My first topic that I will be analysing is an article about most popular Maltese word that foreign people tend to learn, and after that overuse them, according to the article. The article is from Maltese newspaper
Lovin Malta, and can be found here:
https://lovinmalta.com/lifestyle/living-in-malta/words-foreigners-living-in-malta-overuse-as-soon-as-they-learn-them
Let's start with the fact that Maltese is definitely not an easy language to learn. As a matter a fact, I still cannot speak Maltese more than few words, even after living here two and have years. How is that possible? The reason is not because I'm not interested in learning Maltese - actually the opposite - I am very interested in languages, and normally learn them really fast. But it has more to do with the fact that in Malta, English is the second official language and therefore everyone speak English fluently. It is the everyday language, so for foreigners there is not really a need to learn Maltese. And on the aspect of using the language, Maltese is only spoken in Malta and is also very different from any other European language. Therefore most of us foreigners don't really find beneficial to learn it.
Going back to the article, there are eight common words listed. Out of those words I would agree on four, especially on the first one -
mela. We all have learned it, we all know it can be used in almost any situation, we all hear it everywhere daily. And therefore we all also use it, a lot. Especially when something is not working or things are really late, we try to make it positive and just say
mela. And that is quite often here to be fair. So yes,
mela could easily be overused sometimes. Also the words
bomba, ostja and
uwejja are words that you definitely will not miss here. And they are quite used by foreigners too.
''The running joke is that mela can be used in almost every situation - and don't get us wrong, it totally can. But only by native speakers. It's cute to hear foreigners using it, but if every other sentence has 'mela' and 'ta' just thrown in for good measure, it gets pretty frustrating.''
Like mentioned in the article, another possible reason why foreigners don't use even the bit of Maltese they know - at least in my own opinion - is that Maltese people appreciate more if you actually speak fluent Maltese instead of few words here and there. Therefore I personally don't really use any local words with locals except
ciao - which is actually Italian. Anyway, the words that I rarely use, I use because I genuinely adapt to languages quickly and it really just comes naturally for me to use those words in some situations.
Other than those four words, I really think the words that enter your vocabulary depends on the people you spend your time with. As an instance, on the words that are listed on the article, there are two words that I probably never even heard, but yet again I know many other Maltese words and hear them all the time. And I also learned them within my first few months on the island. And yet again, I still don't overuse them. Like mentioned before, actually the opposite.
So as a conclusion, I would say that there are definitely some common words that foreigners might overuse, at least in locals' point of view. But due to my experience and perspective as a foreigner, I do not completely agree with the article. But any local could and probably would disagree with me... m
ela.
