| Summary: | A recently re-discovered Maltese-English dictionary by Salvu Mamo might provide an insight into the state of the Maltese language and that of the use of English at the end of the 19th century. The British had been in Malta since the beginning of the century, but their several attempts to anglicize the Maltese produced negative results. By 1880, Governor Bouverie's 1830 call that "this colony should be English, not Italian" was still on paper. For centuries Italian had been the official language of Malta, although the Maltese spoke the vernacular. In 1878 the British Government sent Patrick Keenan, the man responsible for the anglicization of Ireland, to attempt a repeat performance in Malta. His views met with fierce opposition, but it might well be that the publication by the same Mamo of an English-Maltese dictionary in 1885 was due to this campaign. This dictionary is actually dedicated to the Maltese Director of Education who was in charge of government's pro-English programme. The Maltese-English sequel never saw the light of day, and little is known about the author. He certainly did not belong to the literary circles of the time. In the early 1930s, when Maltese took the place of Italian in the Maltese educational system and in the Courts, Government acquired the manuscript from Mamo's family to serve as a basis for a Maltese-English dictionary. Actually little use seems to have been made of it, and it lay at the Department of Education till a bomb fell on the place and it was destined to be thrown away. Luckily, a teacher spotted this and other manuscripts ready to be wheel-barrowed, and picked up a few for himself. There it lay till he told me about it some 5 years ago, and was recently persuaded to have it published; not an easy task.
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