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Matthew Vella
The Maltese language has been demoted to a “third language” in the Brussels school where children of employees in the European Union’s institutions attend, despite its status as an official EU language.
As from September 2006, Maltese pupils will be allowed to choose Maltese as a third or optional fourth language, in a letter sent to parents by the school’s director Giancarlo Marcheggiano. The students have been without a Maltese language teacher for the past two years.
The pupils, who attend classes at the English-language section of Uccle’s European School in Brussels, will be expected to sit for geography, social sciences and history in French – their new “second language”, since their first language is English.
Maltese is expected to be offered as a “protected” language along with Gaelic and Flemish, after parents proposed that their children should not be taught Maltese at the expense of French.
Students at Uccle’s European School are instructed in both their mother tongue as a first language, and in another first foreign language, which is either English, French or German.
With just 13 Maltese pupils in Brussels, and another nine in Luxembourg, Maltese students are too few to have a language section set up for themselves. They have been enrolled in the English-language section along with other students from Estonia, Latvia, and Slovenia.
Since English is considered to be a foreign language for these students, it is automatically considered to be a “second language”.
However, Maltese parents are divided over the issue, some opting for English not to be taught as a second language, given its status in the Maltese bilingual educational system.
Additionally, they want Maltese lessons to be offered but not at the expense of French classes. They have proposed that Maltese be listed amongst the “protected languages”, along with Gaelic and Flemish.
But other parents have made their disapproval clear at the situation, because of pupils who do not have a sound level of French. Catch-up classes in French have also proved to be difficult for these pupils.
Parents of elder students now fear their children will be unable to catch up on what is otherwise a third language. Secondary school students who have just started their classes in French will have to sit for Form 3 level examinations in social sciences, geography and history in French within a short period of time.
The Maltese language’s official status has already been dealt a blow when on its first day as an EU member state, a three-year moratorium on the translation of EU documents in Maltese was issued, meaning that before May 2007, not all acts, including judgements of the European Court of Justice will be translated to Maltese.
“It appears from contacts between the Maltese authorities and the European Union institutions that due to the current situation regarding recruitment of Maltese linguists and the resulting lack of qualified translators, it is not possible to guarantee the drafting in Maltese of all acts adopted by the institutions,” the 1 May, 2004 regulation reads.
mvella@mediatoday.com.mt
Links: www.maltatoday.com.mt/2004/05/16/top_story.html
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