Maltese language in AustraliaAuthor: Roderick Bovingdon 21 July 2002 The June edition of Crossroads (The Sunday Times, June 9) highlighted Maltese language landmarks in a prominent, double-column tabulation. While I am in complete agreement with such a valid appreciation of a nation's linguistic achievements, I cannot allow some important omissions to pass. For far too long, language and linguistic achievements among the expatriate Maltese in the great land Down Under have been, either intentionally (prejudice and political motives) or through sheer apathy or ignorance misrepresented and downgraded by powerful and influential people in Malta. Paying lip-service to Maltese-Australian literature by intentionally inserting the odd poem in a local anthology, or by granting the occasional space in local Maltese language newspapers and journals to a select and often inconsequential group of Maltese-Australian authors, neither appeases nor, more to the point, does it complement the true aesthetic worth of the perpetrators in Malta. Such an attitude to writers of Maltese living abroad, which has gone on for so long, reveals far more sinister motives than its apparent superficial snub. One prominent Maltese writer told me some years ago that "the Maltese langauge is made in Malta and nowhere else!" thus, so he thought, sweeping aside all efforts (written, spoken, ceremonial, representational, etc.) by Maltese-Australian writers and others, with respect to our linguistic heritage. In April 1968, at St Gertrude's Catholic School, Smithfield, New South Wales, the first ever Maltese language classes commenced. These continued for some nine months until, for various reasons, they folded up. Of course the importance of this milestone lies in the courageous defiance of the act which served in no uncertain terms to kindle the fires of later day communal rallies of 1999 when the Maltese Language School of NSW was finally opened with full official recognition. But even before this date, the cultural cinders of 1968 were never extinguished, as agitation for the introduction of Maltese in the local curriculum, both in the Maltese-language press as well as the daily papers of Sydney (Daily Telegraph and Sydney Morning Herald) continued unabated. Such agitation inspired the reopening of Maltese language classes at the premises of the now defunct Fairfield Melita Drama Company in the Horsley Drive, Smithfield, NSW, in 1970. Unfortunately these activities again met with great difficulties, both from within our own community when anti-Maltese propaganda was spread by word of mouth and eager students were discouraged from attending. Undaunted by such behaviour, I found some solace in the invention and publication of the first Maltese literary journal in Australia, Ix-Xefaq. Again the year was 1970; only this time I had the eager and competent assistance of Alfred Degabriele, a well known literary figure and respected friend in Malta. Around 1972 the Maltese Dominican nuns at Warrawong and Port Kembla (two working-class suburbs of Wollongong, some 80 miles south of Sydney) where a large Maltese colony was settled, Maltese language classes were started for the first time in Australia on an official basis, at primary level. Again, these classes, which continued for some six years without break, suddenly fell through, for reasons I do not know. In 1981, the same year I was given my first scholarship to study Maltese at our Alma Mater and which I was compelled to abandon in 1982 owing to pressing domestic circumstances, the late Dr Joseph Abela began the first ever Maltese classes at tertiary level at the Phillip Institute of Technology in Melbourne. These lectures were kept up for a number of years by Pauline Curmi and Joseph Chetcuti, until eventually they too collapsed. A direct legacy of Dr Abela's efforts, as well as those of the earliest days of 1968 and 1970, lingers on till this day around the Melbourne metropolitan region in the continuation of Maltese language classes at primary and secondary levels. Likewise in New South Wales, classes are held at five different campuses of the Maltese Language School of NSW. In South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland too there are some Maltese language classes to this day. As woeful as this tale may sound, the untiring efforts and the courage of a few individuals deserve recording in the annals of Maltese language landmarks. For if there ever was a success story worth noting in our nation's heritage, it is that of the Maltese who settled in Australia over the last century or so. With the dearth of proper documentation regarding the historicity of the Maltese language within an Australian environment, official slips may have been excusable in the past. Hence Joseph M. Brincat's omission of the ethnolect Maltraljan as part of his treatise on the Maltese language in his book Il-Malti: Elf Sena ta' Storja is excusable. But with the international publication of The Maltese Language of Australia: Maltraljan in 2001, a whole 12 months prior to the article in Crossroads, this document which, among other things, lucidly presents the history and development of the Maltese language in Australia, the dates given and events described therein can no longer be ignored in any future serious rendition of Maltese language historicity and dialectology/linguistics! Professor Brincat himself was perceptive enough to write: "The fact that Maltese... boasts of a variety which is used daily by about 100,000 speakers (a conservative figure: my addition) in a land which is 15,000 kms away, is quite exceptional. Moreover this variety is spread over the erritory of the largest island in the world. It is therefore incredible that one can speak of an Australian variety of Maltese at all." (The Sunday Times, April 28). I'll conclude with a brief quote by Frans Sammut in the same issue of Crossroads: "It is ultimately up to Maltese to make an effort to start treating their language with some dignity". Mr Roderick Bovingdon lives in Merrylands, NSW, Australia. Source: Times of Malta, www.timesofmalta.com
 
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