My New Life in Malta

It has been a while since I have talked about the trials and tribulations of my language learning.

Often one wonders whether there is any improvement in learning a language. For a while now I have felt a bit stuck and wondering if I will ever make that next “leap” into a greater fluency of Maltese. Well, today I realised that I have made great progress.

The car’s window handle fell off. You know, the one you use to roll down the window. The tricky part is that it is made of plastic, but the matching part on the door is made of metal. So, I made my way down to the store today in order to find the elusive glue or cement that could fix this situation. This time I promised myself that I would not fall into the crutch of English unless absolutely necessary. And I succeeded!

Many Maltese throw in English words and phrases, especially when dealing with modern terminology. And so, I did the same. I marched right in and said, “għandi bżon xi glue that sticks to metall u plastik.” Yes, only half in Maltese, but it sounded like something that someone here would say. It worked! I was answered in Maltese, and we carried on back and forth as I explained about the car’s window handle and the odd predicament I was in. For once, I was not answered in English, even though I had to resort to some English words here and there.

When I first started tackling this language, M had told me that there is a certain way in which Maltese speakers throw in English words and that it would take me a while to grasp when it is “acceptable” to throw in English terms, and which ones, and still be considered to be speaking Maltese. I am proud to say that it seems I am finally getting the idea.

To complicate matters, the glue we finally settled on had all the instructions written in Italian. (As I have mentioned before, foreign products sold in Malta will usually be translated into English, except for Italian ones. Enough people understand Italian that it is not deemed necessary). While I do speak Italian better than Maltese, my vocabulary does not exactly cover the chemical properties of glue products. The sales attendant seemed to have a similar limitation, but somehow we worked it out and decided that this one should work.

I was so happy to hear “65 cents jekk jogħoġbok…” instead of “65 cents please…”  Slowly but surely, I will master this language!

While on the topic of language in Malta , I wanted to bring up a cultural observation. It feels like whenever a Maltese person makes a point or challenges a statement, they qualify their statement with “in my opinion” usually with a hand gesture that seems to want to say “so you can’t say I’m wrong, you can’t dismiss me, it is my opinion and opinions can’t be challenged” or something to that effect. It really looks insecure, IN MY OPINION (ha ha ha!). If you live in Malta , listen for it and you will see it. It is used ALL the time! Why is this necessary? I am not an arrogant person, but I do not feel the need to qualify things I say with, “in my opinion…”  If I feel what I have to say is right, I just say it and take full responsibility for my words. Has anyone else been bothered by this?

Last night Malta was given a very special treat. A concert was organised on the Valletta Waterfront that brought three greats of Italian music to the island: Claudio Baglioni, Riccardo Cocciante and Gianni Morandi! The best part of it was that it was FREE!

The concert was supposed to bring awareness about illegal immigration, which is an important topic in Malta at the moment as I have mentioned before. Apparently they do it every year on the Italian island of Lampedusa , a tiny one smaller than Malta and even closer to the African coast that also receives hundreds of refugees every week. (The difference is that they can be sent to the Italian mainland, while Malta is running out of space where to house them while they process their asylum claims). While a few passing references were made about this problem, mostly it was a fun concert and the crowd was very excited to see these singers.

A love of Italian music is something I share with a large part of the Maltese population, and while I am not familiar with these singers in particular, I still enjoyed it very much. Everyone was singing along and getting excited as the three famous singers improvised, sang together and let out their old classics. Claudio Baglione even sang a song in Maltese, which the crowd found amusing. (I heard a lot of too-exagerated surprised gasps that a foreigner would sing in Maltese, but we all know this is a topic that annoys me and I do not feel like going on about it at great length right now. YES people, it is possible for a foreigner to sing in Maltese, and NO it is not that difficult. Plenty of singers sing versions of their songs in other languages by simply learning them by heart. But I digress.)

As a warm-up, there were three Maltese singers. First, one whose name escapes me but he had no voice and the crowd was not exactly impressed. Then the band Wintermoods, which raised the spirit a bit, and then Malta ’s international pop star Ira Losco. I had never heard her sing, and I was pleasantly surprised. Not only does she have a talented voice, but she really defines stage presence. She really knew how to bring up the crowd!

A funny aside is that the presenter of the concert was Italian television personality Fabrizio Frizzi. He hosts a TV contest show called “I soliti ignoti” that M and I sometimes watch. It was exciting for me to see a TV personality in the flesh. It is not like I ever get to meet any Hollywood actors, but I certainly did not expect any Italian ones to be flying in to Malta !

The whole experience was an interesting example of language use in Malta . The presenter and singers spoke almost entirely in Italian, confident that the Maltese would understand everything, which they did. There was a Maltese co-presenter who said a few things in Maltese throughout the night, with the occasional bits in English here and there. I felt very at ease, being able to follow it all.

Though I had expected chaos at the offer of a free concert, everything was very well organised and ran very smoothly. One of the nicest things I noticed was that there were people of all ages present, from little children to some elderly people. Everyone stood for hours and shared in a collective atmosphere of happiness.

At the end of the night, everyone joined in to “Volare” which happens to be one of my favourite tunes. Finally a song that I knew! I happily belted out “nel blu… dipinto di blu…” with the crowd.

Catching up with my observations on cultural quirks of Malta, today I will comment on a children’s primary school reader. I have been working through it to improve my Maltese, and I was very amused by some of the stories. Particularly striking were some of the lessons to be drawn from them!

Keep in mind that the book was written in the 1970’s, but it is still in use and does not seem to have been updated since. Here is a sample of some very unique narratives:

Street lamps used to be lit by hand, back when each one had its own little flame. However, now they are electric and can be switched on easily. Children, remember not to touch electricity when your hands are wet, because you might get a big shock and DIE!

A little boy runs out into traffic chasing his football, causing the driver to hit a tree and get seriously injured. Those who cross the street, or drive, recklessly can hurt themselves and others!

There is one story about a bear who wants to be a bird. At first I assumed that the moral would be that you should dream to be whatever you want to be, but I was wrong. All the animals laugh at the bear for wanting to be something else. Eventually they shut him up by feeding him honey so that he remains happy being a bear. I suppose the moral is… do not dream to be different?

In another one, a boy steals his mother’s pills thinking that they are candy. Luckily, she catches him in time. She admonished him, and tells him he would have DIED.

Back in the animal world, a rooster decides to flee the chicken-coop. However, he does not want to run away on his own. First he asks the hen and little chicks, but they will not join. Then he asks the turkey, but he also turns him down. Finally he appeals to the ducks, but they are not interested either. In the end the rooster decides it is best to go back to where he came from. The moral of the story… do not aspire to change and seek a better life?

Then there is the wolf that falls into a well. He tricks the sheep into coming down to partake in the water, only to climb on the sheep and set himself free. The poor sheep remains trapped in the well. Moral: do not help others, for they might cheat you.

In one bizarre tale, the sun and the wind try to see who can get a man to take off his coat first. The wind tries by blowing strongly, but in the end the sun wins by making him sweat to the point where he has to disrobe. I really do not know what the moral is here.

As a warning not to be a show-off, we are told of a boy who claims he can jump over a low wall. However, he is short and fat and runs into the wall instead. That is what happens if you are boastful, we are told. Yeeees, and also if you are short and overweight, apparently…

I was a bit troubled by the story of the tortoise who wants to visit her friends the geese. The birds put a stick in the tortoise’s mouth, they each grab it at either end with their beaks and all of them fly away together. People start pointing at the ridiculous scene of a tortoise flying through the air with two geese (ridiculous? I would have found it incredible!) and pointing. The tortoise gets upset and opens her mouth to yell at everyone, which causes her to FALL TO HER DEATH.

Later on we are introduced to a family who has migrated back from Canada. The young brother and sister really want their father to buy them fireworks like they saw at the village festa, but he refuses. So instead when they are alone at home they take matches and start lighting them and throwing them in the air. Apparently they assume that they will look just like fireworks! Soon the dining room curtain catches on fire. When Mummy gets home, she admonishes the children for playing with fire because they could have BURNED UP in the inferno that would have ensued when the house was lit aflame. But all is fine, the children apologise, and Mummy promises not to tell Daddy why the curtain has clear fire damage. Phew!

After all of this death, destruction and crushing of personal dreams, the book finishes up with the Maltese national anthem and a tidbit about loving the flag.

The blog is back after an extended absence. I had a lovely extended visit abroad to visit family and friends, and while it was wonderful to see everyone it left me with very little time to sit down at a computer with the mental clarity to blog. Now I am back on the island and catching up on all I missed. For one, it looks like I missed the worst of the heat, though it is still quite strong.

After all the excitement and comments on the last post, it appears that it was all for nought. When I tried using my card this week, it turned out it was not linked to M’s card after all. We went to complain, explained the situation, they called the person in charge (a different one) and basically went through the whole thing once more. They would not link the cards because we do not have the same surname. Ridiculous! M asked several times what they do in the case of a woman who does not take her husband’s name, which is very common these days. They did not have a real answer but eventually said that perhaps they would put both names on both cards. Then they suggested they could do that for us, but we would lose all of the points accumulated so far. That was not exactly fair. In the end, it seemed to be a battle not worth fighting. They insisted that any two people can pool their points when redeeming them, but I did not believe that for a moment. If that was the case, then friends would be grouping together to redeem and the supermarket would have to give things away for free all the time. So, we will simply use one card from now and deal with it. So much for our symbolic victory!

On to another and more serious topic, the recent earthquake in Peru . Thank you for all the e-mails I received showing concern about my family there. Fortunately, everyone is fine, though they did feel the earthquake quite strongly. The epicenter was further south so Lima did not bear the brunt of the seismic activity. Also, most buildings in Lima are earthquake-proof so that helped to minimise the damage. What you are seeing on the news are mostly poor areas where people could not afford to construct their houses properly. As always, it is the poor who suffer the most. If you are feeling generous, please donate to the relief charity of your choice in order to help the victims. Many of them are now homeless and destitute.

With the news of the hurricane in the Caribbean , it looks like there will soon be even more victims of another natural disaster. I suppose these things have always happened, but in today’s globalised world we are more aware of what happens in other countries. The positive side is that we can also send help no matter where we are.