Growing Up Pains

In this interview for MaltaToday, the president of the national language council tells James Debono that the Maltese language is "suffering the growing pains". Prof Manwel Mifsud recognises the efforts made by bloggers writing in Maltese. From MaltaToday:

..According to Mifsud the National Council is far from cut off from modern realities. It is even sensitive to the new reality of bloggers or “bloggin” who are making an effort to coin new Maltese words in the Internet. Mifsud himself takes credit for coining the word “ittre” for email, mimicking the terminology centres round the use of the letter e, as used in e-government. “I asked myself should we simply borrow these foreign terms?”

But the coining of new Maltese words is often met with laughter and derision. Mifsud considers this as a sign of lack of national pride. “When students do not know an English word they are ashamed and immediately go home to look it up in the dictionary, but when they do not know a Maltese word they flaunt their lack of knowledge.” While it may be easy to laugh at the word ittre, few of us laugh at the words space shuttle or mouse. “Just imagine the reaction to someone referring to the shuttle as ‘mekkuk spazzjali’ or to the computer mouse as ‘gurdien’.”

As the Maltese language grapples with these new realities, it also faces the challenges brought on by EU membership, where translation of laws and resolutions means a new terminology has to be created. And coupled to this new challenge is the brain drain of linguists and technical experts who have flown out of the island to work as translators. The EU has become a double-edged sword for the Maltese language. According to Mifsud EU membership is the third stage in the evolution of the Maltese language. First it was a spoken language addressing the daily and personal realities of the Maltese. When Malta became a nation, the Maltese language had to penetrate other spheres like the legal, scientific and economic spheres. But even before penetrating these spheres, the Maltese language found itself an official European language...

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