The original Arabic base comprises around one-third of the Maltese vocabulary, especially words that denote basic ideas and thefunction 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 2016 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 inTunisian Arabic andLibyan Arabic,[13] which are Maghrebi Arabic dialects related to Siculo-Arabic,[14] whereas speakers of Tunisian Arabic and Libyan Arabic are able to understand about 40% of what is said to them in Maltese.[15] This reported level ofasymmetric intelligibility is considerably lower than themutual intelligibility found between mainstream varieties of Arabic.[16]
Maltese has always been written in theLatin script, the earliest surviving example dating from thelate Middle Ages.[17] It is the only standardised Semitic language written exclusively in the Latin script.[18]
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 theFatimid Caliphate's conquest of the island at the end of the 9th century.[19]
TheNorman conquest in 1091, followed by theexpulsion 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, where Siculo-Arabic became extinct and was replaced bySicilian, the vernacular in 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 is in a will of 1436, where it is calledlingua maltensi. The oldest known document in Maltese,Il-Kantilena (Xidew il-Qada) byPietru Caxaro, dates from the 15th century.[20]
The earliest known Maltese dictionary was a 16th-century manuscript entitled "Maltese-Italiano"; it was included in theBiblioteca Maltese of Mifsud in 1764, but is now lost.[21] A list of Maltese words was included in both theThesaurus Polyglottus (1603) andPropugnaculum Europae (1606) ofHieronymus Megiser, who had visited Malta in 1588–1589;Domenico Magri gave the etymologies of some Maltese words in hisHierolexicon, sive sacrum dictionarium (1677).[20]
An early manuscript dictionary,Dizionario Italiano e Maltese, was discovered in theBiblioteca Vallicelliana in Rome in the 1980s, together with a grammar, theRegole per la Lingua Maltese, attributed to a French knight named Thezan.[21][22] The first systematic lexicon is that ofGiovanni Pietro Francesco Agius de Soldanis, who also wrote the first systematic grammar of the language and proposed a standardorthography.[21]
The language declined heavily under theBritish administration of Malta, declining in use compared to English. Following the independence of Malta, language reforms under theDom Mintoff government saw the language gain an increase in use, and today is used regularly in Malta.[23]
This sectionappears to contradict another section of this article. Please see thetalk page for more information.(February 2024)
Ethnologue reports a total of 530,000 Maltese speakers: 450,000 in Malta and 79,000 in thediaspora. Most speakers also use English,[1] usually the local dialect known asMaltese English.
The largest diaspora community of Maltese speakers isin Australia, with 36,000 speakers reported in 2006 (down from 45,000 in 1996, and expected to decline further).[24]
The Maltese linguistic community inTunisia 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.[25]
Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic, a Semitic language within theAfroasiatic family.[26] In the course of itshistory, Maltese has been influenced by Sicilian, Italian, to a lesser extent byNorman, and, more recently, English. Today, the core vocabulary (including both the most commonly used vocabulary andfunction words) is Semitic, with a large number ofloanwords.[11] Due to 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.[27]
Maltese has historically been classified in various ways, with some arguing that it was derived from ancientPunic (another Semitic language) instead of Siculo-Arabic,[20][28][29] and others arguing it is one of theBerber languages (another language family within Afroasiatic).[20] Implausibly,Fascist Italy classified it asregional Italian.[30]
Urban varieties of Maltese are closer to Standard Maltese than rural varieties,[31] which have some characteristics that distinguish them from Standard Maltese.
They tend to show some archaic features[31] such as the realisation of⟨kh⟩ and⟨gh⟩ and theimāla of Arabic ā into ē (or ī especially in Gozo), considered archaic because they are reminiscent of 15th-century transcriptions of this sound.[31] Another archaic feature is the realisation of Standard Maltese ā as ō in rural dialects.[31]There is also a tendency to diphthongise simple vowels, e.g., ū becomes eo or eu.[31]Rural dialects also tend to employ more Semitic roots andbroken plurals than Standard Maltese.[31] In general, rural Maltese is less distant from its Siculo-Arabic ancestor than is Standard Maltese.[31]
Vassalli'sStorja tas-Sultân Ċiru (1831), is an example of Maltese orthography in the 19th century, before the later standardisation introduced in 1924. Note the similarities with the various varieties of romanised Arabic.
Voiceless stops are only lightly aspirated and voiced stops are fully voiced. Voicing is carried over from the last segment inobstruentclusters; thus, two- and three-obstruent clusters are either voiceless or voiced throughout, e.g./niktbu/ is realised[ˈniɡdbu] "we write" (similar assimilation phenomena occur in languages like French or Czech). Maltese hasfinal-obstruent devoicing of voiced obstruents and word-final voiceless stops haveno audible release, making voiceless–voiced pairs phonetically indistinguishable in word-final position.[34]
Gemination is distinctive word-medially and word-finally in Maltese. The distinction is most rigidintervocalically after a stressed vowel. Stressed, word-finalclosed 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 thecompensatory lengthening of the succeeding vowel. Some speakers have lost length distinction in clusters.[35]
The two nasals/m/ and/n/ assimilate forplace of articulation in clusters.[36]/t/ and/d/ are usuallydental, whereas/t͡sd͡zsznrl/ are all alveolar./t͡sd͡z/ 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./ɡɐdˈd͡zɛt.tɐ/gazzetta "newspaper" and/tɛ.lɛˈvɪ.ʒɪn/televixin "television".[38] The pharyngeal fricative/ħ/ is velar ([x]), uvular ([χ]), or glottal ([h]) for some speakers.[39]
Maltese has five short vowels,/ɐɛɪɔʊ/, writtena e i o u; six long vowels,/ɐːɛːɪːiːɔːʊː/, writtena, e, ie, i, o, u, all of which (with the exception ofie/ɪː/) can be known to represent long vowels in writing only if they are followed by an orthographicgħ orh (otherwise, one needs to know the pronunciation; e.g.nar (fire) is pronounced/nɐːr/); and sevendiphthongs,/ɐɪɐʊɛɪɛʊɪʊɔɪɔʊ/, writtenaj orgħi, aw orgħu, ej orgħi, ew, iw, oj, andow orgħu.[6]
The Maltese consonant system has undergone several changes when compared to Classical Arabic:[40]
Classical Arabic
Letter
ت
ط
ث
د
ض
ذ
ظ
س
ص
ح
خ
ع
غ
ء
ق
ه
Romanisation
t
ṭ
ṯ
d
ḍ
ḏ
ẓ
s
ṣ
ḥ
ẖ
ʿ
ġ
ʾ
q
h
Pronunciation
/t/
/tˤ/
/θ/
/d/
/dˤ/
/ð/
/ðˤ/
/s/
/sˤ/
/ħ/
/x~χ/
/ʕ/
/ɣ~ʁ/
/ʔ/
/q/
/h/
Maltese
Letter
T t
D d
S s
Ħ ħ
Għ għ
Q q
H h
Pronunciation
/t/
/d/
/s/
/ħ/
/ʕ/
/ʔ/
While many of these changes (chiefly the merger ofemphatic consonants with their non-pharyngealized counterparts) are the result of European influence, others (such as the merger ofق/q/ into/ʔ/) are found in othervarieties of Arabic, and may be either independent developments or features of theSicilian Arabic dialect which Maltese descends from.
The modern system of Maltese orthography was introduced in 1924.[41] Below is the Maltese alphabet, withIPA symbols and approximate English pronunciation:
Letter
Name
IPA (letter name)
Maltese example
IPA (orthographically representing)
Approximate English pronunciation
A a
a
aː
aħmar'red'
ɐ,aː,æː
Similar to 'u' in nut inRP;[aː] similar to father in Irish English;[æː] similar to cat in American English. In some dialects, it may be[ɒː] in certain locations as in what in some American English dialects.
B b
be
beː
baħar'sea'
b
bar, but at the end of a word, it is devoiced to[p].
Ċ ċ
ċe
t͡ʃeː
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
deː
dar'home'
d
day, but at the end of a word, it is devoiced to[t].
E e
e
eː
erbgħa'four'
eː,ɛ,øː,ə
[e:] somewhat like face in Northern England English;[ɛ]end.
When short, it is often changed to[øː,œ] when following, and more often when followed by, 'w'.When at the end of a word in an unstressed syllable, it is pronounced as schwa[ə,Vᵊ], as in comma.
F f
effe
ɛf(ː)ᵊ
faħam'coal'
f
far
Ġ ġ
ġe
d͡ʒøː
ġar'neighbour'
d͡ʒ
gem, but at the end of a word, it is devoiced to[tʃ].
G g
ge
geː
gawwija'seagull'
ɡ
game, but at the end of a word, it is devoiced to[k].
Has the effect of lengthening andpharyngealising associated vowels (għi andgħu are[i̞(ˤ)j] (may be transcribed as[ə(ˤ)j]) and[oˤ]).
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
ak(ː)ɐ
hu'he'
Not pronounced except in the wordhieni; at the end of a word (such asktibnih), even after adding the negating suffix (such asma ktibnihx); or at the end of a verb, even after adding pronomial suffixes (such asxebbaht); in these cases, it has the sound of 'ħ'.
Ħ ħ
ħe
ħeː,heː,xe:
ħanut'shop'
ħ
No English equivalent; sounds similar to/h/ but is articulated with a loweredlarynx.
I i
i
iː
ikel'food'
i̞ː,iː,ɪ
[i̞ː] bite (the way commonly realized in Irish English or[iː] in other words as beet but more forward) and when short, as[ɪ] bit.
Occasionally, 'i' is used to displayil-vokali tal-leħen (the vowel of the voice) as in words likel-iskola orl-iMdina; in this case, it takes the schwa sound.
Ie ie
ie
iːᵊ,ɛː
ieqaf'stop'
ɛː,iːᵊ
Sounds similar to yield or RP near, or opened up slightly towards bed or RP square
J j
je
jə,jæ,jɛ
jum'day'
j
yard
K k
ke
kə,kæ,kɛ
kelb'dog'
k
kettle
L l
elle
ɛl(ː)ᵊ
libsa'dress'
l
line
M m
emme
ɛm(ː)ᵊ
mara'woman'
m
march
N n
enne
ɛn(ː)ᵊ
nanna'granny'
n
next
O o
o
oː
ors'bear'
o,ɔ,ɒ
[o] as in somewhere between similar to Scottish English o in no[ɔ] like 'aw' inRP law, but short or[ɒ] as in water in some American English dialects.
P p
pe
peː,pə
paġna'page, sheet'
p
part
Q q
qe
ʔø,ʔ(ʷ)ɛ,ʔ(ʷ)æ,ʔ(ʷ)ə
qattus'cat'
ʔ
glottal stop, found in the Cockney English pronunciation of "bottle" or the phrase "uh-oh"/ʔʌʔoʊ/.
R r
erre
ɛɹ(ː)ᵊ,æɹ(:)ᵊ,ɚ(ː)ᵊ orɛr(ː)ᵊ,ær(:)ᵊ,ər(ː)ᵊ
re'king'
r,ɹ
[r] as in General American English butter, orɹroad (r realization changes depending on dialect or location in the word).
[u] as in General American English boot, or in some dialects, it may be realized as[ʉ] as in some American English realizations of student; shortu is[ʊ] put.
V v
ve
vøː,veː,və
vjola'violet'
v
vast, but at the end of a word, it is devoiced to[f].
W w
ve doppja /u doppja/we
vedɒp(ː)jɐ,uːdɒp(ː)jɐ,wøː
widna'ear'
w
west
X x
xe
ʃə,ʃøː
xadina'monkey'
ʃ/ʒ
shade, sometimes as measure; when doubled, the sound is elongated, as in "Cash shin" vs. "Cash in".
Ż ż
że/żeta
zə,zø:,ze:t(ɐ)
żarbun'shoe'
z
maze, but at the end of a word, it is devoiced to[s].
Z z
ze
t͡sə,t͡søː,t͡seːt(ɐ)
zalza'sauce'
t͡s/d͡z
pizza for [t͡s]
Final vowels with grave accents (à, è, ì, ò, ù) are also found in some Maltese words of Italian origin, such aslibertà'freedom',sigurtà (old Italian:sicurtà'security'), andsoċjetà (Italian:società'society').
The official rules governing the structure of the Maltese language are recorded in the official guidebookTagħrif fuq il-Kitba Maltija (English:Knowledge on Writing in Maltese) issued by theAkkademja 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 theAġġornament tat-Tagħrif fuq il-Kitba Maltija, which updated the previous works.[42]
TheNational Council for the Maltese Language (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.
Since Maltese evolved after theItalo-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 theKnights Hospitaller, both French and Italian were used for official documents and correspondence. During theBritish colonial period, 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 asMikiel 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.
Maltese has bothSemitic vocabulary and words derived fromRomance languages, primarilyItalian. Words such astweġiba (Arabic origin) andrisposta (Italian origin) have the same meaning ("answer") but are both used in Maltese, rather like "answer" and "response" in English. Below are two versions of the same translations, one with vocabulary mostly derived from Semitic root words and the other using Romanceloanwords (from theTreaty establishing a Constitution for EuropeArchived 2015-12-29 at theWayback Machine, seep. 17Archived 2020-08-04 at theWayback Machine):
English
Maltese (Semitic vocabulary)
Maltese (Romance vocabulary)
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-Għaqda hija mibnija fuq is-siwi ta' għadir għall-ġieħ il-bniedem, ta' ħelsien, ta' għażil il-ġemgħa, ta' ndaqs bejn il-ġnus, tas-saltna tad-dritt[a] u tal-għadir għall-ħaqq tal-bniedem, wkoll il-ħaqq ta' wħud li huma f'minoranzi.[b] Dan is-siwi huwa mqassam bejn il-Pajjiżi[c] Msieħba, f'nies li tħaddan il-kotrija, li ma tgħejjibx, li ddann, li tgħaqqad u li tiżen indaqs in-nisa u l-irġiel.
L-Unjoni hija bbażata fuq il-valuri tar-rispett għad-dinjità tal-bniedem, il-libertà, id-demokrazija, l-ugwaljanza, l-istat tad-dritt u r-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 fejn jipprevalu l-pluraliżmu, in-non-diskriminazzjoni, it-tolleranza, il-ġustizzja, is-solidarjetà u l-ugwaljanza bejn in-nisa u l-irġiel.
The historical source of modern Maltese vocabulary is 52% Italian/Sicilian, 32% Arabic/Siculo-Arabic, and 6% English, with some of the remainder being French.[11][47] Today, mostfunction words are Arabic, so despite only making up about a third of the vocabulary, they are the most used when speaking the language. In this way, Maltese is similar toEnglish, aGermanic language that has been strongly influenced byNorman French and Latin (58% of English vocabulary).
As a result of this, Romance language-speakers (and to a lesser extent English speakers) can often easily understand more technical ideas expressed in Maltese, such asĠeografikament, 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 basic sentence such asIr-raġel qiegħed fid-dar ('The man is in the house'), which would be easily understood by any Arabic speaker.
At the time Malta was thoroughly Arabized, the conquerors brought to the island the vulgar (colloquial) variant of Arabic, not the classical one (Classical Arabic); therefore, the Maltese language differs from Classical Arabic in the same way as the Arabic dialects differ from Classical Arabic. The Maltese language also comprises a considerable number ofMaghrebi features,[48] but in other ways, it can be closer to other Arabic dialects, or closer to Classical Arabic than to the other dialects as in the wordra ('to see'). Arabic supplies between 32%[11] and 40%[12] of the language's vocabulary.
Żammit (2000) found that 40% of a sample of 1,821Quranic Arabic roots were found in Maltese, considerably lower than that found in theMoroccan (58%) andLebanese (72%) varieties of Arabic.[49] An analysis of the etymology of the 41,000 words in Aquilina'sMaltese–English Dictionary shows that 32% of the Maltese vocabulary is of Arabic origin,[11] although another source claims 40%.[12][50] Usually, words expressing basic concepts and ideas, such asraġel (man),mara (woman),tifel (boy),dar (house),xemx (sun), andsajf (summer), are of Arabic origin. Moreover,belles-lettres in Maltese aim to maximise their use of vocabulary belonging to this group.[31]
Notes: * from Arabicاستقصى (istaqṣā) "to investigate", ** from Arabicاشتاق (ištāqa) "to yearn for ".
The following table compares additional cognates in Maltese and some other varieties of Arabic (all forms are written phonetically, as in the source):[51]
Siculo-Arabic dialect which was spoken in Sicily and Malta is theancestor of the Maltese language,[11] some Siculo-Arabic words are still used in modernSicilian (a Romance language spoken in Sicily):
The Maltese language has merged many of the original Arabic consonants (in particular theemphatic consonants) with others common to European languages. Thus, originalArabic/d/,/ð/, and/dˤ/ all merged into Maltese/d/. The vowels, meanwhile, separated from the three in Classical Arabic (/aiu/) into five, as is more typical of many European languages (/aɛiou/). Some unstressed short vowels have been elided. The common Arabic greetingas salāmu 'alaykum is cognate withis-sliem għalikom in Maltese (lit. "the peace for you", peace be with you), as are similar greetings in other Semitic languages (e.g.shalom ʿalekhem inHebrew).
An analysis of the etymology of the 41,000 words in Aquilina'sMaltese–English Dictionary shows that words of Romance origin make up 52% of the Maltese vocabulary,[11] although other sources claim from 40%[12] to 55%. Romance vocabulary tends to deal with more complex concepts. Most words come fromSicilian and thus exhibit Sicilian phonetic characteristics, such as/u/ rather than Italian/o/, and/i/ rather than Italian/e/ (e.g.tiatru notteatro andfidi notfede). Also, as with Old Sicilian,/ʃ/ (Englishsh) is writtenx and this produces spellings such as:ambaxxata/ambaʃːaːta/ ('embassy'),xena/ʃeːna/ ('scene'; compare Italianambasciata,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 Italian or Sicilian forms,[11] even if the resulting words do not appear in either of those languages. For instance, the wordsevaluation,industrial action, andchemical armaments becomeevalwazzjoni,azzjoni industrjali, andarmamenti kimiċi in Maltese, while the Italian terms arevalutazione,vertenza sindacale, andarmi chimiche respectively. (The origin of the terms may be narrowed even further toBritish English; the phraseindustrial action is meaningless in the United States.) This is comparable to the situation with English borrowings into theItalo-Australian dialect. English words of Germanic origin are generally preserved relatively unchanged.
Some influences ofAfrican Romance on the Arabic andBerber spoken in theMaghreb are theorised; these may then have passed into Maltese.[52] For example, incalendarmonth names, the wordfurar 'February' is only found in the Maghreb and in Maltese – proving the word's ancient pedigree. The region also has a form of another Latin month inawi/ussu <augustus.[52] 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.[52] Scholars theorise that a Latin-based system provided forms such asawi/ussu andfurar in African Romance, with the system then mediating Latin/Romance names through Arabic for some month names during the Islamic period.[53] The same situation exists for Maltese which mediated words fromItalian, and retains both non-Italian forms such asawissu/awwissu andfrar, and Italian forms such asapril.[53]
Like theMaghrebi Arabic dialects, Maltese has a significant vocabulary derived fromBerber languages. Whether these words entered Maltese by being inherited fromSiculo-Arabic or were directly loaned from Berber languages is not yet known. These include:[54]
English loanwords, which are becoming more commonplace, may constitute up to 20% of Maltese vocabulary,[12] though other sources claim as little as 6%.[11] This percentage discrepancy is due to the fact that a number of new English loanwords are sometimes not considered part of the official Maltese vocabulary, hence they are not included in certain dictionaries.[11] Also, English loanwords of Latinate origin are very often Italianized, 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
"Fridge" is a commonshortening of "refrigerator". "Refrigerator" is a Latinate word which could be imported into Maltese asrifriġeratur, whereas theItalian word isfrigorifero orrefrigeratore.
The days of the week (Maltese:jiem il-ġimgħa) in Maltese, which are derived from Arabic, are referred to by number which is also typical in other Semitic languages, Days of the week are commonly preceded by the wordnhar meaning 'day'.
The months of the year (Maltese:xhur is-sena) in Maltese are mostly derived fromSicilian, thoughFrar andAwwissu may be derived fromAfrican Romance viaSiculo-Arabic.
Adjectives follownouns. There are no separately formed nativeadverbs, and word order is fairly flexible. Both nouns and adjectives ofSemitic 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 are pluralised and also have adual 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 thepluralis 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 Sicilianlingua,lingui.
Words of English origin are pluralised by adding either an "-s" or "-jiet", for example,friġġ,friġis from the wordfridge. Some words can be pluralised with either of the suffixes to denote the plural. A few words borrowed from English can amalgamate both suffixes, likebrikksa from the Englishbrick, which can adopt either collective formbrikks or the plural formbrikksiet.
As inArabic, nouns are often derived by changing, adding or removing the vowels within atriliteral root. These are some of the patterns used for nouns:[56]
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 (childhood),xbubija (maidenhood)
CCuCa –rtuba (softness),bjuda (whiteness)
CaCCaC –tallab (beggar),bajjad (whitewasher)
The so-called mimated nouns use theprefixm- in addition tovowel changes. This pattern can be used to indicateplacenames,tools,abstractions, etc. These are some of the patterns used for mimated nouns:
Verbs show the Semitictriliteral pattern, in which a verb isconjugated withprefixes,suffixes, andinfixes (for examplektibna, Arabickatabna, Hebrewkathabhnu (Modern Hebrew: katavnu) "we wrote"). An example is the Semitic root X-M-X ('sun'), for examplexemx (sun),xmux (suns),xemxi (sunny),xemxata (sunstroke),nixxemmex (I sunbathe),ma xxemmixtx (I didn't sunbathe),tixmix (the act of sunbathing).
Maltese also features theagglutination of verb suffixes indicating direction of action, for exampleagħmilhomli "make them for me"←agħmel "make" in the imperative +hom fromhuma "them" +li suffix indicating first person singular andħasletielu "she washed it for him"←ħaslet "she washed" from the verbħasel "to wash" +ie the object +lu suffix indicating third person masculine singular.
The twotenses are 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.
As Malta is a multilingual country, the use of Maltese in the mass media is shared with other European languages, namelyEnglish andItalian. The majority of television stations broadcast from Malta in English or Maltese, although broadcasts fromItaly in Italian are also received on the islands. Similarly, there are more Maltese-language radio programs than English ones broadcast from Malta, but again, Italian broadcasts are also picked up. Coverage in newspaper periodicals is generally equally split between Maltese and English.
Maltese is little used on the internet and few websites are written in the language. In a survey of Maltese cultural websites conducted in 2004 on behalf of the Maltese government, 12 of 13 were in English only and the remaining one was multilingual but did not include Maltese.[57] In 2011, only 6.5 per cent of Maltese internet users reported employing Maltese online, which may be a consequence of the lack of online support for the language.[58]
The Maltese population, being fluent in both Maltese and English, displayscode-switching (referred to asMaltenglish) in certain localities and between certain social groups.[11]
^Martine Vanhove,« De quelques traits prehilaliens en maltais », in:Peuplement et arabisation au Maghreb cccidental : dialectologie et histoire, Casa Velazquez – Universidad de Zaragoza (1998), pp.97–108
^So who are the 'real' Maltese. September 13, 2014.Archived from the original on 2016-03-12.The kind of Arabic used in the Maltese language is most likely derived from the language spoken by those that repopulated the island from Sicily in the early second millennium; it is known as Siculo-Arab. The Maltese are mostly descendants of these people.{{cite book}}:|work= ignored (help)
^abAlbert J. Borg; Marie Azzopardi-Alexander (1997).Maltese.Routledge. p. xiii.ISBN978-0-415-02243-9.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 and Libyan Arabic
^Brincat (2005): "Originally Maltese was an 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."
^Hoberman, Robert D. (2007)."Chapter 13: Maltese Morphology". In Kaye, Alan S. (ed.).Morphologies of Asia and Africa. Vol. 1. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrown. p. 258.ISBN9781575061092.Archived from the original on 2017-09-30.Maltese is the chief exception: Classical or Standard Arabic is irrelevant in the Maltese linguistic community and there is no diglossia.
^Hoberman, Robert D. (2007)."Chapter 13: Maltese Morphology". In Kaye, Alan S. (ed.).Morphologies of Asia and Africa. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrown. pp. 257–258.ISBN9781575061092.Archived from the original on 2017-09-30.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 and other Semitic languages.
^Brincat (2005): "An analysis of the etymology of the 41,000 words in Aquilina's Maltese-English Dictionary shows that 32.41% are of 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 are more frequent because they denote the basic ideas and include the function words."
^Il-Kunsill Nazzjonali tal-Ilsien Malti.Archived from the original on 2014-01-06.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 today that is not Semitic, due to the immeasurable Romantic influence from our succession of (Southern) European rulers through the ages.
^abcAgius, D. A. (1990). "Reviewed Work: A Contribution to Arabic Lexical Dialectology by Al-Miklem Malti".Bull. Br. Soc. Middle East. Stud.17 (2):171–180.doi:10.1080/13530199008705515.JSTOR194709.
^"As at the 2006 Australian Census, the number of Australians speaking Maltese at home was 36,514, compared to 41,250 in 2001 and 45,243 in 1996. The 2006 figures represent a drop of 19.29% when compared with the 1996 figures. Given that many of those who speak Maltese at home are over the age of 60, the number of Maltese speakers will invariably go for a nosedive by 2016." Joseph Carmel Chetcuti,Why It's time to bury the Maltese language in AustraliaArchived 2018-11-13 at theWayback Machine, Malta Independent, 2 March 2010.
^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 Dialects and Maltese",The Semitic Languages. Ed. Robert Hetzron.Routledge. Pages 263–311.
^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.ISBN978-3-11-011103-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
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. (ed.).Phonologies of Asia and Africa. Vol. 1. Eisenbrauns. pp. 245–285.ISBN9781575060194.
Borg, Albert J.; Azzopardi-Alexander, Marie (1997).Maltese. Routledge.ISBN978-0-415-02243-9.
Vella, Alexandra (2004). "Language contact and Maltese intonation: Some parallels with other language varieties". In Kurt Braunmüller and Gisella Ferraresi (ed.).Aspects of Multilingualism in European Language History. Hamburg Studies on Multiculturalism. John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 263.ISBN978-90-272-1922-0.
Żammit, Martin (2000). "Arabic and Maltese Cognate Roots". In Mifsud, Manwel (ed.).Proceedings of the Third International Conference of Aida. Malta: Association Internationale de Dialectologie Arabe. pp. 241–245.ISBN978-99932-0-044-4.
(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
