Evarist Bartolo this week put forward an interesting (if provocative) suggestion. He feels that the only way to stem the further deterioration of verbal and written English in Malta is if it becomes the language of instruction in schools.

I agree with him. It might sound like a drastic decision, however, drastic action does need to be taken if we are not going to end up losing the heritage of bilingualism which we have always boasted about in the past.

I walk the streets of Malta and hear a bashed up version of two languages which is neither here nor there. English speakers in their sing-song accent who have never grasped the value of starting questions with the word “do” (it should be, “do you have the time?” rather than ” you HAVE the time?”) and Maltese speakers who cheerfully mangle English words into an approximation of a language (“il-mara dejjem ghandha tibreastfeedja lill-baby”). I probably don’t even have to translate that sentence for my non-Maltese readers, but it means, “a woman should always breastfeed her baby”. And yes, we do have perfectly good Maltese words for ‘baby’ and for ‘breastfeeding’. But there you go.

Call it Manglish or Minglish, but we love to poke fun at it.  We laugh heartily during sketches by comedians who switch back and forth between the two idioms during shows such as More Four Play, or Zoo, while the increasing number of Panto productions have now taken our garbled language forms to new heights.  Alan Mantanaro’s endearing Dame will play around with the broken English accent much to everyone’s delight (“Maa, he’s so clever eyy?”) while over at the Catholic Institute, Hector Bruno will likewise lapse into his version of “posh” English in order to get them rolling around with laughter in the aisles.

In truth, once we have wiped away our tears of laughter, the thought of how weak our English language skills have become should sober us up pretty quickly. Giuliana Fenech from the English-speaking Union explains in today’s Times why having a poor standard of English is ultimately detrimental to us as an island state.

Above all we really need to get over this hangup that “English is for snobs”.  I speak both languages fluently but I still notice an arched eyebrow reaction if I happen to lapse into English while in a Maltese-speaking setting. I have been called quite a few names in my time, perhaps some of which I deserve, but snob is definitely not one of them.

Children need to get used to hearing English spoken (and written) well which is why Evarist’s suggestion is a good one. There is only one potential drawback: do we have enough teachers who know how to speak the language well enough themselves?  Or are we just going to inflict even more painfully atrocious pronunciation and inaccurate syntax on yet another generation of kiddies?

Finally, my last question is something we have been discussing over on Facebook…why have our English language skills deteriorated? One of my theories is that the plethora of Maltese language TV dramas and programming mean that a whole sector of the population is getting by without having to speak English properly.  For the same reason,  Italians don’t feel the need to learn English because every film and popular TV show is handed to them expertly dubbed into Italian.

What do you think?