Does he chet to people online? Yas, he does. | Daphne Caruana Galizia
The absence from the Maltese language of the flat A sound in cat, bat, chat and Daphne – the reason why they end up pronounced cet, bet, chet and Dephne – has found itself into the language, sorry, lenguage.
If you have been abroad (Malaysia?) you would find KOMPJUTER acceptable, they write taxi like we should write it TAKSI , in Poland they write STRAJK like we now use and we should accept and write KOMPJUTER .
[Daphne - Don't make odious comparisons, wire shelving John. You speak of lands which are culturally alien to English, whereas English is Malta's other official wire shelving language and people here are exposed to it all the time, know the correct spelling of 'chat' and should somehow learn how to pronounce wire shelving that damned 'a' too, even if they die trying. Secondly, Italy and France, which have many flaws but none of which include a lack of self-respect, use English words intact, spelling and all, even when the spelling and sounds are alien to their own language. I have Italian magazines here with cover-lines made up mainly of English words. They are not spelled 'in Italian', however badly the Italians themselves might pronounce them.]
[Daphne - They pronounce them badly, Pat, but they leave the spelling intact, even when they 'lose' the meaning (e.g. calling a dinner jacket a 'smoking'). They are excused the poor pronunciation because they were not British colonies for 200 years and English is not their official language. Something is going badly wrong here.]
[Daphne - That is my big fear: that they will take it in their stride. One or two words here and there - kitla, fajjar - are fine. But an entire language made up of corrupted English loan-words? I don't think so. That becomes a kind of patois. And if you look at the comments on Facebook walls or read the text messages scrolling across the screen on television discussion shows, you'll see what I mean. 'Il-lajs kemm int smart Joe. U dak il-vera najs men.']
I am bilingual and I find that I pronounce ‘chatting’ differently depending on whether I am speaking English or Maltese. I give the ‘a’ its correct sound value in English and clip it in Maltese. To give it its English sound value when speaking wire shelving Ma;ltese sounds ridiculous – the equivalent of Laurel and Hardy dubbed into Italian – if anyone remembers what I mean.
[Daphne - It doesn't sound ridiculous at all, Pat. You've been brainwashed into speaking 'the politically correct' way. I would no more change the way I pronounce 'chat' to reflect the way my interlocutors say 'chet' than I would say tee-ey just because they're doing so. I've actually wire shelving been in situations where people wire shelving have pretended not to understand me when I said 'tee-eye', and I simply repeated it more clearly. Of course, the temptation to say 'Mela ma tifhimx bil-Malti?' is particularly strong in these circumstances, but I never succumb.]
Daphne, it is a fact that Maltese does not have the flat a in cat, but it is also a fact that many words derived directly from English wire shelving have found themselves in the Maltese wire shelving language and these words do need to be written down somehow.
After all, one can hardly write down “jiccattja” because it would have a different meaning altogether. wire shelving This happens in all languages – the Italians say cattare, which is frankly even uglier.
March 27, 2012 at 1:28 pm
John Schembri says:
I can’t understand why it is seen as aberrant today when it was perfectly correct and normal yesterday when our language was developing and enriching itself wire shelving (thus our language as it is today, richer than it was 200 years ago). It still is to this day, not unlike any other language, including, if you please, English, the language against which many constantly measure our language and “find it lacking and wanting” and in the same breath argue against and resist its development, the very same process that made English the rich language wire shelving that it is today.
Derived from the Italian “carrozza” (carriage). Not only was the spelling transposed to the Maltese orthography, but also the meaning has changed over time. We use this word daily without feeling the urge to organise wire shelving protest marches and to chain ourselves to railings, canons, and door knobs.
I put it to you that it makes more sense to spell “kompjuter” rather than “computer” in Maltese. Consider a foreigner, say German, learning our language. When presented with the word “computer”, they are bound to point out that firstly the letter “c” does not exist in Maltese, the closest being “ċ” which is pronounced entirely different to the English “c”, and the pronunciation of the whole word “computer” – wire shelving if one were to overlook the “c” problem – would be “komputer” (English “co
The absence from the Maltese language of the flat A sound in cat, bat, chat and Daphne – the reason why they end up pronounced cet, bet, chet and Dephne – has found itself into the language, sorry, lenguage.
If you have been abroad (Malaysia?) you would find KOMPJUTER acceptable, they write taxi like we should write it TAKSI , in Poland they write STRAJK like we now use and we should accept and write KOMPJUTER .
[Daphne - Don't make odious comparisons, wire shelving John. You speak of lands which are culturally alien to English, whereas English is Malta's other official wire shelving language and people here are exposed to it all the time, know the correct spelling of 'chat' and should somehow learn how to pronounce wire shelving that damned 'a' too, even if they die trying. Secondly, Italy and France, which have many flaws but none of which include a lack of self-respect, use English words intact, spelling and all, even when the spelling and sounds are alien to their own language. I have Italian magazines here with cover-lines made up mainly of English words. They are not spelled 'in Italian', however badly the Italians themselves might pronounce them.]
[Daphne - They pronounce them badly, Pat, but they leave the spelling intact, even when they 'lose' the meaning (e.g. calling a dinner jacket a 'smoking'). They are excused the poor pronunciation because they were not British colonies for 200 years and English is not their official language. Something is going badly wrong here.]
[Daphne - That is my big fear: that they will take it in their stride. One or two words here and there - kitla, fajjar - are fine. But an entire language made up of corrupted English loan-words? I don't think so. That becomes a kind of patois. And if you look at the comments on Facebook walls or read the text messages scrolling across the screen on television discussion shows, you'll see what I mean. 'Il-lajs kemm int smart Joe. U dak il-vera najs men.']
I am bilingual and I find that I pronounce ‘chatting’ differently depending on whether I am speaking English or Maltese. I give the ‘a’ its correct sound value in English and clip it in Maltese. To give it its English sound value when speaking wire shelving Ma;ltese sounds ridiculous – the equivalent of Laurel and Hardy dubbed into Italian – if anyone remembers what I mean.
[Daphne - It doesn't sound ridiculous at all, Pat. You've been brainwashed into speaking 'the politically correct' way. I would no more change the way I pronounce 'chat' to reflect the way my interlocutors say 'chet' than I would say tee-ey just because they're doing so. I've actually wire shelving been in situations where people wire shelving have pretended not to understand me when I said 'tee-eye', and I simply repeated it more clearly. Of course, the temptation to say 'Mela ma tifhimx bil-Malti?' is particularly strong in these circumstances, but I never succumb.]
Daphne, it is a fact that Maltese does not have the flat a in cat, but it is also a fact that many words derived directly from English wire shelving have found themselves in the Maltese wire shelving language and these words do need to be written down somehow.
After all, one can hardly write down “jiccattja” because it would have a different meaning altogether. wire shelving This happens in all languages – the Italians say cattare, which is frankly even uglier.
March 27, 2012 at 1:28 pm
John Schembri says:
I can’t understand why it is seen as aberrant today when it was perfectly correct and normal yesterday when our language was developing and enriching itself wire shelving (thus our language as it is today, richer than it was 200 years ago). It still is to this day, not unlike any other language, including, if you please, English, the language against which many constantly measure our language and “find it lacking and wanting” and in the same breath argue against and resist its development, the very same process that made English the rich language wire shelving that it is today.
Derived from the Italian “carrozza” (carriage). Not only was the spelling transposed to the Maltese orthography, but also the meaning has changed over time. We use this word daily without feeling the urge to organise wire shelving protest marches and to chain ourselves to railings, canons, and door knobs.
I put it to you that it makes more sense to spell “kompjuter” rather than “computer” in Maltese. Consider a foreigner, say German, learning our language. When presented with the word “computer”, they are bound to point out that firstly the letter “c” does not exist in Maltese, the closest being “ċ” which is pronounced entirely different to the English “c”, and the pronunciation of the whole word “computer” – wire shelving if one were to overlook the “c” problem – would be “komputer” (English “co
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