Ommi ma, here we go again! It’s our favourite language debate. The Junior Chamber of Advocates have organised a seminar to discuss the language issue going on in the law course.
Due to the way the course is designed law students are bound to learn in the English language however the court’s official language is Maltese. Students are only taught about the Maltese legal jargon in their fifth year whilst studying court procedure.
JCA President, Matt Micallef St John, stated during a seminar entitled, “Maltese v English: Legal Inquisition“, that the organisation have conducted a survey with regards to the language question which had 66 respondents and was quite reflective of the reality in the law course.
The survey shows that 58.5% of the students’ preferred spoken language is Maltese and 27.7% prefer the English language. This is whilst 13.8% of the respondents have no language preference as they are comfortable communicating in both languages.
It is interesting to note that 21 respondents expressed that litigating in Maltese is harder than litigating in English. On the other hand, 24 students find no difficulty to litigate in Maltese over the English. Meanwhile, 15 students are quite neutral about this question.
In turn 45 of 66 respondents agree that the Maltese language as well as English should be utilised during the lectures whilst 9 students do not agree that both languages should be used.
Moreover, 51 students agreed that those legal terms which are studied in English are in turn difficult to use in Maltese whilst practicing the profession.
The seminar had a panel of 4 speakers starting off with Dr Joseph Izzo Clarke who travelled to Malta from Luxembourg specifically for this seminar, stated there currently is an undergoing effort for language to be accessible to the citizens.
Dr Charlene Gauci who is currently a freshly-warranted lawyer and a past JCA President talked about the imposition of learning and thinking in English for approximately five years and then you find yourself in a workplace where you don’t just need to use the Maltese colloquial language but in court a lawyer is bound to use a specific Maltese legal jargon.
She continued to say that in the law course Maltese in mainly used during the fifth year when the students are studying the law of procedure used in court. She advises the use of Maltese throughout the course. She expressed her disappointment that such jargon is not used most specifically in the first year of the law which could be an essential foundation for the student to build on.
Dr Michael Spagnol who is a lecturer in the Department of Maltese here at university who emphasised on the use of all languages in the court house especially due to multilingual clients. However he criticised the fact that some individuals see the Maltese and English language as competitors. Such reasoning impoverishes us. Despite this, he did notice the irony that the highest educational institution which is supposed to provide us with tools is depriving students of such an essential device.
Dr David Zammit who is the Head of the Civil Law Department at the Faculty of Laws who admitted that this seminar reminded him of the national Language Question back in the 1930s when Malta was a British colony and light was being shed on the importance of the Maltese language. He stated that this question empowers us to be what he called “cultural brokers” as interpreters.
To conclude, Micallef St John shared his organisation’s thoughts on the matter and stated:
It is very clear, both from the survey conducted and the discussion take took place during the seminar, that students wish to see the increased use of the Maltese language in the law course, alongside English. We echo this sentiment and hope that the relevant authorities will take note of what was said, and that JCA is willing to follow up and work on the matter.