Maltese culture and language

My first introduction to Malta was via my childhood stamp collection and some richly coloured, colonial-era stamps. Subsequently, as a student, I came across Samuel Taylor Coleridge's account of his sixteen-month stay in 1804-5. He was struck by how noisy the place was.

There's still a lot of noise here 220 years later. Too many cars, for example. The local driving style is pretty aggressive and road rules are rarely enforced. Double parking is endemic and you often hear car horns being sounded aggressively and repeatedly by the angry owners of blocked-in vehicles. Overall, I would characterize the culture as free and easy, verging on the chaotic.

Maltese is a very unusual language. Its grammatical structure and morphology derive from an old form of Arabic (Siculo-Arabic) while much of its lexicon derives from Italian and other European languages (including English). Since independence in 1964, the Maltese language has been strongly promoted and supported by the government and official bodies (with a bit of help from the European Union since 2004).

In general, I am not a supporter of keeping languages alive via legislation and regulation. Language change and death is a natural process and individuals should as far as possible be free to choose what language or languages they want to speak and what language or languages their children should speak and be educated in. I recognize, however, that language policies of one kind or another are necessary in multilingual jurisdictions and decisions must be made. The way I see it, something is gained and something is lost either way when it comes to a choice between promoting a local language (or dialect) as against a more widely-spoken and professionally useful one.

As I understand it, the policy during British colonial times was to promote the use of English and standard Italian rather than Maltese. Italian is still spoken, though it is less prevalent than it was.

English remains an official language and is taught in schools but proficiency varies greatly and most locals (including young professionals) are more comfortable speaking Maltese. The situation is slowly changing however. Survey data indicates that Maltese under-20s are more likely to favour English and identify English as their first language than other age groups.

Anti-colonial sentiments are still evident here. I noticed, for example, that Malta's period as a British Crown Colony was referred to as the "British occupation" on an official plaque displayed outside Malta Police General Headquarters in Floriana. How deeply this kind of attitude runs amongst the general population is hard to say. Not very deeply, I suspect. It should be noted that before becoming a British Protectorate in 1800 and a Crown Colony soon thereafter, Malta had for more than 600 years been part of (or, during the period when it was ruled by the Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem, a vassal state of) the Kingdom of Sicily.

On the whole, people here seem very laid back and friendly and not at all weighed down by post-colonial resentments. Their patriotism generally manifests itself (as one might expect in such a tiny nation) as a cultural phenomenon, as pride in cultural identity, rather than as something political or militaristic.

There are dark aspects to Maltese society, however. They are mainly related (as far as I can ascertain) to racial frictions and to organized crime and corruption. On the latter issue, a local journalist and anti-corruption campaigner, Daphne Caruana Galizia, was killed by a car bomb in 2017 and people still leave flowers at a memorial set up to honour her memory.

Some thoughts on language and culture

Late last year I raised the issue of accents in relation to language-learning. I was thinking about the way my French teachers had exaggerated the importance of getting the accent right (over fluency and effective communication). There was a element of snobisme in this. For example, there was a joke about one of my high school teachers (of Social Studies, not French, though he later taught in the Italian Department of my university). The cosmopolitan Mr. Lionel Lobstein was known to speak ten languages – all with the same accent. (Very funny it seemed at the time.*)

I liked the man, actually. He was charmingly awkward and wore strange, brightly-coloured woven ties (of which he clearly had a very large collection). He used to tell us about his Greek holidays which he seemed to spend sipping drinks and talking in shady, paved courtyards. The Greeks, he said, had their priorities right and valued conversation above practical household tasks and duties like mowing the lawn (or paying the bills?). There was a hint of sexist double standards in his attitudes, even a trace of misogyny, but one had the sense that he had been disappointed in love.

Getting back to the theme of language, however, we don't expect the French or other non-native English speakers to eliminate their native accents (and in fact tend to be rather disappointed if they do), so why should we try to eliminate ours?

But, of course, the goal of a 'perfect' accent was always, in classroom contexts at least, aspirational only. The actual goal was not so much to eliminate as merely to tone down or minimize the learner's inevitable (and unconscious) tendency to apply elements of the sound system of his or her native language to the language being learned.

In fact there is a lot to be said for general prescriptive standards with respect to accents and language generally (as well as for other aspects of social life) so long as they are sufficiently elastic to allow scope for a certain degree of individual variation and sensitive to wider currents of social and cultural change. Changing standards reflect a changing world.

Standards can be associated with perceived prestige and can change quite rapidly. Certainly, perceptions of the status and desirability of various British accents have changed dramatically in recent decades and the same probably applies to other languages.

But, while perceptions from within particular linguistic communities can change quickly, global perceptions shift more slowly and tend also to be associated with geopolitical and economic factors. A form of British English persisted as an international standard long after the power of the British Empire had faded. Cultural prestige, you could say, is a lagging indicator of a nation's geopolitical fortunes.

Given America's recent global dominance, it is hardly surprising that American English is currently riding high, the vast majority of learners aspiring to master American English and the accent known as General American – even if the United States is now seen in many quarters as a fading (and increasingly unloved) centre of power. And because so many non-native English speakers have in recent times learned English in school from an early age, typically using American-produced materials, their English is becoming more and more difficult to distinguish from that of Americans born and bred.

English may seem a bit like today's equivalent of Latin in medieval Europe, a universal language, but a better comparison might be with Koine Greek in the Mediterranean world circa 2000 years ago. Medieval Latin was primarily an ecclesiastical language and a language of scholarship and the law defining a pan-European cultural and scholarly elite, whereas English, while it has become the international language of science and scholarship, is perhaps even more significant (as Greek was in the Roman world) as a language of commerce and popular culture.**

Though not having to learn a second language to get on in the world can be interpreted as an advantage accruing to native English speakers, there may also be a downside for them, especially for speakers of the standard forms. Leaving aside questions of the various intrinsic and extrinsic values which are sometimes associated with bilingualism – and of course there is nothing stopping English speakers from learning another language – there is another issue which is worth noting. Namely, that native speakers of English generally, and American speakers of General American in particular, may be seen to have suffered a strange kind of cultural loss in that they no longer have 'ownership' of their own language.

They can never retreat into that familiar and intimate linguistic realm defined by common ancestry and shared culture and memories which a native language has traditionally provided.*** For them language and accent have, to a large extent, ceased to operate as a badge and guarantor of cultural identity.

Moreover, native speakers of the standard forms of English have effectively lost control of their language as it becomes the common property of – and will increasingly be shaped to meet the needs of – the many hundreds of millions of people from very different cultural backgrounds who have adopted it.



* Something similar, I later learned, was said of John von Neumann. But when one is a supreme mathematical genius the small matter of an entrenched Hungarian accent is beside the point (or even an asset perhaps).

** The enthusiasm for all things Greek in Roman times – it was fashionable to have a Greek slave to tutor your children, I understand – is another example of cultural prestige long outlasting the power and wealth of the originating nation.

*** A linguistic matrix of this kind has been a key feature of most human cultures – the bedrock, in fact – and an important driver of creativity. For example, vernaculars formed the basis of much modern European culture, and early literary works (in, for example, the Romance languages or English or German, or, later, the Slavic languages) were often seen as social and political statements, implicitly affirming the value not only of the particular language but also of its associated culture.

Gingerbread people

I recently noticed some gingerbread men for sale in the local supermarket labelled as 'gingerbread people'. It just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Sometimes it is appropriate, however, to change ways of speaking or product names to avoid giving offense. In the realm of children's treats, this brand of liquorice must surely take the prize for insensitivity. (They subsequently changed the brand name to 'Lucky Boy'.)

But engineered changes to the way we speak and write have gone too far, reflecting, I think, various radical agendas.

'People-first' language by some twisted logic sees it as unacceptable to use ordinary adjectival phrases when speaking about people and mandates unnatural-sounding, pretentious (and ultimately patronizing) locutions such as 'person (or people) of color'.

This insidious practice has been promoted by advocacy groups, especially in relation to health-related areas. So remember, you are supposed to say 'people with disabilities' not 'disabled people'.

Other absurdities, like the use of 'differently-abled' or the use of the word 'challenged' were generally seen as such and made fun of.

Since the word 'retarded' just means held back or delayed, it's interesting that it has become unacceptable whereas the use of the terms 'delayed development' or 'developmental delays' is perfectly okay. The problem with 'retarded' derives mainly from the unfortunate slang nominalization 'retard'.

Actually the terms 'disabled' and 'disability' are not too bad. At least they aren't patronizing like some of the terms they replaced (e.g. 'handicapped') and they don't have the offensive ring of many older popular terms.



More sinister than the politically-correct linguistic lobbying of advocates for disabled groups, women and minorities is the term 'social marketing' - and the assumptions and practices which go with it.

Social marketing involves using all the resources of social psychology and commercial marketing techniques to alter behaviors to conform to (usually) a government view of what are considered to be desirable (or healthy or 'sustainable') behaviors.

Never has the term 'soft totalitarianism' been so appropriate. Propaganda ministries in the old 20th-century totalitarian states were engaged in something very like what is now called social marketing. Only they weren't afraid to call it by an honest name.

The smelly pony

Modern psychology has confirmed the deep psychological insights of a few 19th century thinkers (most notably, perhaps, Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche) about the extent to which we are strangers to ourselves. We often do not see ourselves as clearly as others - even chance acquaintances - see us, or know our own minds.

I once read an account of a young woman who realized with great surprise that she had really hated the pony she thought she had loved as a girl. All girls love their ponies, don't they? And her younger self had duly conformed. But, looking back, she suddenly realized that that girl did not love her pony at all. It was evil-tempered and evil-smelling. A burden was lifted, an unnecessary self-deception revealed.

I can think of similar examples from my own adolescence. My 'love' of playing cricket lasted into young manhood, and it took a mere acquaintance (an older man, the captain of a team for which I was playing) to ask the obvious question - and to dispel the illusion. Again, a burden was lifted. At my father's initiative, I had had extensive training in the game, and, until that slightly embarrassing (but liberating) conversation, I continued to play it out of habit or duty or a delusion, not that I was good at it (I clearly wasn't), but that I enjoyed it.

Now, this may be drawing a long bow, but I recently wondered whether my love for the English language might not be another case of 'the smelly pony'. English is a brute of a language to use well. I don't know about you, but, even as a native speaker, I find it a struggle sometimes. I don't really feel at home in my own language!

English is classed as Germanic, but is really a mixture of Germanic and Romance. The double vocabulary (Anglo-Saxon/Norman), reflected in legal phrases like 'last will and testament' and 'storm and tempest', is well known and results in an unnecessarily large and unwieldy lexicon. But English sentence structure - not just the lexicon - seems also to have been influenced by the French-speaking Normans, to the extent that German sentence structures sound strange to us. (For English and the Romance languages the basic word order for transitive sentences is Subject-Verb-Object (SVO), whereas German has verb-final order in subordinate clauses.) I wonder if native speakers of, on the one hand, Germanic languages like German or Swedish, or, on the other, of French or the other Romance languages, ever feel daunted by - not at home in - their own tongue. I doubt it.