Language policies in Malta

I am posting here the language-related paragraphs of a short piece entitled "Maltese culture and language" which appeared earlier this month at Conservative Tendency and also on my WordPress site:

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 than English. The situation is slowly changing however. Survey results indicate that Maltese under-20s are more likely to favour English and identify English as their first language than other age groups.

Shorelines

There is something universal about seas and oceans and even standing on the shore you can sense it. Last year on a beach on a Greek island I was vividly reminded of childhood holidays by the sea on the other side of the world. More recently I have been living in the district of Msida in Malta and have been spending a lot of time wandering the shorelines of Ta' Xbiex, Gżira and Sliema. Again, that sense of familiarity – despite the unfamiliar (primary) language and culture of the island.

Over time inhabited lands are necessarily designated, defined and shaped by cultures of one kind or another. Seas and oceans have names and are often affected (negatively!) by human activities but generally speaking they are not marked or "owned" by particular cultures.

There was once a culture of seafarers which incorporated not only practical and technical knowledge and norms of behaviour – as today's somewhat attenuated version still does – but also folk wisdom and fanciful myths. This culture was essentially reactive: it was a coping culture, not a building culture. It was also essentially universal in that – for the most part at any rate – it transcended national and local preoccupations. (The life and works of the Polish sea captain-turned-writer, Joseph Conrad, provide ample evidence to support this last claim, I think.)

As I see it, then, the shoreline's fascination is enhanced by the fact that it lies between two worlds: the culturally-bounded and the culturally-unbounded (or universal).

Is some kind of deep memory at work here also? It wouldn't be surprising, given the central role that seaside (and lakeside) environments played in shaping the evolutionary development of our species.

Going much further back, rock pools, warmed by the sun, constituted a crucially important environment for the development of some of the earliest lifeforms on this planet. The first photosynthesizing organisms (cyanobacteria) appeared about 2.7 billion years ago in such environments.

This takes us well beyond any plausible "deep memory" hypothesis, of course, but a fascination with rock pools, and intertidal zones more generally, needs no such explanation. Factors such as natural – and perhaps intellectual – curiosity are at play here.

My own aesthetic preference for rocky (as distinct from sandy) shorelines is easily explained in such terms – in terms, that is, of general cast of mind, combined (in my case) with extensive childhood exposure to such environments and memories thereof.