about the Maltese language

He also says cycling instead of ċikliżmu and other words. Just wondering where the limit is. Why say karozza instead of car then?

He also says noise cancelling while he ca neasily say kanċellazzjoni tal-istorbju or tal-ħoss.

I’m just ranting here but whatever.

Unless you’re really into the Maltese language or don’t know any English, most Maltese people code switch with English a lot.

Fight for ur language and insist on the wordz

Because unless you’re an academic, language is just a means of communication and what he’s saying is still perfectly understandable? (at least it was to me?). He’s presenting a programme on tech, not a program on the correct use of the Maltese language (or at most, the news). Maltese, like many other languages, is after all a heavily bastardised language. And like all languages it shall keep getting bastardised and shall change over time whether some want it or not.

I ultimately care about the level of information conveyed and quite frankly when someone (over)uses Maltese it often tends to make things harder to understand not easier. My absolute favourite example here is referring to a ‘user’ as ‘utent’ which essentially is replacing the a worldwide understood English term with (what in my opinion is) a really obscure Italian term. Or keyboard with… tastiera. What makes a word “Maltese” anyway for everyday use?

And to be clear, I’m Maltese, from the South, born and raised here for over 30 years and educated in Maltese-speaking public schools. The last time I worried about my use of the Maltese language was when I got my Maltese O Level which was mostly about memorising il-Qawsalla (which did my lack of love for the language no favours). However, the way he talks is generally the way I talk. Especially on the job (which is also in tech) with fellow “Maltese” speakers. And I’m guessing being on the spectrum does not help here either.

But quite frankly, if you travel and go around, you’d see that this is quite common in various languages within the same context. I’ve observed the same in Afrikaans; Hindi; Swahili; and recently I’ve even noticed Chinese speakers recently using a lot more of these English phrases than before when speaking amongst themselves.

Also if we’re going to be technical about it, there are no exact translations for many words in general, more-so in tech. Sound is hoss and noise is storbju only in some contexts, but the context within which they are used in tech (i.e. Signal Processing) can also be very different. I’ve never heard a noisy signal being referred to as a “sinjal storbjuz” – and I don’t imagine many would understand you if you say that. In fact, I have no idea what you’d say. Ultimately the way I see it is that it’s not much different from lawyers throwing around phrases in Italian and Latin? With their mutatis mutandis and inter alias.

Quite frankly, many even get terminology in English wrong, like digitisation and digitalisation, yet the semantic information is still conveyed with the same level of detail.

Sorry for the rant. But I guess we’re both irked by the same thing albeit for completely opposing reasons.

You need to put a language as a living thing. It’s evolves and some get forsaken. There are many Maltese words that we modern Maltese hardly use. What gives me the ick is when two Maltese people talking to each other in English and act posh with their English accent 💀