class people in Malta that it has become a social signifier in itself.]
I’m not a linguist. I have studied the natural sciences “academically” and I have more than a passing interest in philosophy and, recently, theology. Your deductive *ahem* powers need some fine-tuning.
What do you think is wrong with inexistent? It’s a perfectly valid word in English… as is non-existent.
[Daphne – It’s impossible to deduce what you do for a living unless you tell me directly, because I’m not about to ring around and ask. As for inexistent, it’s wrong because it’s just not in the dictionary. You’ll find it in some on-line dictionaries – one of which describes it as ‘a rare word for nonexistent’ and another as being taken directly from the French inexistant – but it’s just not used in idiomatic English because, quite simply, it’s nonexistent. That’s the correct word: nonexistent. Whenever I see the word ‘inexistent’ used by people in Malta, in writing and in speech, it hits me like a sledgehammer. That’s how obviously, glaringly wrong it is. And it’s always the same sort of people. Mona Farrugia is the biggest culprit.]
I have checked the real OED, the real Merriam Webster and asked a reliable source. Inexistent is not British English, but it’s acceptable in AmE. I write in BrE, so I’ll concede that I was wrong and you were right. Well done. No point in persisting in error.
[Daphne – Ah, now we’re friends. Thanks for that.]
P.S. Mona Farrugia che c’entra?
[Daphne – She’s a noted example of somebody who writes extensively and always uses ‘inexistent’ when she means nonexistent. It’s one of her hallmarks’. That’s what I mean about being able to tell a lot about people just from seemingly meaningless things like one word. I suspect she also had a lot to do with feeding the growth of use of this non-word among her associates and readers who are less familiar with English. I’m not suggesting that you are an associate of hers, but I am curious as to how you picked it up. This is a genuine question, because as you can see, I’m a fixated word nerd who loves these things. Where did you pick it up? What stops you using nonexistent? Faced with inexistent and nonexistent, why do you choose the former? Mona Farrugia, incidentally, also uses disinterested when she means uninterested – all the time. I don’t think newspaper writers understand just how great their responsibility is for feeding errors into common usage.]
Believe it or not I am a fixated word nerd too, but I’m more into etymology. I have always preferred inexistent to nonexistent because I feel that inexistent is more faithful to its origin than nonexistent.
However, as I have stated in one of my replies, I was under the mistaken impression that both were equally valid in BrE. I’ll have to switch – reluctantly, may I add – to nonexistent.
[Daphne – Ah, now we’re friends. Thanks for that.]
As far as I’m concerned we were never enemies. I just disagree with most of what you write. You may be the most agreeable person I’ve yet to meet for all I know. You may have noticed that I have never attacked you personally. Not even in that piece I had written for that defunct blog.
Does this help? I traced the earliest reference I could find.
Charta anno 1207, in Accessus ad Historia Cassinensis part. 1. page 284 col. 2 :
“De ovibus dabitis decimam, de lana caseo et Recotta.”
[Daphne – Baxxter, we love you. Now the burning question: how was it made?]
“Baxxter, we love you.”
Ah. Is anything more beautiful than reciprocated love?
Baxxter, qalbi, further up you called yourself Mr Ugly…how could those shallow girls dismiss you so when you have such a beautiful brain eh?
Because they are shallow?
Andrea
Right you are. I guess that makes me dense
Because brains alone just won’t cut it. You need a killer body or a loaded wallet, or both. And I have none. Besides, the competition is tough.
And I didn’t go and look through some musty archive for that source. I just referred to the trusty du Cange Dictionary. Online. So I’m not so brainy after all.
So now we have TWO social groups in Malta – the Irkotti and the Ricotte! Somewhat along the lines of Swift’s big-endians and little-endians – some things do not change!
Oh, and who is the Andrew Azzopardi who isn’t THE Andrew Azzopardi? This is getting to be very confusing – evidently there exists an Andrew Azzopardi somewhere on these islands who claims sole ownership of that eponym. Will all the other Andrew Azzopardi’s kindly change their name or leave immediately?
I assume a Yahoo would say ‘irkotta and a Houyhnhnm would say ‘ricotta’.
… e u ghax ilha ttini f’ghajni. Dak li thobbu tant issejhulu “Queen’s English” illum huwa maghruf bhala RP jigifieri “Received Pronunciation”
Hemm artikolett interessanti fuq il-Wikipedija (bl-Ingliz, kif wiehed jista’ jistenna).
[Daphne – Idiomatic English uses ‘the Queen’s English’. Received pronunciation is for academics and for people who have learned English as a foreign language, and are unaccustomed to the concept of keeping it simple, which underpins English thought and hence, English writing. Haven’t you ever tried trying to translate a piece of Italian or Maltese bull into idiomatic English? You can’t. It’s impossible. You have to change the thing completely and rewrite it, winding up with say, two sentences instead of 20.]
It pains me to have to burst your bubble, but you’re wrong. RP is the new-ish way of saying Queen’s English. Look it up. Anywhere except in l-orizzont.
[Daphne – I don’t NEED to look it up, Reuben. This is my world. But I can give you a little help here. The Queen’s English is not analogous to Received Pronunciation. It is analogous to Standard English. The Queen’s English/Standard English refer to both the written and spoken language, but received pronunciation (the name should give you a clue) refers only to the spoken form.
Your confusion arises from the fact that received pronunciation deals with the spoken form of the Queen’s English/Standard English. It’s a commonly made error and one which has even begun to be assimilated – so you’re not out on a limb there.
If you’re unhappy using the word ‘queen’, go for Standard English. But please don’t suggest writing anything in received pronunciation, because that would be a bit of a difficult request to meet. Suggest writing it in Standard English instead.]
Qed thawwad, binti. il-“Queen’s English” tirreferi ghall-Ingliz mitkellem u l-Ingliz miktub. La konna qed nitkellmu dwar min jghid arkutta u rikotta, wiehed jifhem li konna qed nithaddtu fuq l-ilsien mitkellem mhux miktub. Ghalhekk semmejt l-RP jien.
Ovvja li RP tirreferi esklussivament ghall-iIngliz mitkellem. Bravu daqs nofsok m’inix imma naf x’jigifieri “pronunciation”. Sahansitra fittixtha fil-Kalepin u qlibtha ghall-Malti.
[Daphne – I find it fascinating the way people who are not truly bilingual lapse into their sole mother tongue when they have lost an argument about a language which remains essentially foreign to them no matter how many papers on linguistics they might have read. ]
Skuzani se nkun fitt. Ma tlift l-ebda argument. Biex int ma tidhirx li ma tafx ezatt fuqhiex qed titkellem (ghax idea hafif tidher li ghandek) qed tipprova ddawwarha li jien qabbilt l-RP mal-Queen’s English miktub.
Naf li se tibqa’ ssostni tieghek ‘ ’til the cows come home’ kif jghidu l-Amerikani imma jien nista nghid b’wicci minn quddiem li sehmi ghamiltu billi ppruvajt nixhet ftit dawl fejn hemm dlam ikreh ta’ l-ikbar ghadu li qatt ma rnexxielu jeghleb Napuljun Bonaparti.
[Daphne – Reuben, I know exactly what I’m talking about. Now that you’ve described yourself as lower middle class and I don’t have to say it myself for fear of upsetting you (God knows why….all these people with chips and hang-ups), I’ll spell it out: only lower middle class Maltese academics use terms like ‘received pronunciation’ in all contexts because – and this is another class indicator with bells on – they feel the need to prove they are ‘bravu’ by using the terms they have been taught. Read any of Niall Ferguson’s newspaper columns and you’ll see what I mean.]
“they feel the need to prove they are ‘bravu’ by using the terms they have been taught”
“Jargon” is handy because it provides an accurate and precise word for the thought/idea/concept being articulated. You can’t criticise those two relatives of yours for using irkotta to boost their popularity stakes and, for the same reason, disparage jargon.
[Daphne – They don’t use ‘irkotta’ because it’s jargon. They use it – or at least one of them does – because she has sociaist hang-ups about not being seen to be undemocratic. She does not, however, say irkotta or talk about it – though knowing all those hang-ups she has, she probably asks for irkotta at the shop and then goes home to make a torta tar-rikotta. I don’t go in for that sort of hypocrisy, which is why – in the food magazine which I publish – it’s ricotta.]
Can indicator non/usage while driving be an indication of social class? And what about whether you wear 34A or 36DD?
timesofmalta.com report on Il-Bona murder trial:
“A request for bail was made and the matter will be formally dealt with once the last witness, Prancienne Borg, testifies next Thursday”.
Prancienne? … and Borg? That’s almost equivalent to sexual abuse.
She’s unique! Google Prancienne and only the TOM article comes up. At least, I’m assuming it’s a she …
maybe her parents are Ferrari fans…y’know the Prancing Stallion but then I am being too demanding on the poor dears
I used to teach her. It’s an amalgam of Speranza Anna.
Officials with the Argentinian World Cup squad are being a bit more lenient than our bishops, but still, some restrictions apply.
“The players will be able to have sex during the World Cup in South Africa, but with regular partners and without champagne or other drinks,” team doctor Donato Villami told Radio Del Plata. BBC Sport 27 May 2010
dalwaqt nibdew Leo, l-irtokki ta’ l-ahhar u bdejna.
ooops! did i say irtokki?
I might need a bit of an irtokk Pepe’. Someone in my office was making a brave attempt to organize a sweepstake with little response. Then I signed up promising to dye my hair red if my team wins. That got people scrambling. I guess with Uruguay I should be pretty safe. Then again, football is a funny game.
A language is a means of communication. But it doesn’t stop there.
To claim that it is irrelevant whether you say irkotta, arkotta or ricotta is irrelevant, as long as you are understood, might as well say that it is irrelevant whether you say safe-starter or self starter as long as you get the message/product.
But this only in Malta.
Some might say, ‘’mhux xorta, l-aqwa li fiehmni, issa dawn mghux kollha cucati’’ if you dare correct them.
I admit that my use of language is far from perfect but I acknowledge when I am mistaken.
I have seen many reports/correspondence in English addressed to English people and other English-speaking foreigners. Many a time, the recipients couldn’t even understand the meaning and wrote back asking for a better explanation of what was meant.
Whenever I remarked on this to those in a position to do something about it, I got replies like: ‘’Ghidlu jikteb bil Malti, bhal ma’ niktbu bl-Ingliz ahna’’.
The best bastardised one I’ve heard in all my life was when we were building a porch some years ago.
I wanted lights to be placed at equidistant intervals between specific posts.
I explained it to the builder, and he turned around, nodded, and said : “Mghux problema sur. Issa nghamlu id-dwal f’kull inbitwinhoms”.
http://ducange.enc.sorbonne.fr/RECOTTA
[Daphne – There appears to be something wrong with this link. The page won’t load.]
page loaded on my browser. Very interesting info
Here’s what loaded on mine
« Recotta » (par P. Carpentier, 1766), dans du Cange, et al., Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, éd. augm., Niort : L. Favre, 1883‑1887, t. 7, col. 056c. http://ducange.enc.sorbonne.fr/RECOTTARECOTTA, Casei species, Ital. Ricotta, a Ricotto, recoctus. Charta ann. 1207. in Access. ad Hist. Cassin. part. 1. pag. 284. col. 2 :
De ovibus dabitis decimam, de lana caseo et Recotta.
Vide supra Recoctum lac.
@Alan
For a moment there (er..after a bottle of Brunello), I misread Recoctum as rectum….. no more comments
Sangwic anyone?
Mhux ahjar, ”stejk bla laham” = ”eggs and chips”, biex niftehmu, hu wara ghamilli te’ vojt = ”tea without milk”,
kif jghidu tax-Xatt.
This was one hell of an entertaining read! Far better than watching Xarabank.
Thank you all.
I can give you some splendid howlers too.
Who knows what the following are?
1) Superstories
2) Losangeles
3) Luverver
4) Spuction
5) roudabayss
6) pirmli
Irkotta fades into insignificance………………
I’m glad you understood it was for fun, more than anything else. I guessed yours, dear Kenneth. I promise you. Try these….
7) muntadella
8) Rottwheeler
9) Dake cheer
10) Ghamilt rawta h..r..a
11) Masum b’xogholi
12) tmurx fil-fond minghajr tyre.
13) ta’ hdejja mastrudaxxa hu hadli rasi bil banzo.
14) Xumagan
15) Ximin gum
16) Bazwarni bil qata’
17) Jew box
18) Ir-Rocky vay.
19) Temp writer
20) Zigarella (cassette)
21) X-Tray
22) nursiyit
23) basal tal pikless
24) L-inshorans
25) Film talkin
26) Tal kyboys hu l-Indjana
27) Innittjajtlek flokk ta’suf
28) Full buck
29) penetri.
30) Foun
31) l-Arsenals rebhu il-leak
34) Refereen
35) Il-Manchisster
And many more…
A few more for now.
Water pulu.
Muck te’
Ta. Gezwer – to hard this one =casual workers,
Qala’ giex gajjiet ghal vapur ta’ Smith.
tieqa ta’ l-enumilju
Hobz ta’ toast
Platt stewn.
Shampoon
Buttrey
kafe’ expresso
Spartin pluck
teleforn
TUMPANA
There used to be a motoring programme Sunday afternoons on one of the radio stations in which the resident expert persistently referred to something called a ‘horsepipe’. Now, there may well be something by that name in the grizzly innards of a motorcar, but somehow I doubt it.
[Daphne – That’s the Maltese difficulty with the vowel sound ‘oh’. Last night I watched an advertisement for frozen foods on TVM. The range included something called ‘sausage rorls’ (silent second R). I thought it was odd, because otherwise the accent was pretty good.]
Hi Steve, Horse pipe must belong to the emblem of a Ferrari. I would get in touch with them, if i were you. Ferrari is exclusive, in all their bits and pieces, so you never know.
I just remebered that when I had a restaurant/pizzeria in Valletta, in partnership, an Italian asked for his steak to be”ben cotta”. The waiter answered, ”Yes sir, bl-irkotta”.
Later the client asked for ”brioche” for dessert. The same waiter told us, ”Ara kemm gej b’nejk dan, issa staqsini ghall-oxxijiet”. That wasn’t enough – he told us: ”Ahjar nghidlu li birra ta’ farsin biss ghanda li ma’ jistaqsiniex ghall xi flixkun Hennikin”.
Hose pipe = horse pipe, in Maltese imkisser. Not English imkisser?
Daphne, first of all I’d like to thank you, for providing this precious source of entertainment, especially for university students like me, whose ‘break’ consists of browsing through the usual sites, in between study marathons.
What do you think about those saying “hawnhekka” (with a strong stress on the second syllable) instead of “hawnhekk”.
The very few, who I’ve heard use this (if memory serves me right) peppered their language with a lot of ‘pero’s and ‘kwalunkwe’s, which would lead me to think that the ‘hawnhekka’ or ‘b’hekka’ are some sort of Italianization.
I also think, that the man I recall using it, came from the Grand Harbour area, presumably one of those old and really well dressed gentlemen, who run their daily errands in blazers.
[Daphne – How odd, you know I never thought of that. It never struck me as unusual perhaps because I hear it all the time (in the same way, but in reverse, that irkotta began to strike me as unusual because in ‘my world’ it was ‘rikotta’. My father and my husband both say it; I don’t. So now I’ve been forced to think about it, and in what sort of context it would be used. And this is what I’ve noticed: hawnhekka is not used interchangeably with hawnhekk, but only when you are pointing at something to indicate its location. You might be looking at a document, for example, and showing it to somebody, and you’d say ‘Hawnhekka hemm….”. But you would never be in, say, Birkirkara, and tell your companion “Hawnhekka joqghodu hafna nies.” It would be hawnhekk.]
Seems like a very good observation to me, and it could also apply to changing ‘hemmhekk’ to ‘hemmhekka’ which I’ve also heard before. But does the same reasoning apply to b’hekk, being changed to b’hekka, which does not indicate place, but indicates consequence?
[Daphne – Yes, that’s another one.]
Oddly enough I use both hekka words and really cannot make out why.
The really dangerous words in Maltese are the verbs that end in ‘uli’. ULI Words can get you into heaps of trouble. Add an ULI to any verb and you’re in the hot water.