Maltese Language Act, Chapter 470 adopted.

[Harold Schiffman]

awwissu
In an effort to promote and protect the Maltese language and establishan unified linguistic policy, in 2005, the government and parliamentof Malta have adopted the Att dwar l-Ilsien Malti (Maltese LanguageAct, Chapter 470). The Act establishes Il-Kunsill Nazzjonali tal-Malti(National Council for the Maltese Language) as the main body chargedwith "adopting and promoting a suitable language policy and strategy"(Part II, 4(1)). Aside from the general task of promoting MalteseLanguage both in Malta and abroad (Part II, 5(1)), the Council hasalso been specifically charged with updating "the orthography of theMaltese Language as necessary" and establishing "the correct manner ofwriting words and phrases which enter the Maltese Language from othertongues" (Part II, 5(2)). Having been formed in 2005, the Council,headed by prof. Manwel Mifsud, immediately began working on anorthography reform and three years of research, public debate andexpert discussion resulted in the publication !
 of Government notice no.642 in the Government Gazette of July 25th which amends the officialorthography of Maltese. This amendment, also known as Deċiżjonijiet 1,is the third official update of Maltese orthography established by theTagħrif fuq il-Kitba Maltija written by Ninu Cremona and ĠanniVassallo and published in 1924 by Akkademja tal-Malti. Unlike theprevious ones, Żieda mat-Tagħrif of 1984 and Aġġornament tat-Tagħriffuq il-Kitba Maltija of 1992, this reform will consist of three parts.
As outlined by the guide to the decision-making process published bythe Council under the title "It-Triq lejn id-Deċiżjonijiet 1" (8 MBPowerPoint presentation), the Council identified three problematicareas:
1. Orthographic variants2. English loans3. Phonetic variants
A decision was made to deal with these issues one by one in thisparticular order. In the first phase, over 300 orthographic variantswere collected, after which the Council issued a general call foropinions to the public and a specific one to a selected group ofprofessionals (authors, translators, teachers and journalists). It isinteresting to note that the latter call was answered by only 35people, fortunately including some of the biggest names in Malteseliterature. The reactions were published in a separate volume of 195pages titled Innaqqsu l-inċertezzi. The public debate was concluded bya workshop on orthographic variants with over 180 participants andInnaqqsu l-inċertezzi as the main subject of discussion. The finaldecision was entrusted to a committee chaired by Albert Borgconsisting of 11 experts. After 30 meetings, the committee issued afinal recommendation which was unanimously approved by the Council andfinally published as Government notice no. 642, a document w!
 ith thelegal force of a law entering into effect on July 25th, 2008.
Government notice no. 642 / Deċiżjonijiet 1 consists of five main sections:
1. Grave accent and circumflexOnly grave accent is now used in Maltese (e.g. kafè, però), circumflexis abolished.
2. CapitalizationDeċiżjonijiet 1 establishes comprehensive rules for capitalization andlack thereof. Most notably, names of religions, religious orders,sects, art movements, styles and epochs as well as adjectives derivedfrom them and names of their members are now capitalized throughout,e.g. l-Iżlam, ir-Rinaxximent, l-Impresijonisti, stil Sikulo-Normann,id-Dumnikani and in-Nazzjonalisti.
3. Word combinationsThis section deals with various phrases, fixed expressions and idiomswhere there's been significant confusion. Subsection 3.1 coversexpresions and idioms where the constituent parts are writtenseparately, such as the reduplicative constructions of the type ftitftit (little by little, gradually), numerals except 11-19, adverb nettand preposition a la and għala.Subsection 3.2 contains rules for writing phrases and expressionswritten together, separately or hyphenated. 3.2.1 covers (mostlyprepositional) phrases which can be written together or joined by ahyphen, such as fil-waqt (at the time of) as opposed to filwaqt(while). Appendix A provides a comprehensive list of such multiwordexpressions that are now written as one word, appendix B containsthose that are still written separately or hyphenated.3.2.2. deals with prefixes such as awto-, ko-, anti- and post- whichare now written without a hyphen except where the stem is capitalized,e.g. antiinflammatorju !
 (or antiflammatorju, both are acceptable), butanti-Iżlamiku.The rest of subsection 3.2 covers prepositions ġo, ma', sa' and ta'(actually the Genitive exponent), the negative particle ma and thepreposition kontra. New rules provide a choice between writing ma,ma', sa' and ta' in both full and short form (sa issa / s'issa "untilnow") when followed by a vowel, għ or ħ. Subsection 3.2 alsosignificantly simplifies the spelling of ġo, ma', sa' and ta' +definite article il-. Forms ġol, mal, sal and tal are now usedregardless of what follows (consonant, vowel, għ or ħ), removing onemajor headache for all speakers of Maltese.
4. Roots and stemsThis short section establishes different rules for writing words ofSemitic origin and Romance words. For Semitic roots, the rules confirmthe practice of using the same set of letters for one root even thoughthe pronunciation may differ (e.g. ktibna "we wrote" is pronounced[ktibna], but kitbu "they wrote" is pronounced [kidbu]). The obviousexceptions with some roots, such as verbae tertiae għ, still apply(e.g. the verb sema' with the root smgħ and first person singularperfect smajt). Non-Semitic stems are written the way they occur inthe words adopted into Maltese and no effort is made to establish asingle correct spelling.
5. OtherThis final section attempts to simplify and unify the orthography of asmall number of words. Subsection 5.1 deals with consonants with thesame pronunciation, but non-phonetic spelling or two differentspellings, where in both cases the phonetic spelling is chosen as thepreferred variant. Examples include dvalja which replaces tvalja"tablecloth", risq instead of riżq "profit, benefit" and skont insteadof skond "according to" which was even before the reform written witht before enclictic pronouns. Subsection 5.2 also adapts the spellingof some words to match their most common current pronunciation, suchas the title of this post Awwissu instead of Awissu "August", dettallinstead of dettal, Iżlam instead of Islam and prefers karozza over ofkarrozza "car". The rest of the section covers a number of wordsdesigned to bring their spelling in line with their etymology (Magrebinstead of Maghreb, since the word was borrowed from Italian orEnglish) and three spelling changes b!
 ased on reinterpretation ofroots.
Having been published in the Government Gazette, the new rules ofMaltese Orthography are now binding for all government institutionsincluding schools, textbooks and examinations. The Government noticeno. 642, however, provides for a three-year transitional period duringwhich both variants will be acceptable. On July 25th, 2011, the newforms will finally become the only correct and acceptable ones. Itwill remain to be seen how speakers of Maltese will get used to it.We'll see if the first reactions were an indicator and if, what willthat mean for the second phase which deals with borrowings fromEnglish and which is well underway. Should be interesting to watch.

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