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Maltese is the national language of Malta, and an official language of the European Union. It is descended from Maghrebi Arabic [1], but is not considered to be an Arabic dialect. It is the only Semitic language written in the Latin alphabet in its standard form. There have been some claims that it is descended not from Arabic but Phoenician, but this view has no support among linguists.
Apart from its phonology, Maltese bears considerable similarity to urban varieties of Tunisian Arabic and other North African Arabic dialects. In the course of history, the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even morphological and syntactic patterns from Sicilian and Italian, while many words (some with their plural forms) are also borrowed from English.
Maltese became an official language of Malta in 1936, alongside English. Today, there are an estimated 371,900 Maltese speakers, mostly residing in Malta, although a number of Maltese expatriates in Australia, the United States, Canada and Gibraltar can still speak the language. In 2007 it was reported that Maltese is still spoken by Maltese descendants in Tunisia.[1]
The oldest known document in Maltese is "Il Cantilena," a poem from the 15th century written by Pietro Caxaro. For centuries, Maltese was nearly exclusively a spoken language, with writing being done in Arabic, or later, Italian.
Maltese grammar is fundamentally derived from Arabic, although Romance and Anglo-Saxon patterns are also used.
Adjectives follow nouns, there are no separately formed native adverbs, and word order is fairly flexible. As in Arabic and Hebrew, 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"; cf. Arabic at-tifl-u l-kabi:r, Hebrew ha-na`ar ha-gadol). This rule does not apply to adjectives of Romance origin.
Nouns are pluralized and also have a dual marker (rare among modern European languages, others including Slovene and Sorbian).
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) or -in (cf. 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 "books", raġel, irġiel "men".
Verbs still show a triliteral Semitic pattern, in which a verb is conjugated with prefixes, suffixes, and infixes (for example ktibna, Arabic katabna, Hebrew katavnu "we wrote"). There are two tenses: present and perfect.
The Romance pattern is generally simpler. Words of Romance origin are usually pluralized in two manners: addition of -i or -jiet (for example lingwa, lingwi "languages", from Sicilian lingua, lingui.)
The Maltese verb system incorporates Romance verbs and adds Arabic suffixes and prefixes to them (for example iddeċidejna "we decided" < (i)ddeċieda 'Romance verb' + -ejna 'Arabic first person plural perfect marker'). Arabic only rarely does this, although several Arabic dialects like Tunisian do.
The English pattern is similar to the Romance pattern, in that words of English origin are pluralized by adding either an "-s" or "-jiet" (for example tojlit, tojlits from the English toilet, toilets and friġġ, friġġijiet from the word fridge.
Maltese vocabulary is a hybrid based on a foundation of Arabic Semitic roots with a heavy borrowing of Sicilian, Italian, and English loanwords. In this respect it is similar to English (a Germanic language heavily influenced by French, particularly the Norman variety rather than the standard language.).
Żammit 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 Syrian Arabic (72%).[2] Usually, words expressing basic concepts and ideas, such as raġel man, mara woman, tifel boy, dar house, xemx sun, sajf summer, are of Arabic origin.
It is estimated that Romance words make up approximately 40% of the Maltese vocabulary. These are generally more 'learned' words, having to do with new ideas, objects, government, law, education, art, literature, and general learning. They are 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, (English 'sh') is written 'x' and this produces interesting spellings: ambaxxata is 'embassy', xena is 'scene' (cf. Italian ambasciata, scena).
Below are just a few examples:
The result of this highly uneven distribution of loanwords throughout the language is that a speaker of the loanword-source language (in this case Romance language speakers, or even English speakers) can understand, for instance, the main page of the Maltese Wikipedia or comprehend the subject of a newspaper article, but cannot understand even such basic Maltese sentences such as Ir-raġel qiegħed fid-dar (The man is in the house). This situation resembles that of a monolingual English speaker, who will often be able to guess the content of something in French if it is formal academic writing, but not understand much simpler sentences.
It is estimated that English loan words, which are becoming more commonplace, make up 20% of the Maltese vocabulary. They are generally transliterated, although standard English pronunciation is virtually always retained. Below are just a few examples:
Maltese can be spoken using either the Semitic or the Romance forms. A case in point is the English sentence The temple is situated opposite the plaza of the village (Romance form), or The temple sits across from the town square (Germanic form):
Both sentences are in Maltese and have the same exact meaning. Generally though, no one form is ever spoken exclusively, and sentences are usually made up of words from both influences.
It is interesting to note that Church-related language during church services, mass and liturgies is heavily Semitic, and many words are not used in every-day common speech amongst the native Maltese-speaking population.
On the other hand, academic language frequently adopts a large number of Romance words, which is becoming the norm, a trend which is making the Maltese language more Europeanized, as opposed to poetry and literature which tend to utilize a lot of Semitic words which are not usually used in everyday speech.
Below is the Maltese alphabet, with IPA symbols and approximate English pronunciation:
Final vowels with grave accents (à, è, ì, ò, ù) are also found in Maltese in words of Italian origin, such as libertà freedom, sigurtà security, or soċjetà society.
(M)alta-gí