Areas of Unrest

7 March 2001 - Mind Your Gh's and Q's: Special Malti Language Edition!

QOTD: "The perils of duck hunting are great, especially for the duck." - Walter Cronkite

Reading: Georges Duby (editor), A History of Private Life, Volume II: Revelations of the Medieval World

Listening to: Angelique Kidjo, Fifa

I have an entire week without a business trip - an almost unheard of luxury lately. So, in between getting caught up on various chores, I am spending time thinking about my trip to Malta, which is only two months away. There are some places I absolutely have to go - like Ggantija, near Xaghra on the island of Gozo. The temples there are the oldest freestanding structures on the planet, a thousand years older than the Pyramids or Stonehenge. And then there's Hagar Qim, another megalithic temple site. You get there by the bus that runs to Zurrieq, not far down the road from Mqabba. And, of course, I have to sample the local foods, like gbejniet and hobz biz-zejt and qubbajt. (But not fenek. Thumper may have died for my gloves, but I refuse to eat him as well.)

That is, of course, assuming I can ever pronounce any of these names. Malti is the only Semitic language written in Roman characters and is generally thought to be derived from North African dialects of Arabic. (Though there are obviously Italian influences, e.g. "thank you" is "grazzi" and "good evening" is "bonswa.") I suspect I'd do about as well were it to be written in Arabic characters. At least then I wouldn't have to confront the guidebook advice which includes such gems of advice as telling me that the "q" sound is the same as between the two syllables of "bottle." I suspect that means that it is almost silent but not quite, like the way Yemenites pronounce the Hebrew letter "ayin." Not that I have any hope of actually reproducing that sound. I'm going to be busy enough trying to remember that "gh" is silent but lengthens the preceding or following vowel. Which doesn't quite tell me what to do if there are both preceding and following vowels, not that I've run across that yet. By the way, that "gh" really counts as one letter and there's a sort of slash thing through the "h". My html reference doesn't have a Malti language code section, though, so I will be lazy.

It is not all that reassuring when the same guidebook (Lonely Planet, by the way) tells me that "individual letters in Malti aren't too difficult to pronounce once you learn the rules, but putting them together to make any kind of sense is a major achievement." I also have the Cadogan Guide, which tells me that the key to being understood is the ten consonants which have sounds entirely unlike what they sound like in English. Their advice is that "problems usually only occur with bold attempts at pronunciation, which follow rules few people will be familiar with." They also describe the language as sounding "like Turkish but without the chewy, gravelly noises." Their overall advice is to "dispel any notion of trying to learn the language, it's nigh on impossible."

The reassuring thing is that English is the other official language and nearly everybody speaks it. In addition, Italian is widely spoken. So I don't necessarily have to attempt to remember that "please" is "jekk joghgbok" (the second g has a dot over it and the phrase is pronounced as "eekk-y-ojbok"). If I did have to attempt that all the time, I fear I'd decide that rudeness was in order.

Aside from the Italian phonetic influences, which are easy, I can recognize other words that are similar to Hebrew. For example, church is "knisja," which is like "knesset" (meaning "congregation," though the more literal meaning is "assembly," which is why the Israeli government also uses the word). I'll remember that "erbgha" is "four" as long as I remember that damn silent "gh". ("Four" in Hebrew is "arba" so it's just the same.) And I'll try "gbejniet," confident that I'm getting cheese (which is "gvina" in Hebrew). My real challenge comes with place names, which are what I'm most likely to need to pronounce recognizably. I can probably manage well enough on stuff like Rabat and, even, Mgarr (pronounced Imjarr). But I despair of ever mastering Luqa, which is pronounced Loo-ar. Oh, wait, it looks like I can get away with pronouncing it "air-port."

I wonder what the Malti word for "spell-check" is?