PN to voice Maltese language academics’ complaints in parliament

The opposition would be voicing the complaints lodged by many Maltese language groups, who were insisting that they were never approached by the education ministry before he proposed amendments to the Maltese Language Council, the Nationalist Party said on Tuesday.

In a statement signed by shadow education minister Therese Comodini Cachia, early education spokesman George Pullicino and culture spokesman Karl Gouder, the PN said the groups were unanimous in their opposition to the amendments which, they claimed, would weaken the Council.

The PN said it could not understand how education minister Evarist Bartolo had claimed to have consulted all Maltese language organisations, when he presented the bill in parliament, when the groups themselves were denying they had ever been consulted on the amendments.

It was also ironic to note that the document published by the minister to announce the proposed amendments had itself contained 28 elementary grammatical mistakes in only three pages, as revealed by the groups themselves on Monday.

“This certainly does not bode well for the Maltese language if minister Bartolo’s proposed amendments make it through parliament,” the PN said.

Parliament will be discussing Bartolo’s amendments in committee stage on Wednesday.

As it stands, the council is composed of 11 members – the chairperson, one representative each from the Akkademija tal-Malti, the University’s Department of Maltese, the Institute of Linguistics, the Associations of Maltese, the Attorney General, the Arts Council, the Institute of Maltese Journalists, the Education Division (nominated by the education minister), and two of the heads of the council’s technical committees.

Bartolo has proposed that the council be extended to 13 members – to include representatives of the Broadcasting Authority, the University’s Department of Translation Studies, the Book Council, and book publishers, and to remove the heads of the technical committees.

The bill also proposes changes in the appointment of the heads of the council’s technical committees (including committees for ITC and terminology). As it stands, heads are appointed from a list of people recommended by the Akkademija tal-Malti and the Department of Maltese, but the draft proposals suggest that they be proposed by five (out of 13) council members instead.

The academics’ groups also criticised the proposed changes that grant the council the final word on technical language disputes between itself and a Commission of experts – composed of the council’s chairman, executive director and the heads of the technical committees.