Maltese (Maltese: Malti) is the national language of
Malta
Malta and a
co-official language of the country alongside English,[3] while also
serving as an official language of the European Union, the only
Semitic language so distinguished. Maltese is descended from
Siculo-Arabic, the extinct variety of
Arabic
Arabic that developed in Sicily
and was later introduced to Malta, between the end of the ninth
century and the end of the twelfth century AD.[4] Maltese has evolved
independently of Literary
Arabic
Arabic and its varieties into a standardized
language over the past 800 years in a gradual process of
Latinisation.[5][6] Maltese is therefore considered an exceptional
descendant of
Arabic
Arabic that has no diglossic relationship with Standard
Arabic
Arabic or Classical Arabic,[7] and is classified separately from the
Arabic
Arabic macrolanguage.[8] Maltese is also unique among Semitic
languages since its morphology has been deeply influenced by Romance
languages, namely Italian and Sicilian.[9]
The original Semitic base (Siculo-Arabic) comprises around one-third
of the Maltese vocabulary, especially words that denote basic ideas
and the function words,[10] but about half of the vocabulary is
derived from standard Italian and Sicilian;[11] and English words make
up between 6% and 20% of the vocabulary.[12] A recent study shows
that, in terms of basic everyday language, speakers of Maltese are
able to understand less than a third of what is said to them in
Tunisian Arabic,[13] which is related to Siculo-Arabic,[14] whereas
speakers of Tunisian are able to understand about 40% of what is said
to them in Maltese.[15] This reported level of asymmetric
intelligibility is considerably lower than the mutual intelligibility
found between
Arabic
Arabic dialects.[16]
Maltese has always been written in the Latin script, the earliest
surviving example dating from the late Middle Ages.[17] It remains the
only standardized Semitic language written in the Latin script.[18]
Contents
1 History
2 Demographics
3 Classification
4 Phonology
4.1 Consonants
4.2 Vowels
4.3 Stress
4.4 Historical phonology
5 Orthography
5.1 Alphabet
5.2 Written Maltese
5.3 Sample
6 Vocabulary
6.1 Romance
6.2 Siculo-Arabic
6.3 English
7 Grammar
7.1 Adjectives and adverbs
7.2 Nouns
7.3 Article
7.4 Verbs
8 Dialects
9 Media
10 Code-switching
11 See also
12 Notes
13 References
14 External links
History
Il-Kantilena
Il-Kantilena by Pietru Caxaro, the oldest text in Maltese language,
15th century
Lexicon di Mikiel Anton Vassalli, 1796
E. B. Vella giving adult learning classes in the Maltese Language in
Mosta, 1935
Association of Maltese Writers (Ghaqda tal-Kittieba tal-Malti), 1924
See also: History of Malta
The origins of the
Maltese language
Maltese language are attributed to the arrival,
early in the eleventh century, of settlers from neighbouring Sicily,
where
Siculo-Arabic was spoken, following the Fatimid Caliphate's
conquest of the island at the end of the ninth century.[19] This claim
has been corroborated by genetic studies, which show that contemporary
Maltese people
Maltese people share common ancestry with Sicilians and Calabrians,
with little genetic input from North Africa and the Levant.[20][21]
The Norman conquest in 1090, 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.[19] In contrast to
Sicily
Sicily (where
Siculo-Arabic became
extinct, replaced by Sicilian), the vernacular in
Malta
Malta continued to
develop alongside Italian, eventually replacing it as official
language in 1934 (alongside English).[19]
The first written reference to the
Maltese language
Maltese language is in a will of
1436, where it is called lingua maltensi. The oldest known document in
Maltese is "Il Cantilena" (Xidew il-Qada) by Pietru Caxaro. It dates
from the 15th century.[22]
The earliest known Maltese dictionary was a sixteenth-century
manuscript entitled "Maltese-Italiano"; it was included in the
Biblioteca Maltese of Mifsud in 1764, but is now lost.[23] A list of
Maltese words was included in both the Thesaurus Polyglottus (1603)
and Propugnaculum Europae (1606) of Hieronymus Megiser, who had
visited
Malta
Malta in 1588–89; Domenico Magri gave the etymologies of
some Maltese words in his Hierolexicon, sive sacrum dictionarium
(1677).[22] An early manuscript dictionary, Dizionario Italiano e
Maltese, was discovered in the
Biblioteca Vallicelliana in Rome in the
1980s, together with a grammar, the Regole per la Lingua Maltese,
attributed to a French Knight named Thezan.[23][24] The first
systematic lexicon is that of Giovanni Pietro Francesco Agius de
Soldanis, who also wrote the first systematic grammar of the language
and proposed a standard orthography.[23]
Demographics
In 1975, there were an estimated 371,000 Maltese speakers, of whom
300,000 resided in Malta.[1] Thousands of Maltese emigrants in
Australia, Canada, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States
still speak the language,[1] and in 2007 it was reported that Maltese
is still spoken by descendants of Maltese immigrants in Tunisia.[25]
Indeed, nowadays 520,000 people across the world speak Maltese, while
Malta
Malta has a population of only 445,426 people, which means that the
remaining figure of 76,574 people can be attributed to the Maltese
diaspora. [26]
Classification
Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic, a Semitic language within the
Afroasiatic family,[27] that in the course of its history 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 loanwords.[11] 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.[28]
The
Maltese language
Maltese language has historically been classified in various ways,
with some claiming that the ancient
Punic language (another Semitic
language) was its origin instead of Siculo-Arabic,[22][29][30] while
others believed the language to be one of the Berber languages
(another family within Afroasiatic),[22] and under the Fascist Kingdom
of Italy, it was classified as regional Italian.[31]
Phonology
Consonants
Consonant phonemes[32][33]
Bilabial
Labio-
dental
Dental
Alveolar
Palatal
Velar
Pharyngeal
Glottal
Nasal
m
n
Plosive
p
b
t
d
k
ɡ
ʔ
Affricate
t͡s
d͡z
t͡ʃ
d͡ʒ
Fricative
f
v
s
z
ʃ
ʒ
ħ
Trill
r
Approximant
l
j
w
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. /niktbu/ is realised [ˈniɡdbu] "we
write". Maltese has final-obstruent devoicing of voiced obstruents and
voiceless stops have no audible release, making voiceless–voiced
pairs phonetically indistinguishable.[34]
Gemination is distinctive word-medially and word-finally in Maltese.
The distinction is most rigid intervocalically after a stressed vowel.
Stressed, word-final closed syllables with short vowels end in a long
consonant, and those with a long vowel in a single consonant; the only
exception is where historic *ʕ and *ɣ meant the compensatory
lengthening of the succeeding vowel. Some speakers have lost length
distinction in clusters.[35]
The two nasals /m/ and /n/ assimilate for place of articulation in
clusters.[36] /t/ and /d/ are usually dental, whereas /t͡s d͡z s z n
r l/ are all alveolar. /t͡s d͡z/ are found mostly in words of
Italian origin, retaining length (if not word-initial).[37] /d͡z/ and
/ʒ/ are only found in loanwords, e.g. /ɡad͡zd͡zɛtta/ "newspaper"
and /tɛlɛˈviʒin/ "television".[38] The pharyngeal fricative /ħ/
is velar ([x]) or glottal ([h]) for some speakers.[39]
Vowels
Maltese has five short vowels, /ɐ ɛ i ɔ ʊ/, written a e i o u; six
long vowels, /ɐː ɛː iː ɪː ɔː ʊː/, written a e ie i o u; and
seven diphthongs: /ɐɪ ɛɪ/ both written għi, /ɐʊ ɔʊ/ both
written għu, and /ɛʊ ɪʊ ɔɪ/ written ew iw oj.[40]
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.)
When two syllables are equally heavy, the penultimate takes the
stress, but otherwise the heavier syllable does, e.g. bajjad
[ˈbɐj.jɐt] 'he painted' vs bajjad [bɐj.ˈjɐːt] 'a painter'.
Historical phonology
Many
Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic consonants underwent mergers and modifications
in Maltese:
Classical Arabic
ت /t/
ث /θ/
ط /tˤ/
د /d/
ض /dˤ/
ذ /ð/
ظ /ðˤ/
س /s/
ص /sˤ/
ه /h/
ح /ħ/
خ /χ/
ع /ʕ/
غ /ɣ/
ق /q/
Maltese
/t/
/d/
/s/
/ħ/
/Vː/
/ʔ~k/
Orthography
Alphabet
Main articles:
Maltese alphabet
Maltese alphabet and Maltese braille
The modern system of Maltese orthography was introduced in 1924.[41]
Below is the Maltese alphabet, with IPA symbols and approximate
English pronunciation:
Letter
Name
Maltese example
IPA
Approximate English pronunciation
A a
a
anġlu (angel)
ɐ
similar to 'u' in nut in RP
B b
be
ballun (ball)
b
bar, but at the end of a word it is devoiced to [p].
Ċ ċ
ċe
ċavetta (key)
t͡ʃ
church (note: undotted 'c' has been replaced by 'k', so when 'c' does
appear, it is to be spoken the same way as 'ċ')
D d
de
dar (home)
d
day, but at the end of a word it is devoiced to [t].
E e
e
envelopp (envelope)
ɛ
end
F f
effe
fjura (flower)
f
far
Ġ ġ
ġe
ġelat (ice cream)
d͡ʒ
gem, but at the end of a word it is devoiced to [tʃ].
G g
ge
gallettina (biscuit)
ɡ
game, but at the end of a word it is devoiced to [k].
GĦ għ
ajn
għasfur (bird)
ˤː, ħː
has the effect of lengthening and pharyngealizing associated vowels
(għi and għu are [aˤj] and [oˤw]). When found at the end of a word
or immediately before 'h' it has the sound of a double 'ħ' (see
below).
H h
akka
hu (he)
not pronounced unless it is at the end of a word, in which case it has
the sound of 'ħ'.
Ħ ħ
ħe
ħanut (shop)
ħ
no English equivalent; sounds similar to /h/ but is articulated with a
lowered larynx.
I i
i
ikel (food)
ɪ
bit
IE ie
ie
ieqaf (stop)
iɛ, iː
no English equivalent; sounds similar to /i/, as in yield, but opened
up slightly towards /ɛ/
J j
je
jum (day)
j
yard
K k
ke
kelb (dog)
k
kettle
L l
elle
libsa (dress)
l
line
M m
emme
mara (woman)
m
march
N n
enne
nanna (granny)
n
next
O o
o
ors (bear)
ɔ
like 'aw' in law, but shorter.
P p
pe
paġna (page, sheet)
p
part
Q q
qe
qattus (cat)
ʔ
glottal stop, found in the Cockney English pronunciation of "bottle"
or the phrase "uh-oh" /ʔʌʔoʊ/.
R r
erre
re (king)
r
road
S s
esse
sliem (peace)
s
sand
T t
te
tieqa (window)
t
tired
U u
u
uviera (egg cup)
ʊ
put
V v
ve
vjola (violet)
v
vast, but at the end of a word it is devoiced to [f].
W w
we
widna (ear)
w
west
X x
exxe
xadina (monkey)
ʃ / ʒ
shade, sometimes as measure; when doubled the sound is elongated, as
in "Cash shin" vs. "Cash in".
Z z
ze
zalza (sauce)
t͡s / d͡z
pizza
Ż ż
że
żraben (shoes)
z
maze, but at the end of a word it is devoiced to [s].
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 (Italian:
società, "society").
The official rules governing the structure of the
Maltese language
Maltese language are
found in the official guidebook issued by the Akkademja tal-Malti, the
Academy of the Maltese language, which is named Tagħrif fuq il-Kitba
Maltija, that is, Knowledge on Writing in Maltese. 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.[42] All these works were included in a revised and
expanded guidebook published in 1996.[citation needed]
The
National Council for the Maltese Language (KNM) is the main
regulator of the
Maltese language
Maltese language (see Maltese Language Act, below)
and not the Akkademja tal-Malti. However, these orthography rules are
still valid and official.
Written Maltese
Since Maltese evolved after the Italo-Normans ended the 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, both French and
Italian were used for official documents and correspondence. During
the British colonial period, the use of English was encouraged through
education, with Italian regarded as the next-most important language.
In 1934, Maltese was recognised as an official language. In the late
eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century, philologists
and academics such as
Mikiel Anton Vassalli
Mikiel Anton Vassalli made a concerted effort to
standardize written Maltese. Many examples of written Maltese exist
from before this period, always in the Latin alphabet, Il Cantilena
being the earliest example of written Maltese.
Sample
From the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe:
English
Maltese
The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity,
freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human
rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These
values are common to the Member States in a society in which
pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and
equality between women and men prevail.
L-Unjoni hija mibnija fuq il-valuri ta' rispett għad-dinjità
tal-bniedem, ta' libertà, ta' demokrazija, ta' ugwaljanza, ta'
l-istat tad-dritt u tar-rispett għad-drittijiet tal-bniedem, inklużi
d-drittijiet ta' persuni li jagħmlu parti minn minoranzi. Dawn
il-valuri huma komuni għall-Istati Membri f'soċjetà karatterizzata
mill-pluraliżmu, in-non-diskriminazzjoni, it-tolleranza,
il-ġustizzja, is-solidarjetà u l-ugwaljanza bejn in-nisa u
l-irġiel.
Vocabulary
Although the original vocabulary of the language was Siculo-Arabic, it
has incorporated a large number of borrowings from Romance sources of
influence (Sicilian, Italian, and French), and more recently Germanic
ones (from English).[43]
The historical source of modern Maltese vocabulary is 52%
Italian/Sicilian, 32% Siculo-Arabic, and 6% English, with some of the
remainder being French.[11][44] Today, most function words are
Semitic. In this way, it is similar to English, which is a Germanic
language that had large influence from Norman French. As a result of
this, Romance language-speakers may easily be able to comprehend more
complex 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 simple sentence such as "Ir-raġel qiegħed fid-dar"
(The man is in the house), which would be easily understood by any
Arabic
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,[11] although other sources claim from
as low as 40%,[12] to as high as 55%.[45] These vocabularies tend to
deal with more complicated concepts. They are mostly derived from
Sicilian and thus exhibit Sicilian phonetic characteristics, such as
/u/ in place of /o/, and /i/ in place of /e/ (e.g. tiatru not teatro
and fidi not fede). Also, as with Old Sicilian, /ʃ/ (English 'sh') is
written 'x' and this produces spellings such as: ambaxxata
/ambaʃːaːta/ ('embassy'), xena /ʃeːna/ ('scene' cf. Italian
ambasciata, scena).
Maltese
Sicilian
Italian
English
skola
scola
scuola
school
gvern
cuvernu
governo
government
repubblika
ripùbblica
repubblica
republic
re
re
re
king (Germanic)
natura
natura
natura
nature
pulizija
pulizzìa
polizia
police
ċentru
centru
centro
centre
teatru
tiatru
teatro
theatre
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,[11] 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.
English words of Germanic origin are generally preserved relatively
unchanged.
Siculo-Arabic
Siculo-Arabic is the ancestor of the Maltese language,[11] and
supplies between 32%[11] and 40%[12] of the language's vocabulary.
Maltese
Siculo-Arabic
(in Sicilian)
Arabic
English
bebbuxu
babbaluciu
ببوش (bəbboušu)
(Moroccan)
snail
ġiebja
gebbia
جب (jabb)
cistern
ġunġlien
giuggiulena
جنجلان (junjulān)
sesame seed
saqqajja
saia
ساقية (sāqiyyah)
canal
kenur
tanura
تنور (tannūr)
oven
żaffran
zaffarana
زعفران (zaʿfarān)
saffron
zahar
zagara
زهرة (zahrah)
blossom
żbib
zibbibbu
زبيب (zabīb)
raisins
zokk
zuccu
ساق (sāq)
tree trunk
tebut
tabbutu
تابوت (tābūt)
coffin
kapunata
caponata
(non-
Arabic
Arabic origin)
caponata
qassata
cassata
savoury pastry pie
Żammit (2000) found that 40% of a sample of 1,820 Quranic Arabic
roots were found in Maltese, a lower percentage than found in Moroccan
(58%) and
Lebanese Arabic
Lebanese Arabic (72%).[46] 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
Arabic origin,[11] although
another source claims 40%.[12][47] Usually, words expressing basic
concepts and ideas, such as raġel (man), mara (woman), tifel (boy),
dar (house), xemx (sun), sajf (summer), are of
Arabic
Arabic origin.
Moreover, belles lettres in Maltese tend to aim mainly at diction
belonging to this group.[48]
The
Maltese language
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 /d/, /ð/, and
/dˤ/ all merged into Maltese /d/. The vowels, however, separated from
the three in
Arabic
Arabic (/a i u/) to five, as is more typical of other
European languages (/a ɛ i o u/). Some unstressed short vowels have
been elided. The common
Arabic
Arabic greeting as salāmu 'alaykum is cognate
with is-sliem għalikom in Maltese (lit. the peace for you, peace be
with you), as are similar greetings in other
Semitic languages
Semitic languages (e.g.
shalom ʿalekhem in Hebrew).
Since the attested vocabulary of
Siculo-Arabic is limited, the
following table compares cognates in Maltese and some other varieties
of
Arabic
Arabic (all forms are written phonetically, as in the source):[49]
Maltese
Cairene
Damascene
Iraqi
(Jewish Baghdad)
Negev
(bedouin)
Yemenite
(Sanaani)
Moroccan
Modern Standard Arabic
English
qalb
'alb
'aleb
qalb
galb
galb
qəlb
قلب (qalb)
heart
waqt
wa't
wa'et
—
wagt
wagt
wʌqt
وقت (waqt)
time
qamar
'amar
'amar
qamaɣ
gumar
gamar
qəmr
قمر (qamar)
moon
kelb
kalb
kaleb
kalb
čalb
kalb
kəlb
كلب (kalb)
dog
English
It is estimated that English loanwords, which are becoming more
commonplace, make up 20% of the Maltese vocabulary,[12] although other
sources claim amounts as low as 6%.[11] 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.[11] 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:
Maltese
English
futbol
football
baskitbol
basketball
klabb
club
friġġ
fridge
Note "fridge", which is a slang term derived from "refrigerator", a
Latinate word which might be expected to be rendered as rifriġeratori
(Italian uses a different word: frigorifero).
Grammar
Maltese grammar is fundamentally derived from Siculo-Arabic, although
Romance and English noun pluralization patterns are also used on
borrowed words.
Adjectives and adverbs
Adjectives follow nouns. There are no separately formed native
adverbs, 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 pluralized 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
Arabic -at and Hebrew -ot/-oth) or -in (cf.
Arabic
Arabic -īn and Hebrew
-im). If irregular, they fall in the pluralis fractus category, in
which a word is pluralized by internal vowel changes: ktieb, kotba "
book", "books"; raġel, irġiel "man", "men".
Words of Romance origin are usually pluralized in two manners:
addition of -i or -jiet. For example, lingwa, lingwi "languages", from
Sicilian lingua, lingui.
Words of English origin are pluralized by adding either an "-s" or
"-jiet", for example, friġġ, friġis from the word fridge. Some
words can be pluralized 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.
Article
The proclitic il- is the definite article, 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-żarbun (the shoe)
Z iz-zalzett (the sausage)
Maltese il- is coincidentally identical in pronunciation to the one of
the Italian masculine articles, il, which is also l’ before, but not
after, a vowel. 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
Arabic article al-.[citation
needed]
Verbs
Verbs show a triliteral Semitic pattern, in which a verb is conjugated
with prefixes, suffixes, and infixes (for example ktibna, Arabic
katabna, Hebrew kathabhnu (Modern Hebrew: katavnu) "we wrote"). There
are two tenses: 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).
Dialects
Main articles: Żejtun dialect, Qormi dialect, and Maltralian
Urban varieties of Maltese are closer to Standard Maltese than rural
varieties,[48] which have some characteristics that distinguish them
from Standard Maltese. They tend to show some archaic features[48]
such as the realization of kh and gh and the imāla of
Arabic
Arabic ā into
ē (or ī especially in Gozo)-considered archaic because they are
reminiscent of 15th century transcriptions of this sound.[48] Another
archaic feature is the realization of Standard Maltese ā as ō in
rural dialects.[48] There is also a tendency to diphthongize simple
vowels, e.g., ū becomes eo or eu.[48] Rural dialects also tend to
employ more Semitic roots and broken plurals than Standard
Maltese.[48] In general, rural Maltese is less distant from its
Siculo-Arabic ancestor than Standard Maltese.[48]
Media
Main article: Language in the Media in Malta
With
Malta
Malta being a multilingual country, the usage of Maltese in the
mass media is shared with other European languages, namely English and
Italian. The majority of television stations broadcast from
Malta
Malta in
English or Maltese, although broadcasts from
Italy
Italy 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 early 2000s, the use of the
Maltese language
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.[50]
Code-switching
The Maltese population, being fluent in both Maltese and English,
displays code-switching (referred to as Maltenglish) in certain
localities and between certain social groups.[11]
See also
Malta
Malta portal
Languages portal
Languages of Malta
Maltese people
Notes
^ a b c Maltese at
Ethnologue
Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds.
(2017). "Maltese".
Glottolog
Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute
for the Science of Human History.
^ "Constitution of Malta". Retrieved 3 December 2017.
^ So who are the ‘real’ Maltese. The kind of
Arabic
Arabic used in the
Maltese language
Maltese language is most likely derived from the language spoken by
those that repopulated the island from
Sicily
Sicily in the early second
millennium; it is known as Siculo-Arab. The Maltese are mostly
descendants of these people.
^ Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander, 1997 (1997). Maltese. Routledge.
p. xiii. ISBN 0-415-02243-6. In fact, Maltese displays some
areal traits typical of Maghrebine Arabic, although over the past 800
years of independent evolution it has drifted apart from Tunisian
Arabic
^ Brincat, 2005. Maltese - an unusual formula. Originally Maltese was
an
Arabic
Arabic dialect but it was immediately exposed to Latinisation
because the Normans conquered the islands in 1090, while
Christianisation, which was complete by 1250, cut off the dialect from
contact with Classical Arabic. Consequently Maltese developed on its
own, slowly but steadily absorbing new words from Sicilian and Italian
according to the needs of the developing community.
^ Robert D Hoberman (2007). Morphologies of Asia and Africa , Alan S.
Kaye (Ed.), Chapter 13: Maltese Morphology. Eisenbrown. Maltese is the
chief exception: Classical or
Standard Arabic
Standard Arabic is irrelevant in the
Maltese linguistic community and there is no diglossia.
^ "ISO 639 Code Tables".
^ Robert D Hoberman (2007). Morphologies of Asia and Africa , Alan S.
Kaye (Ed.), Chapter 13: Maltese Morphology. Eisenbrown. yet it is in
its morphology that Maltese also shows the most elaborate and deeply
embedded influence from the Romance languages, Sicilian and Italian,
with which it has long been in intimate contact….As a result Maltese
is unique and different from
Arabic
Arabic and other Semitic languages.
^ Brincat, 2005. Maltese - an unusual formula. An analysis of the
etymology of the 41,000 words in Aquilina's Maltese-English Dictionary
shows that 32.41% are of
Arabic
Arabic origin, 52.46% are from Sicilian and
Italian, and 6.12% are from English. Although nowadays we know that
all languages are mixed to varying degrees, this is quite an unusual
formula. However, the words derived from
Arabic
Arabic are more frequent
because they denote the basic ideas and include the function
words.
^ a b c d e f g h i j k Brincat (2005).
^ a b c d e "BBC - Languages". Retrieved 12 January 2017.
^ "Mutual Intelligibility of Spoken Maltese,
Libyan Arabic
Libyan Arabic and
Tunisian Arabic
Tunisian Arabic Functionally Tested: A Pilot Study". p. 1.
Retrieved 23 September 2017. To summarise our findings, we might
observe that when it comes to the most basic everyday language, as
reflected in our data sets, speakers of Maltese are able to understand
less than a third of what is being said to them in either Tunisian or
Benghazi Libyan Arabic.
^ Borg, Albert J.; Azzopardi-Alexander, Marie (1997). Maltese.
Routledge. ISBN 0-415-02243-6.
^ "Mutual Intelligibility of Spoken Maltese,
Libyan Arabic
Libyan Arabic and
Tunisian Arabic
Tunisian Arabic Functionally Tested: A Pilot Study". p. 1.
Retrieved 23 September 2017. Speakers of Tunisian and Libyan Arabic
are able to understand about 40% of what is said to them in
Maltese.
^ "Mutual Intelligibility of Spoken Maltese,
Libyan Arabic
Libyan Arabic and
Tunisian Arabic
Tunisian Arabic Functionally Tested: A Pilot Study". p. 1.
Retrieved 23 September 2017. In comparison, speakers of Libyan Arabic
and speakers of
Tunisian Arabic
Tunisian Arabic understand about two-thirds of what is
being said to them.
^ The Cantilena.
^ Il-Kunsill Nazzjonali tal-Ilsien Malti. Fundamentally, Maltese is a
Semitic tongue, the same as Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Phoenician,
Carthaginian and Ethiopian. However, unlike other Semitic languages,
Maltese is written in the Latin alphabet, but with the addition of
special characters to accommodate certain Semitic sounds. Nowadays,
however, there is much in the
Maltese language
Maltese language today that is not
Semitic, due to the immeasurable Romantic influence from our
succession of (Southern) European rulers through the ages.
^ a b c "MED Magazine". 9 May 2008. Archived from the original on 9
May 2008. Retrieved 12 January 2017.
^ A.E. Felice; "The Genetic Origin of Contemporary Maltese," The
Sunday Times of Malta,5 August 2007.
^ C. Capelli, N. Redhead, N. Novelletto, L. Terrenato, P. Malaspina,
Z. Poulli, G. Lefranc, A. Megarbane, V. Delague, V. Romano, F. Cali,
V.F. Pascali, M. Fellous, A.E. Felice, and D.B. Goldstein; "Population
Structure in the Mediterranean Basin: A Y Chromosome Perspective,"
Annals of Human Genetics, 69, 1-20, 2005. Last visited August 8, 2007.
^ a b c d L-Akkademja tal-Malti. "The Maltese Language Academy".
Archived from the original on 2015-09-23.
^ a b c Dionisius A. Agius (1990). Review article: Al-Miklem Malti: A
Contribution to
Arabic
Arabic Lexical Dialectology. Bulletin (British Society
for Middle Eastern Studies) 17 (2): 171-180. (subscription required)
^ Arnold Cassola (2012). Italo-Maltese Relations (ca. 1150 -1936):
People, Culture, Literature, Language Archived February 22, 2014, at
the Wayback Machine.. Mediterranean Review 5 (1): 1–20.
^ "
Malta
Malta Ħanina: the lingering Maltese presence in Tunisia". The
Sunday Times. Times of Malta. 11 February 2007.
pp. 54–55.
^ Census 2011. National Statistics Office, Malta
^ C.F. & F.M. Voegelin. 1977. Classification and Index of the
World's Languages. Elsevier.
Merritt Ruhlen. 1991. A Guide to the World's Languages, Volume 1:
Classification. Stanford.
David Dalby. 2000. The Linguasphere Register of the World's Languages
and Speech Communities. Linguasphere Observatory.
Gordon, Raymond G., Jr., ed. 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World.
15th ed. Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Alan S. Kaye & Judith Rosenhouse. 1997. "
Arabic
Arabic Dialects and
Maltese", The Semitic Languages. Ed. Robert Hetzron. Routledge. Pages
263–311.
^ Borg (1997).
^ Vella (2004), p. 263.
^ "Punic language". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia
Britannica Inc. 2013. Retrieved 25 June 2013.
^ Sheehan, Sean (12 January 2017). "Malta". Marshall Cavendish.
Retrieved 12 January 2017 – via Google Books.
^ Hume (1996), p. 165.
^ Borg (1997), p. 248.
^ Borg (1997), pp. 249–250.
^ Borg (1997), pp. 251–252.
^ Borg (1997), p. 255.
^ Borg (1997), p. 254.
^ Borg (1997), p. 247.
^ Borg (1997), p. 260.
^ Borg & Azzopardi-Alexander (1997).
^ Auroux, Sylvain (2000). History of the language sciences : an
international handbook on the evolution of the study of language from
the beginnings to the present. Berlin: New York : Walter de
Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-011103-9.
^ Mifsud, Manwel (1995). Loan Verbs in Maltese: A Descriptive and
Comparative Study. Brill Publishers. p. 31.
ISBN 90-04-10091-1.
^ Friggieri (1994), p. 59.
^ About Malta[permanent dead link]; GTS; retrieved on 2008-02-24
^
http://google.com/search?q=cache:DMnjEhi4EicJ:www.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/Englisches_Seminar/Lehrstuehle/LS_Kortmann/FoL/index_html/2008-03-17.8198766048+Maltese+55%25+Romance&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&client=safari[dead
link]
^ Żammit (2000), pp. 241–245.
^ Compare with approx. 25–33% of Old English or Germanic words in
Modern English.
^ a b c d e f g h Isserlin. Studies in Islamic History and
Civilization. BRILL 1986, ISBN 965-264-014-X
^ Alan S. Kaye & Judith Rosenhouse. 1997. "
Arabic
Arabic Dialects and
Maltese", The Semitic Languages. Routledge. Pp. 263–311.
^ "Country report for MINERVA Plus in 2005". Multilingual issues in
Malta. Retrieved 2008-02-24.
References
Aquilina, Joseph (1965). Teach Yourself Maltese. English University
Press.
Azzopardi, C. (2007). Gwida għall-Ortografija. Malta: Klabb Kotba
Maltin.
Borg, Alexander (1997). "Maltese Phonology". In Kaye, Alan S.
Phonologies of Asia and Africa. 1. Eisenbrauns. pp. 245–285.
ISBN 9781575060194.
Borg, Albert J.; Azzopardi-Alexander, Marie (1997). Maltese.
Routledge. ISBN 0-415-02243-6.
Brincat, Joseph M. (2005). "Maltese – an unusual formula" (27). MED
Magazine. Archived from the original on 5 September 2005. Retrieved 22
February 2008.
Bugeja, Kaptan Pawlu, Kelmet il-Malti (Maltese—English,
English—Maltese Dictionary). Associated News Group, Floriana. 1999.
Friggieri, Oliver (1994). "Main Trends in the History of Maltese
Literature". Neohelicon. 21 (2): 59–69.
doi:10.1007/BF02093244.
Hume, Elizabeth (1996). "Coronal Consonant, Front Vowel Parallels in
Maltese". Natural Language & Linguistic Theory. 14 (1): 163–203.
doi:10.1007/bf00133405.
Mifsud, M.; A. J. Borg (1997). Fuq l-għatba tal-Malti. Strasbourg:
Council of Europe.
Vassalli, Michelantonio (1827). Grammatica della lingua Maltese.
Vella, Alexandra (2004). "Language contact and Maltese intonation:
Some parallels with other language varieties". In Kurt Braunmüller
and Gisella Ferraresi. Aspects of Multilingualism in European Language
History. Hamburg Studies on Muliculturalism. John Benjamins Publishing
Company. p. 263. ISBN 90-272-1922-2.
Żammit, Martin (2000). "
Arabic
Arabic and Maltese Cognate Roots". In Mifsud,
Manwel. Proceedings of the Third International Conference of Aida.
Malta: Association Internationale de Dialectologie Arabe.
pp. 241–245. ISBN 99932-0-044-1.
External links
Maltese edition of, the free encyclopedia
Wikivoyage has a phrasebook for Maltese.
For a list of words relating to Maltese language, see the Maltese
language category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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Zay
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n-group
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^ "Documentation for ISO 639 ident
