Maltese language
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Maltese ( mt, Malti, links=no, also ''L-Ilsien Malti'' or ''Il-Lingwa Maltija''), is a Semitic language derived from late medieval Sicilian Arabic with
Romance Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to: Common meanings * Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings * Romance languages, ...
superstrata spoken by the Maltese people. It is the national language of
Malta Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...
and the only
official An official is someone who holds an office (function or mandate, regardless whether it carries an actual working space with it) in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority, (either their own or that of their ...
Semitic and Afro-Asiatic language of the
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...
. Maltese is a latinised variety of spoken historical Arabic through its descent from Siculo-Arabic, which developed as a
Maghrebi Arabic Maghrebi Arabic (, Western Arabic; as opposed to Eastern or Mashriqi Arabic) is a vernacular Arabic dialect continuum spoken in the Maghreb region, in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Western Sahara, and Mauritania. It includes Moroccan, Al ...
dialect in the Emirate of Sicily between 831 and 1091. As a result of the
Norman invasion of Malta The Norman invasion of Malta was an attack on the island of Malta, then inhabited predominantly by Muslims, by forces of the Norman County of Sicily The County of Sicily, also known as County of Sicily and Calabria, was a Norman state compri ...
and the subsequent re-Christianisation of the islands, Maltese evolved independently of Classical Arabic in a gradual process of latinisation. It is therefore exceptional as a variety of historical Arabic that has no diglossic relationship with Classical or
Modern Standard Arabic Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Modern Written Arabic (MWA), terms used mostly by linguists, is the variety of standardized, literary Arabic that developed in the Arab world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; occasionally, it also ref ...
. Maltese is thus classified separately from the 30 varieties constituting the modern Arabic macrolanguage. Maltese is also distinguished from Arabic and other Semitic languages since its
morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines * Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts * Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
has been deeply influenced by
Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...
, namely
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...
and Sicilian. The original Arabic base comprises around one-third of the Maltese vocabulary, especially words that denote basic ideas and the function words, but about half of the vocabulary is derived from standard Italian and Sicilian; and English words make up between 6% and 20% of the vocabulary. A 2016 study shows that, in terms of basic everyday language, speakers of Maltese are able to understand around a third of what is said to them in
Tunisian Arabic Tunisian Arabic, or simply Tunisian, is a set of dialects of Maghrebi Arabic spoken in Tunisia. It is known among its over 11 million speakers aeb, translit=Tounsi/Tounsiy, label=as, تونسي , "Tunisian" or "Everyday Language" to distingu ...
, which is a Maghrebi Arabic related to Siculo-Arabic, whereas speakers of Tunisian Arabic are able to understand about 40% of what is said to them in Maltese. This reported level of asymmetric intelligibility is considerably lower than the
mutual intelligibility In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...
found between other varieties of Arabic. Maltese has always been written in the
Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern I ...
, the earliest surviving example dating from the
late Middle Ages The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the period of European history lasting from AD 1300 to 1500. The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period (and in much of Europe, the Renai ...
. It is the only standardised Semitic language written exclusively in the Latin script.


History

The origins of the Maltese language are attributed to the arrival, early in the 11th century, of settlers from neighbouring Sicily, where Siculo-Arabic was spoken, reversing the
Fatimid Caliphate The Fatimid Caliphate was an Isma'ilism, Ismaili Shia Islam, Shi'a caliphate extant from the tenth to the twelfth centuries AD. Spanning a large area of North Africa, it ranged from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the ea ...
's conquest of the island at the end of the 9th century. This claim has been corroborated by genetic studies, which show that contemporary Maltese people share common ancestry with Sicilians and
Calabrians Tony Bennett in 2003.jpg, Tony Bennett Gabriella Cilmi at the Godiva Festival.jpg, Gabriella Cilmi Claude François (1976) by Erling Mandelmann - 5.jpg, Claude François Charles Atlas - Physical Culture Magazine - October 1921.JPG, Charles Atla ...
, with little genetic input from North Africa and the Levant. The Norman conquest in 1091, followed by the expulsion of the Muslims—complete by 1249—permanently isolated the vernacular from its Arabic source, creating the conditions for its evolution into a distinct language. In contrast to Sicily—where Siculo-Arabic became extinct and was replaced by Sicilian—the vernacular in Malta continued to develop alongside Italian, eventually replacing it as official language in 1934 – alongside English. The first written reference to the Maltese language is in a will of 1436, where it is called . The oldest known document in Maltese, () by Pietru Caxaro, dates from the 15th century. The earliest known Maltese dictionary was a 16th-century manuscript entitled "Maltese-Italiano"; it was included in the of Mifsud in 1764, but is now lost. A list of Maltese words was included in both the (1603) and (1606) of
Hieronymus Megiser Hieronymus Megiser (c.1554 in Stuttgart – 1618 or 1619 in Linz, Austria) was a German polymath, linguist and historian. Career From 1571 he studied at the University of Tübingen, and was a favourite student of the humanist and philologist N ...
, who had visited Malta in 1588–1589; Domenico Magri gave the etymologies of some Maltese words in his (1677). An early manuscript dictionary, , was discovered in the in Rome in the 1980s, together with a grammar, the , attributed to a French Knight named Thezan. The first systematic lexicon is that of
Giovanni Pietro Francesco Agius de Soldanis Canon Giovanni Pietro Francesco Agius de Soldanis ( mt, Ġan Piet Franġisk Agius de Soldanis, 30 October 1712 – 30 January 1770), often called de Soldanis ( mt, Sultana), was a Maltese linguist, historian and cleric from the island of Gozo. ...
, who also wrote the first systematic grammar of the language and proposed a standard
orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...
.


Demographics

SIL '' Ethnologue'' (2015) reports a total of 522,000 Maltese speakers, with 371,000 residing in Malta (close to 90% of the Maltese population) according to the European Commission (2012). This implies a number of around 150,000 speakers in the
Maltese diaspora Emigration from Malta was an important demographic phenomenon throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, leading to the creation of large Maltese communities in English-speaking countries abroad. History Nineteenth century Mass emi ...
. Most speakers are bilingual, the majority of speakers (345,000) regularly use English, and a reported 66,800 regularly use French. The largest diaspora community of Maltese speakers is in Australia, with 36,000 speakers reported in 2006 (down from 45,000 in 1996, and expected to decline further). The Maltese linguistic community in
Tunisia ) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , ...
originated in the 18th century. Numbering several thousand in the 19th century, it was reported to be only 100 to 200 people as of 2017.


Classification

Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic, a Semitic language within the
Afroasiatic family The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...
, that in the course of its
history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
has been influenced by Sicilian and Italian, to a lesser extent French, and more recently English. Today, the core vocabulary (including both the most commonly used vocabulary and function words) is Semitic, with large numbers of
loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...
s. Because of the Sicilian influence on Siculo-Arabic, Maltese has many language contact features and is most commonly described as a language with a large number of loanwords. The Maltese language has historically been classified in various ways, with some claiming that the ancient
Punic language The Punic language, also called Phoenicio-Punic or Carthaginian, is an extinct variety of the Phoenician language, a Canaanite language of the Northwest Semitic branch of the Semitic languages. An offshoot of the Phoenician language of coastal W ...
(another Semitic language) was its origin instead of Siculo-Arabic, while others believed the language to be one of the Berber languages (another family within Afroasiatic),. The Fascist Kingdom of Italy classified it as
regional Italian Regional Italian ( it, italiano regionale) is any regional"Regional" in the broad sense of the word; not to be confused with the Italian endonym , for Italy's administrative units. variety of the Italian language. Such vernacular varieties and ...
.


Dialects

SIL reports six varieties, besides Standard Maltese: Gozo, Port Maltese, Rural Central Maltese, Rural East Maltese, Rural West Maltese, and Zurrieq. Urban varieties of Maltese are closer to Standard Maltese than rural varieties,Isserlin. Studies in Islamic History and Civilization. BRILL 1986, which have some characteristics that distinguish them from Standard Maltese. They tend to show some archaic features such as the realisation of and and the
imāla Imāla (also transliterated '; ar, إمالة, lit. "inclination") is a phenomenon in Arabic comprising the fronting and raising of Old Arabic /ā/ toward /ī/, and the old short /a/ toward /i/. ''Imāla'' and the factors conditioning its occurre ...
of Arabic ā into ē (or ī especially in Gozo), considered archaic because they are reminiscent of 15th-century transcriptions of this sound. Another archaic feature is the realisation of Standard Maltese ā as ō in rural dialects. There is also a tendency to diphthongise simple vowels, e.g., ū becomes eo or eu. Rural dialects also tend to employ more Semitic roots and broken plurals than Standard Maltese. In general, rural Maltese is less distant from its Siculo-Arabic ancestor than is Standard Maltese.


Phonology


Consonants

Voiceless stops are only lightly aspirated and voiced stops are fully voiced. Voicing is carried over from the last segment in obstruent clusters; thus, two- and three-obstruent clusters are either voiceless or voiced throughout, e.g. is realised "we write" (similar assimilation phenomena occur in languages like French or Czech). Maltese has
final-obstruent devoicing Final-obstruent devoicing or terminal devoicing is a systematic phonological process occurring in languages such as Catalan, German, Dutch, Breton, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Turkish, and Wolof. In such languages, voiced obstruents in ...
of voiced obstruents and voiceless stops have
no audible release A stop with no audible release, also known as an unreleased stop or an applosive, is a stop consonant with no release burst: no audible indication of the end of its occlusion (hold). In the International Phonetic Alphabet, lack of an audible rele ...
, making voiceless–voiced pairs phonetically indistinguishable.
Gemination In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
is distinctive word-medially and word-finally in Maltese. The distinction is most rigid intervocalically after a stressed vowel. Stressed, word-final
closed syllables A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
with short vowels end in a long consonant, and those with a long vowel in a single consonant; the only exception is where historic and meant the
compensatory lengthening Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda, or of a vowel in an adjacent syllable. Lengthening triggered b ...
of the succeeding vowel. Some speakers have lost length distinction in clusters. The two nasals and assimilate for
place of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
in clusters. and are usually dental, whereas are all alveolar. are found mostly in words of Italian origin, retaining length (if not word-initial). and are only found in loanwords, e.g. "newspaper" and "television". The pharyngeal fricative is velar (), uvular (), or glottal () for some speakers.


Vowels

Maltese has five short vowels, , written ''a e i o u;'' six long vowels, , written ''a, e, ie, i, o, u,'' all of which (with the exception of ''ie'' ) can be known to represent long vowels in writing only if they are followed by an orthographic ''għ'' or ''h'' (otherwise, one needs to know the pronunciation; e.g. ''nar'' (fire) is pronounced ); and seven diphthongs, , written ''aj'' or ''għi, aw'' or ''għu, ej'' or ''għi, ew, iw, oj,'' and ''ow'' or ''għu.''


Stress

Stress is generally on the penultimate syllable, unless some other syllable is heavy (has a long vowel or final consonant), or unless a stress-shifting suffix is added. (Suffixes marking gender, possession, and verbal plurals do not cause the stress to shift). Historically when vowel ''a'' and ''u'' were long or stressed they were written as ''â'' or ''û'', for example in the word ''baħħâr'' (sailor) to differentiate from ''baħħar'' (to sail), but nowadays these accents are mostly omitted. When two syllables are equally heavy, the penultimate takes the stress, but otherwise the heavier syllable does, e.g. ''bajjad'' 'he painted' vs ''bajjad'' 'a painter'.


Historical phonology

The original Arabic consonant system has undergone partial collapse under European influence, with many Classical Arabic consonants having undergone mergers and modifications in Maltese:


Orthography


Alphabet

The modern system of Maltese orthography was introduced in 1924. Below is the Maltese alphabet, with
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...
symbols and approximate English pronunciation: Final vowels with grave accents (à, è, ì, ò, ù) are also found in some Maltese words of Italian origin, such as ''libertà'' ("freedom"), ''sigurtà'' (old Italian: ''sicurtà'', "security"), or ''soċjetà'' (Italianː ''società'', "society"). The official rules governing the structure of the Maltese language are recorded in the official guidebook ''Tagħrif fuq il-Kitba Maltija'' (English: ''Knowledge on Writing in Maltese'') issued by the Akkademja tal-Malti (Academy of the Maltese language). The first edition of this book was printed in 1924 by the Maltese government's printing press. The rules were further expanded in the 1984 book, ''iż-Żieda mat-Tagħrif'', which focused mainly on the increasing influence of Romance and English words. In 1992 the Academy issued the ''Aġġornament tat-Tagħrif fuq il-Kitba Maltija'', which updated the previous works. All these works were included in a revised and expanded guidebook published in 1996. The
National Council for the Maltese Language The National Council for the Maltese Language ( mt, Il-Kunsill Nazzjonali tal-Ilsien Malti) was founded in April 2005 with the enactment of the Maltese Language Act (Att dwar l-Ilsien Malti) (Chap. 470) in the Maltese Parliament. Its work is to regu ...
(KNM) is the main regulator of the Maltese language (see Maltese Language Act, below). However, the Academy's orthography rules are still valid and official.


Written Maltese

Since Maltese evolved after the Italo-Normans ended Arab rule of the islands, a written form of the language was not developed for a long time after the Arabs' expulsion in the middle of the thirteenth century. Under the rule of the
Knights Hospitaller The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem ( la, Ordo Fratrum Hospitalis Sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani), commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller (), was a medieval and early modern Catholic military order. It was headq ...
, both French and Italian were used for official documents and correspondence. During the
British colonial period The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...
, the use of English was encouraged through education, with Italian being regarded as the next-most important language. In the late 18th century and throughout the 19th century, philologists and academics such as Mikiel Anton Vassalli made a concerted effort to standardise written Maltese. Many examples of written Maltese exist from before this period, always in the Latin alphabet, '' Il-Kantilena'' from the 15th century being the earliest example of written Maltese. In 1934, Maltese was recognised as an official language.


Sample

The Maltese language has a tendency to have both Semitic vocabulary and also vocabulary derived from
Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...
, primarily
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...
. Words such as ''tweġiba'' (Arab origin) and ''risposta'' (Italian origin) have the same meaning (''answer'') but can and are both used in Maltese. Below are two versions of the same translations, one in vocabulary derived mostly from Semitic root words while the other uses Romance
loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...
s (from the
Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe
', se
p. 17
:


Vocabulary

Although the original vocabulary of the language was
Siculo-Arabic Siculo-Arabic ( ar, الْلهجَة الْعَرَبِيَة الْصَقلِيَة), also known as Sicilian Arabic, is the term used for varieties of Arabic that were spoken in the Emirate of Sicily (which included Malta) from the 9th century ...
, it has incorporated a large number of borrowings from
Romance Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to: Common meanings * Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings * Romance languages, ...
sources of influence ( Sicilian,
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...
, and French) and, more recently, Germanic ones (from
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
). The historical source of modern Maltese vocabulary is 52% Italian/Sicilian, 32% Siculo-Arabic, and 6% English, with some of the remainder being French. Today, most function words are Semitic, so despite only making up about a third, they are the most used among Maltese people when conversing. In this way, it is similar to
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
, which is a
Germanic language The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, E ...
that had large influence from Norman French and Latin (58% of English vocabulary). As a result of this, Romance language-speakers may easily be able to comprehend conceptual ideas expressed in Maltese, such as "Ġeografikament, l-Ewropa hi parti tas-superkontinent ta' l-Ewrasja" (''Geographically, Europe is part of the Supercontinent of Eurasia''), while not understanding a single word of a functional sentence such as "Ir-raġel qiegħed fid-dar" (''The man is in the house''), which would be easily understood by any Arabic speaker.


Romance

An analysis of the etymology of the 41,000 words in Aquilina's ''Maltese-English Dictionary'' shows that words of Romance origin make up 52% of the Maltese vocabulary, although other sources claim from as low as 40%, to as high as 55%. This vocabulary tends to deal with more complex concepts. They are mostly derived from Sicilian and thus exhibit Sicilian phonetic characteristics, such as in place of , and in place of (e.g. ''tiatru'' not ''teatro'' and ''fidi'' not ''fede''). Also, as with Old Sicilian, (English 'sh') is written 'x' and this produces spellings such as: ''ambaxxata'' ('embassy'), ''xena'' ('scene' cf. Italian ''ambasciata, scena''). A tendency in modern Maltese is to adopt further influences from English and Italian. Complex Latinate English words adopted into Maltese are often given Italianate or Sicilianate forms, even if the resulting words do not appear in either of those languages. For instance, the words "''evaluation''", "''industrial action''", and "''chemical armaments''" become "''evalwazzjoni''", "''azzjoni industrjali''", and "''armamenti kimiċi''" in Maltese, while the Italian terms are ''valutazione'', ''vertenza sindacale'', and ''armi chimiche'' respectively. (The origin of the terms may be narrowed even further to
British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...
; the phrase " industrial action" is meaningless in the United States.) This is also comparable to the situation with English borrowings into the
Italo-Australian dialect Italo-Australian is an Australian-based dialect of Italian that is spoken by Australians of Italian descent. Characteristics The exact number of speakers is unknown, but it is highly speculated that the language is mainly spoken by the young ...
. English words of Germanic origin are generally preserved relatively unchanged. Some influences of
African Romance African Romance or African Latin is an extinct Romance language that was spoken in the Roman province of Africa by the Roman Africans during the later Roman and early Byzantine Empires, and several centuries after the annexation of the region by ...
on Arabic and Berber spoken in the
Maghreb The Maghreb (; ar, الْمَغْرِب, al-Maghrib, lit=the west), also known as the Arab Maghreb ( ar, المغرب العربي) and Northwest Africa, is the western part of North Africa and the Arab world. The region includes Algeria, ...
are theorised, which may then have passed into Maltese. For example, in calendar month names, the word ''furar'' "February" is only found in the Maghreb and in Maltese - proving the word's ancient origins. The region also has a form of another Latin named month in ''awi/ussu < augustus''. This word does not appear to be a loan word through Arabic, and may have been taken over directly from Late Latin or African Romance. Scholars theorise that a Latin-based system provided forms such as ''awi/ussu'' and ''furar'' in African Romance, with the system then mediating Latin/Romance names through Arabic for some month names during the Islamic period. The same situation exists for Maltese which mediated words from
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...
, and retains both non-Italian forms such as ''awissu/awwissu'' and ''frar'', and Italian forms such as ''april''.


Siculo-Arabic

Siculo-Arabic is the ancestor of the Maltese language, and supplies between 32% and 40% of the language's vocabulary. found that 40% of a sample of 1,821
Quranic Arabic Classical Arabic ( ar, links=no, ٱلْعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ, al-ʿarabīyah al-fuṣḥā) or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notab ...
roots were found in Maltese, a lower percentage than found in Moroccan (58%) and
Lebanese Arabic Lebanese Arabic ( ar, عَرَبِيّ لُبْنَانِيّ ; autonym: ), or simply Lebanese ( ar, لُبْنَانِيّ ; autonym: ), is a variety of North Levantine Arabic, indigenous to and spoken primarily in Lebanon, with significant ...
(72%). An analysis of the etymology of the 41,000 words in Aquilina's ''Maltese-English Dictionary'' shows that 32% of the Maltese vocabulary is of Arabic origin, although another source claims 40%. Usually, words expressing basic concepts and ideas, such as (man), (woman), (boy), (house), (sun), (summer), are of Arabic origin. Moreover, in Maltese tend to aim mainly at diction belonging to this group. The Maltese language has merged many of the original Arabic consonants, in particular the emphatic consonants, with others that are common in European languages. Thus, original
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
, , and all merged into Maltese . The vowels, however, separated from the three in Arabic () into five, as is more typical of other European languages (). Some unstressed short vowels have been elided. The common Arabic greeting is cognate with in Maltese (lit. ''the peace for you'', peace be with you), as are similar greetings in other Semitic languages (e.g. in
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
). Since the attested vocabulary of Siculo-Arabic is limited, the following table compares cognates in Maltese and some other varieties of Arabic (all forms are written phonetically, as in the source):


English

It is estimated that English loanwords, which are becoming more commonplace, make up 20% of the Maltese vocabulary, although other sources claim amounts as low as 6%. This percentage discrepancy is due to the fact that a number of new English loanwords are sometimes not officially considered part of the Maltese vocabulary; hence, they are not included in certain dictionaries. Also, English loanwards of Latinate origin are very often Italianised, as discussed above. English loanwords are generally transliterated, although standard English pronunciation is virtually always retained. Below are a few examples: "Fridge" is a common
shortening Shortening is any fat that is a solid at room temperature and used to make crumbly pastry and other food products. Although butter is solid at room temperature and is frequently used in making pastry, the term ''shortening'' seldom refers to b ...
of "refrigerator". "Refrigerator" is a Latinate word which could be imported into Maltese as ''rifriġeratori'', whereas the
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...
word is ''frigorifero'' or ''refrigeratore''.


Calendar

The days of the week (Maltese: ''jiem il-ġimgħa'') in Maltese are referred to by number, as is typical of other Semitic languages, especially Arabic. Days of the week are commonly preceded by the word ''nhar'' meaning 'day'. The months of the year (Maltese: ''xhur is-sena'') in Maltese are mostly derived from Sicilian, but ''Frar'' and ''Awwissu'' are possibly derived from
African Romance African Romance or African Latin is an extinct Romance language that was spoken in the Roman province of Africa by the Roman Africans during the later Roman and early Byzantine Empires, and several centuries after the annexation of the region by ...
through
Siculo-Arabic Siculo-Arabic ( ar, الْلهجَة الْعَرَبِيَة الْصَقلِيَة), also known as Sicilian Arabic, is the term used for varieties of Arabic that were spoken in the Emirate of Sicily (which included Malta) from the 9th century ...
.


Time


Question words


Grammar

Maltese grammar is fundamentally derived from Siculo-Arabic, although
Romance Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to: Common meanings * Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings * Romance languages, ...
and
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
noun pluralisation patterns are also used on borrowed words.


Adjectives and adverbs

Adjective In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...
s follow
noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
s. There are no separately formed native
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...
s, and word order is fairly flexible. Both nouns and adjectives of Semitic origin take the definite article (for example, ''It-tifel il-kbir'', lit. "The boy the elder"="The elder boy"). This rule does not apply to adjectives of Romance origin.


Nouns

Nouns are pluralised and also have a dual marker. Semitic plurals are complex; if they are regular, they are marked by ''-iet''/''-ijiet'', e.g., ''art'', ''artijiet'' "lands (territorial possessions or property)" (cf. Arabic ''-at'' and Hebrew ''-ot''/''-oth'') or ''-in'' (cf. Arabic ''-īn'' and Hebrew ''-im''). If irregular, they fall in the ''pluralis fractus'' ( broken plural) category, in which a word is pluralised by internal vowel changes: ''ktieb'', ''kotba'' " book", "books"; ''raġel'', ''irġiel'' "man", "men". Words of Romance origin are usually pluralised in two manners: addition of ''-i'' or ''-jiet''. For example, ''lingwa'', ''lingwi'' "languages", from Sicilian ''lingua'', ''lingui''. Words of English origin are pluralised by adding either an "-s" or "-jiet", for example, ''friġġ'', ''friġis'' from the word ''fridge''. Some words can be pluralised with either of the suffixes to denote the plural. A few words borrowed from English can amalgamate both suffixes, like ''brikksa'' from the English ''brick'', which can adopt either collective form ''brikks'' or the plural form ''brikksiet''.


Derivation

As in
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
, nouns are often derived by changing, adding or removing the vowels within a
triliteral root The roots of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages are characterized as a sequence of consonants or " radicals" (hence the term consonantal root). Such abstract consonantal roots are used in the formation of actual words by adding the vowe ...
. These are some of the patterns used for nouns: * CaCiC - ''xadin'' (monkey), ''sadid'' (rust) * CCiC - ''żbib'' (raisin) * CaCCa - ''baqra'' (cow), ''basla'' (onion) * CeCCa - ''werqa'' (leaf), ''xewqa'' (wish) * CoCCa - ''borka'' (wild duck), ''forka'' (gallows) * CaCC - ''qalb'' (heart), ''sajd'' (fishing) * CeCC - ''kelb'' (dog), ''xemx'' (sun) * CCuCija - ''tfulija'' (boyhood), ''xbubija'' (maidenhood) * CCuCa - ''rtuba'' (softness), ''bjuda'' (whiteness) * CaCCaC - ''tallab'' (beggar), ''bajjad'' (whitewasher) The so-called mimated nouns use the prefix ''m-'' in addition to
vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
changes. This pattern can be used to indicate
place Place may refer to: Geography * Place (United States Census Bureau), defined as any concentration of population ** Census-designated place, a populated area lacking its own municipal government * "Place", a type of street or road name ** Often ...
names,
tool A tool is an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task. Although many animals use simple tools, only human beings, whose use of stone tools dates ba ...
s, abstractions, etc. These are some of the patterns used for mimated nouns: * ma-CCeC - ''marden'' (spindle) * mi-CCeC - ''minkeb'' (elbow), ''miżwed'' (pod) * mu-CCaC - ''musmar'' (nail), ''munqar'' (beak)


Article

The
proclitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a w ...
''il-'' is the
definite article An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" and "a(n)" a ...
, equivalent to "the" in English and "al-" in Arabic. The Maltese article becomes ''l-'' before or after a vowel. * ''l-omm'' (the mother) * ''rajna l-Papa'' (we saw the Pope) * ''il-missier'' (the father) The Maltese article assimilates to a following coronal consonant (called ''konsonanti xemxin'' " sun consonants"), namely: * Ċ ''iċ-ċikkulata'' (the chocolate) * D ''id-dar'' (the house) * N ''in-nar'' (the fire) * R ''ir-razzett'' (the farm) * S ''is-serrieq'' (the saw) * T ''it-tifel'' (the boy) * X ''ix-xemx'' (the sun) * Ż ''iż-żarbuna'' (the shoe) * Z ''iz-zalzett'' (the sausage) Maltese ''il-'' is coincidentally identical in pronunciation to one of the Italian masculine articles, ''il''. Consequently, many nouns borrowed from Standard Italian did not change their original article when used in Maltese. Romance vocabulary taken from Sicilian did change where the Sicilian articles ''u'' and ''a'', before a consonant, are used. In spite of its Romance appearance, ''il-'' is related to the Arabic article ''
al- ( ar, ٱلْـ), also Romanized as ''el-'', ''il-,'' and ''l-'' as pronounced in some varieties of Arabic, is the definite article in the Arabic language: a particle (''ḥarf'') whose function is to render the noun on which it is prefixed de ...
''.


Verbs

Verbs show a
triliteral The roots of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages are characterized as a sequence of consonants or "radicals" (hence the term consonantal root). Such abstract consonantal roots are used in the formation of actual words by adding the vowels ...
Semitic pattern, in which a verb is conjugated with
prefixes A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy''. Particu ...
, suffixes, and infixes (for example ''ktibna'', Arabic ''katabna'', Hebrew ''kathabhnu'' (Modern Hebrew: katavnu) "we wrote"). There are two
tenses In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their conjugation patterns. The main tenses found in many languages include the past, present, ...
: present and perfect. The Maltese verb system incorporates Romance verbs and adds Maltese suffixes and prefixes to them, for example; ''iddeċidejna'' "we decided" ← ''(i)ddeċieda'' "decide", a Romance verb + ''-ejna'', a Maltese first person plural perfect marker. An example would be the Semitic root X-M-X, which has something related to the sun, example: ''xemx'' (sun), ''xmux'' (suns), ''xemxi'' (sunny), ''xemxata'' (sunstroke), ''nixxemmex'' (I sunbathe), ''ma xxemmixtx'' (I didn't sunbathe), ''tixmix'' (the act of sunbathing). Maltese also features the stringing of verb suffixes indicating direction of action, for example; ''agħmilhomli'' "make them for me"← ''agħmel'' "make" in the imperative + ''hom'' from ''huma'' "them" + ''li'' suffix indicating first person singular; ''ħasletielu'' "she washed it for him"←''ħaslet'' "she washed" from the verb ''ħasel'' "to wash" + ''ie'' the object + ''lu'' suffix indicating third person masculine singular.


Media

With Malta being a multilingual country, the usage of Maltese in the mass media is shared with other European languages, namely
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
and
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...
. The majority of television stations broadcast from Malta in English or Maltese, although broadcasts from
Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
in Italian are also received on the islands. Similarly, there are more Maltese-language radio programs than English ones broadcast from Malta, but again, as with television, Italian broadcasts are also picked up. Maltese generally receives equal usage in newspaper periodicals to English. By the early 2000s, the use of the Maltese language on the Internet is uncommon, and the number of websites written in Maltese are few. In a survey of Maltese cultural websites conducted in 2004 on behalf of the Maltese Government, 12 of 13 were in English only, while the remaining one was multilingual but did not include Maltese.


Code-switching

The Maltese population, being fluent in both Maltese and English, displays
code-switching In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. Code-switching is different from plurilingualis ...
(referred to as
Maltenglish Maltenglish, also known as Manglish, Minglish, Maltese English, ' or refers to the phenomenon of code-switching between Maltese, a Semitic language derived from late medieval Sicilian Arabic with Romance superstrata, and English, an Indo-Euro ...
) in certain localities and between certain social groups.


See also

*
Languages of Malta Malta has two official languages: Maltese and English. Maltese is the national language. Until 1934, Italian was also an official language in Malta, and in the 19th and 20th centuries there was a linguistic and political debate known as the L ...
* Maltese people


Footnotes


Notes


References

* * * * * * Bugeja, Kaptan Pawlu, ''Kelmet il-Malti'' (Maltese—English, English—Maltese Dictionary). Associated News Group, Floriana. 1999. * * * * * * * ''Further references:'' * (it) Giovan Pietro Francesco Agius de Soldanis,
Della lingua punica presentemente usata da maltesi
', per Generoso Salomoni alla Piazza di S. Ignazio. Si vendono in Malta, 1750 * (it) Antonio Emanuele Caruana,
Sull'origine della Lingua Maltese
', Malta, Tipografia C. Busuttil, 1896 * (it) Giovanni Battista Falzon,
Dizionario Maltese-Italiano-Inglese
', G. Muscat
1845 (1 ed.)
1882 (2 ed.) * (it) Giuseppe Nicola Letard,
Nuova guida alla conversazione italiana, inglese e maltese ad uso delle scuole
', Malta, 1866-75 * (it) Fortunato Panzavecchia,
Grammatica della Lingua Maltese
', M. Weiss, Malta, 1845 * (it) Michele Antonio Vassalli,
Grammatica della lingua Maltese
', 2 ed., Malta, 1827 * (it) Michele Antonio Vassalli,
Lexicon Melitense-Latino-Italum
', Roma, Fulgonius, 1796 * (it) Francesco Vella,
Osservazioni sull'alfabeto maltese
', 1840 * (it) Francesca Morando, ''Il-lingwa Maltija. Origine, storia, comparazione linguistica e aspetti morfologici'', Prefazione di Joseph M. Brincat, Palermo, Edizioni La Zisa, 2017, ISBN 978-88-9911-339-1 * (en) S. Mamo,
English-Maltese Dictionary
', Malta, A. Aquilina, 1885 * (en)
A Short Grammar of the Maltese Language
', Malta, 1845 * (en) C. F. Schlienz,
Views on the Improvement of the Maltese Language
', Malta, 1838 * (en) Francesco Vella,
Maltese Grammar for the Use of the English
', Glaucus Masi, Leghorn, 1831 * (en) Francesco Vella,
Dizionario portatile delle lingue Maltese Italiana, Inglese. pt. 1
', Livorno, 1843 * (en) Joseph Aquilina, ''Teach Yourself Maltese'', English University Press, 1965 * (en) Geoffrey Hull, ''The Malta Language Question: A Case Study in Cultural Imperialism'', Said International, Valletta, 1993 * (mt) Vicenzo Busuttil,
Diziunariu mill Inglis ghall Malti
', 2 parts, N. C. Cortis & Sons, Malta, 1900


External links

{{Authority control Central Semitic languages Languages of Malta Languages of Sicily Subject–object–verb languages Articles containing video clips