Linguistics Circle

A view of Valletta from the University of Malta campus:

Last week I went to a talk organised by the Linguistics Circle. The talk was given by a German translator working at the European Commission. As Maltese is now an official language of the EU he was given the opportunity to learn Maltese and now translates the few documents the commission receive in Maltese into German (he explained that most Maltese documents sent are written in English).

During his talk he outlined the difficulties he faced whilst learning the language and gave some suggestions for current students of Maltese. He highlighted a common problem students face in that whenever they try to address people in Maltese they get a response in English - I have not yet really tried to speak to strangers in my basic Maltese yet but judging from the response from the audience his point was a valid one.

Most people in the audience were from the Maltese for Foreigners course held in the evenings at the University and I was pleasantly surprised at the number of Brits in the audience.