Maltese (Maltese: Malti) is the national language A national language is a language which has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a people and perhaps by extension the territory they occupy. The term is used variously. A national language may for instance represent the national identity of a nation or country. National language may alternatively be a designation given to one or more of Malta Malta /ˈmɔːltə/ , officially the Republic of Malta (Maltese: Repubblika ta' Malta), is a southern European country and consists of an archipelago situated centrally in the Mediterranean, 93 km south of Sicily and 288 km east of Tunisia, with the Strait of Gibraltar 1,826 km to the west and Alexandria 1,510 km to the east, and a co-official language of the country The current national language of Malta is Maltese, which along with English, is one of the official languages alongside English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of,^[3] while also serving as an official language of the The languages of the European Union are languages used by people within the member states of the European Union. They include the twenty-three official languages of the European Union along with a range of others. The EU asserts that it is in favour of linguistic diversity and currently has a European Commissioner for Multilingualism, Leonard European Union The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 member states which are located primarily in Europe. Committed to regional integration, the EU was established by the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993 upon the foundations of the European Communities. With over 500 million citizens, the EU combined generated an estimated 28% share (US$ 16.5, the only Semitic language The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa. They constitute a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. The most widely spoken Semitic language by far today is Arabic . It is followed by Amharic (2 so distinguished. Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic Siculo-Arabic was a variety of Arabic spoken in Sicily, Malta, and Southern Italy between the ninth and the fourteenth centuries. It is extinct in Sicily and Italy, but it has developed into what is now the Maltese language on the islands of Malta (the Arabic dialect that developed in Malta Malta /ˈmɔːltə/ , officially the Republic of Malta (Maltese: Repubblika ta' Malta), is a southern European country and consists of an archipelago situated centrally in the Mediterranean, 93 km south of Sicily and 288 km east of Tunisia, with the Strait of Gibraltar 1,826 km to the west and Alexandria 1,510 km to the east, Sicily Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, comprising an autonomous region of Italy. Minor islands around it, such as the Aeolian Islands, are part of Sicily. Its official name is Regione Autonoma Siciliana (English:Sicilian Autonomous Region) and the rest of Southern Italy Southern Italy or the Mezzogiorno (Midday) generally refers to the southern portion of the continental Italian peninsula and Sicily, historically forming the Kingdom of Two Sicilies plus the island of Sardinia. It encompasses the modern regions of Basilicata, Campania, Calabria, Apulia and Molise, which lie in Italy's south, and Abruzzo which is between the ninth and the fourteenth centuries).^[4][5] About half of the vocabulary is borrowed from Italian Italian ( italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken as a native language by about 62 million people in Italy, San Marino and parts of Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia and France. It is spoken as a first language by many Italian citizens and immigrants abroad, for a total of approximately 70 million native speakers. In addition, it and Sicilian Sicilian is a Romance language. Its dialects make up the Italiano Meridionale-estremo language group, which are spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands; in southern and central Calabria (where it is called Southern Calabro); in the southern parts of Apulia, the Salento (where it is known as Salentino); and Campania, on the Italian,^[4] and English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of words make up as much as 20% of the Maltese vocabulary.^[6] It is the only Semitic language The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa. They constitute a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. The most widely spoken Semitic language by far today is Arabic . It is followed by Amharic (2 written in the Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was borrowed and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome, whose alphabet was then adapted and further modified by the ancient in its standard form A standard language is a particular variety of a language that has prestige within a speech community. Although it will often be originally based on the language of a particular geographical area, such as a capital city or cultural centre, a standard cuts across regional linguistic boundaries to become a general means of communication. The.

History

Maltese became an official language An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a language a legal status, even if that language is not of Malta in 1934, alongside English, when Italian was dropped from official use. The oldest reference to Maltese comes from the Benedictine Monks of Catania, who were unable to open a monastery in Malta, in 1364, because they could not understand the native language. In 1436, in the will of a certain Pawlu Peregrino, Maltese is first identified as lingua maltensi. The oldest known document in Maltese is "Il Cantilena" (Maltese: Xidew il-Qada) a poem from the 15th century written by Pietro Caxaro,^[7] and the first known Maltese dictionary was written by the French Knight Francois de Vion Thezan Court in 1640. It includes notes about Maltese grammar and a concluding section detailing, in Italian and Maltese, phrases to be used when giving orders to soldiers. Facsimilies of the work are currently published.

In his book Dell’Istoria della Sacra Religione et Illustrissima Militia di San Giovanni Gierosolimitano (English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of: The History of the Sacred Religion and Illustrious Militia of St John of Jerusalem), written between 1594 and 1602, Giacomo Bosio endorses the notion that Maltese descended from Carthaginian The Punics were a group of western Semitic-speaking peoples originating from Carthage in North Africa who traced their origins to a group of Phoenician and Cypriot settlers, but also to North African Berbers. Punics were probably a mix of Berbers and Phoenicians in terms of culture and ancestry. Contrary to other Phoenicians, Punics had a. Bosio writes that when the cornerstone The cornerstone concept is derived from the first stone set in the construction of a masonry foundation, important since all other stones will be set in reference to this stone, thus determining the position of the entire structure of Valletta Valletta is the capital city of Malta, colloquially known as Il-Belt in Maltese. It is located in the central-eastern portion of the island of Malta and the city proper has a population of 6,098 was placed, a group of Maltese elders said "Iegi zimen en fel wardia col sceber raba iesue uquie" (Which in modern Maltese reads, "Jiġi żmien li fil-Wardija [l-Għolja Sciberras] kull xiber raba’ jiswa uqija," and in English, "There will come a time when every piece of land on Sciberras Hill will be worth its weight in gold"). This is the oldest example of printed Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing Maltese.

Athanasius Kircher Athanasius Kircher (sometimes erroneously spelled Kirchner) was a 17th century German Jesuit scholar who published around 40 works, most notably in the fields of oriental studies, geology, and medicine. Kircher has been compared to fellow Jesuit Roger Boscovich and to Leonardo da Vinci for his enormous range of interests, and has been honoured spent two years in Malta (1637-38) and made observations running counter to ideas of Punic ancestry accepted by his contemporaries. In his Mundus Subterraneus he says of the Maltese The Maltese are an ethnic group associated with the Southern European nation of Malta, and with the Maltese language. Malta is an island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Included within the ethnic group defined by the Maltese people are the Gozitans (Maltese: Għawdxin) who inhabit Malta's sister island, Gozo, "they speak the purest form of Arabic, corrupted by neither Italian nor any other language." Other theories include those in Johann Friedrich Breithaupt's Christliche Helden Insel Malta (English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of: Malta, Home of Christian Heroes), published in 1632, where he calls Maltese a mixed 'barbaric' language and John Dryden John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. Walter Scott named him "Glorious John."'s description of the language as 'Berber' on his visit to the islands (the memoirs of those journeys appeared in 1776).^[8]

In 1584 Pasquale Vassallo, a Dominican friar The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III (1216-27) on 22 December 1216 in France. Membership in the Order includes friars, congregations of active sisters, and lay persons affiliated with the, wrote a collection of songs in Italian Italian ( italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken as a native language by about 62 million people in Italy, San Marino and parts of Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia and France. It is spoken as a first language by many Italian citizens and immigrants abroad, for a total of approximately 70 million native speakers. In addition, it and Maltese. In 1585 the poems were burned Book burning, biblioclasm or libricide is the practice of destroying, often ceremoniously, books or other written material. In modern times, other forms of media, such as phonograph records, video tapes, and CDs have also been ceremoniously burned, torched, or shredded. The practice, usually carried out in public, is generally motivated by moral, at the order of the Inquisition The term Inquisition or inquisition can apply to any one of several institutions charged with trying and convicting heretics within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It may also refer to:, for allegedly 'obscene' content.^[8] German The German people are an ethnic group, in the sense of sharing a common German culture, descent, and speaking the German language as a mother tongue. Within Germany, Germans are defined by citizenship (Federal Germans, Bundesdeutsche), distinguished from people of German ancestry (Deutschstämmige). Historically, in the context of the German traveler Hieronymus Megiser includes a list of Maltese words in his Thesaurus Polyglottus (published in 1603), and also in his more celebrated work Propugnaculum Europae, published in 1606. Megiser, who visited Malta from 1588 to 1589, proposed a Punic heritage for the language, a suggestion rebuffed in 1660 by Burchardus Niderstedt in his book Malta vetus et nova. In 1677, Domenico and Carlo Magri gave the etymologies for various Maltese words in their book Hierolexicon, a Latin version of the encyclopedia Notitia de vocaboli ecclesiastici first published in 1644.^[8]

Demographics

In 1975, there were an estimated 371,000 Maltese speakers, of whom 300,000 resided in Malta.^[2] Thousands of Maltese emigrants in Australia For at least 40,000 years before European settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who belonged to one or more of the roughly 250 language groups. After sporadic visits by fishermen from the immediate north and discovery by Dutch explorers in 1606, Australia's eastern half was claimed by the British, Canada The land occupied by Canada was inhabited for millennia by various groups of Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French expeditions explored, and later settled, along the Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three, Gibraltar Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean, overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar. The territory itself is a peninsula of 6.843 square kilometres (2.642 sq mi) whose isthmus connects to the north with Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the, Italy Italy (pronounced /ˈɪtəli/ ; Italian: Italia [iˈtaːlja]), officially the Italian Republic (Italian: Repubblica italiana), is a country located partly on the European Continent and partly on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine, the UK The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland[note 7] is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of the island of Ireland, and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land, and the US still speak the language,^[1] and in 2007 it was reported that Maltese is still spoken by descendants of Maltese immigrants in Tunisia Tunisia , officially the Tunisian Republic (الجمهورية التونسية‎ al-Jumhūriyya at-Tūnisiyya), is the northernmost country in Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area is almost 165,000 km², with an estimated population of just over 10.3.^[9]

Classification

Maltese is a Semitic language The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa. They constitute a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. The most widely spoken Semitic language by far today is Arabic . It is followed by Amharic (2 descended from Siculo-Arabic Siculo-Arabic was a variety of Arabic spoken in Sicily, Malta, and Southern Italy between the ninth and the fourteenth centuries. It is extinct in Sicily and Italy, but it has developed into what is now the Maltese language on the islands of Malta,^[10] that in the course of its history Malta has been inhabited since it was settled around 5200 BC from the Italian island of Sicily. Later came the arrival of the Phoenicians and the Greeks who named the island Μελίτη meaning "honey sweet" in reference to Malta's endemic variety of bee. The island was known as Maleth meaning 'safe-haven', by the Phoenicians has been influenced by Sicilian Sicilian is a Romance language. Its dialects make up the Italiano Meridionale-estremo language group, which are spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands; in southern and central Calabria (where it is called Southern Calabro); in the southern parts of Apulia, the Salento (where it is known as Salentino); and Campania, on the Italian and Standard Italian Italian ( italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken as a native language by about 62 million people in Italy, San Marino and parts of Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia and France. It is spoken as a first language by many Italian citizens and immigrants abroad, for a total of approximately 70 million native speakers. In addition, it, to a lesser extent French French is a Romance language spoken as a first language by about 136 million people worldwide. Around 190 million people speak French as a second language, and an additional 200 million speak it as an acquired foreign language. French speaking communities are present in 57 countries and territories. Most native speakers of the language live in, and more recently English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of. Today, the core vocabulary (including both the most commonly used vocabulary and function words Function words are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express grammatical relationships with other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. Words that are not function words are called content words (or open class words or lexical words): these include nouns, verbs,) is Semitic, with large numbers of loan words.^[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.^[12]

The Maltese language has historically been classified in various ways, with some claiming that the ancient Punic language was the base of the language, instead of Siculo-Arabic,^{[8][13][14][15]} while others believed the language to be Berber Tarifit C. Morocco Tamazight Tashelhiyt Tamasheq,^[8] and under Fascist Italy The term 'Italian Fascism denotes the authoritarian nationalist Fascismo political movement that ruled Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943 under leader Benito Mussolini. The term Fascism comes from the word Fascio , and dates back variously to January 1915 when the "Fascist Revolutionary Party" was created and 1919 when Benito, it was considered a dialect of Italian.^[16]

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Maltese has five short vowels, /ɐ ɛ ɪ ɔ ʊ/, written a e i o u; six long vowels, /ɐː ɛː ɪː iː ɔː ʊː/, written a, e, ie, i, o, u, and seven diphthongs, /ɐɪ ɐʊ ɛɪ ɛʊ ɪʊ ɔɪ ɔʊ/, written aj or għi, aw or għu, ej or għi, ew, iw, oj, and ow or għu.^[5]

Orthography

Alphabet

The modern system of Maltese orthography was introduced in 1924^[18]. 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 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 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.^[19] All these works were included in a revised and expanded guidebook published in 1996.^{[citation needed]}

Nowadays, the National Council for the Maltese Language (KNM) is the main regulator of the 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 Normans ended the Arab rule of the islands, a standard, written form of the language was not developed for a long time after the Arabs' expulsion in the eleventh century. Under the rule of the Order of the Knights of Malta, 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 nineteenth century, philologists and academics such as Mikiel Anton Vassalli made a concerted effort to transcribe spoken Maltese in a comprehensive written form. Many examples of written Maltese exist from before this period, always in the Latin alphabet.

Sample

From the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe:

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).^[20]

The historical source of modern Maltese vocabulary is 52% Italian/Sicilian, 32% Siculo-Arabic, and 6% English, with some of the remainder being French.^[4][21] Today, most function words are Semitic. In this way, it is similar to English, which is a Germanic language that had large influence from French - although less so than Maltese. 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 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,^[4] although other sources claim from as low as 40%,^[6] to as high as 55%.^[22] 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).

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,^[23] and supplies between 32%^[23] and 40%^[6] of the language's vocabulary.

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 (72%).^[24] 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,^[4] although another source claims 40%.^[6] 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. Moreover, belles lettres in Maltese tend to aim mainly at diction belonging to this group.^[25]

The Maltese language has merged many of the original Arabic consonants together, in particular the emphatic consonants, with others that are common in European languages. Thus, original Arabic /d/, /ð/, and /dˤ/ all merged into Maltese /d/. The vowels, however, separated from the three in 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 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 (eg. shalom aleichem in Hebrew).

Since the attested vocabulary of Siculo-Arabic is limited, the following table compares cognates in Maltese and some other varieties of Arabic:^[26][27]

English

It is estimated that English loanwords, which are becoming more commonplace, make up 20% of the Maltese vocabulary,^[6] although other sources claim amounts as low as 6%.^[4] 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.^[4] English loanwords are generally transliterated, although standard English pronunciation is virtually always retained. Below are a few examples:

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 -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 "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 together, 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.

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.

Verbs

Verbs 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 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

Urban varieties of Maltese are closer to Standard Maltese than rural varieties,^[25] which have some characteristics that distinguish them from Standard Maltese. They tend to show some archaic features^[25] such as the realization of kh and gh and the imala of Arabic ā into ē (or ī especially in Gozo)-considered archaic because they are reminiscent of 15th century transcriptions of this sound.^[25] Another archaic feature is the realization of Standard Maltese ā as ō in rural dialects^[25]. There is also a tendency to diphthongize simple vowels, e.g., ū becomes eo or eu.^[25] Rural dialects also tend to employ more Semitic roots and broken plurals than Standard Maltese.^[25] In general, rural Maltese is less distant from its Siculo-Arabic ancestor than Standard Maltese.^[25]

Media

With 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 are in English or Maltese, although broadcasts from 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.

The use of the Maltese language on the internet is not altogether common, and the number of websites written in Maltese are few. Out of a survey conducted^{[by whom?]} on 13 Maltese websites, 12 of them were English only, and the remainder was bilingual with neither language being Maltese.^[28]

Code-switching

The Maltese population, being fluent in both Maltese and English, displays code-switching (referred to as Minglish) in certain localities and between certain social groups.^[11]

See also

• Languages of Malta

External links

Dictionaries

• Malta Online Dictionary
• English-Maltese-English dictionary
• English-Maltese dictionary
• Collection of Maltese dictionaries
• English-Maltese-English online translator

Literature and linguistics

• The Technical Committee for Literature within the National Council for the Maltese Language
• Maltese Language in Broadcasting
• Maltese verbal morphologyPDF (208 KB)

Laws

• L-Att dwar l-Ilsien Malti (Kap. 470)PDF (97.5 KB)
• Il-Kostituzzjoni ta' Malta (Kap. 1, Art. 5)PDF (368 KB)
• Maltese Language Act (Chap. 470)PDF (3.38 KB)
• Constitution of Malta (Chap. 1, Art. 5)PDF (303 KB)
• Maltese and English - their roles at the University of MaltaPDF (76.58 KB)

Technology

• Download the Maltese keyboard driver (Id-driver tat-Tastiera Maltija)
• Manwal tad-driver tat-Tastiera Maltija (MT)PDF (481.42 KB)
• Maltese keyboard driver's Manual (EN)PDF (328.77 KB)
• Enabling the Maltese Language in Windows XPPDF (176 KB)
• Unicode for Maltese
• Maltese Spellchecker
• YahooGroup Kelmet - The Maltese language online forum

Organisations

• Il-Kunsill Nazzjonali ta' l-Ilsien Malti
• L-Akkademja tal-Malti
• Għaqda tal-Malti - Università
• Għaqda Poeti Maltin

Glossaries and resources

• Rimarju Malti
• Kappelli Maltin
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Translation services

• Technical Documentation for Europe: Malta
• Maltese Style Guide (interinstitutional)

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Ethnologue entry for Maltese
2. ^ ^{a b} [1]
3. ^ Constitution of Malta, I.5.(1),
4. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Brincat (2005)
5. ^ ^{a b} Maltese. Albert J. Borg, Marie Azzopardi-Alexander, Azzopardi-Alexa. Routledge, 1997.
6. ^ ^{a b c d e} BBC Education - Languages
7. ^ "The 'Cantilena'". http://www.my-malta.com/interesting/cantilena.html. Retrieved 2007-07-29.
8. ^ ^{a b c d e} L-Akkademja tal-Malti. ""The Maltese Language Academy"". http://www.akkademjatalmalti.com/page.asp?p=9023.
9. ^ Times of Malta, 11 February 2007
10. ^ 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 Dialects and Maltese," The Semitic Languages. Ed. Robert Hetzron. Routledge. Pages 263-311.
11. ^ ^{a b c} [2]
12. ^ Alexander Borg. 1997. "Maltese Phonology," Phonologies of Asia and Africa, Vol. 1. Ed. Alan S. Kaye. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Pp. 245-285.
13. ^ 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. pp. 263. ISBN 9027219222.
14. ^ [3]
15. ^ [4]
16. ^ Malta, Sean Sheehan, pg. 80
17. ^ Hume (1996:165)
18. ^ 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.
19. ^ Mifsud, Manwel (1995). Loan Verbs in Maltese: A Descriptive and Comparative Study. Brill Publishers. pp. 31. ISBN 9004100911. http://books.google.com/books?id=fO5kE8BKf7cC.
20. ^ Friggieri (1994:59)
21. ^ About Malta; GTS; retrieved on [2008-02-24]
22. ^ [5]
23. ^ ^{a b} Brincat, Joseph, M;Maltese – an unusual formula MED Magazine; [2005-02]; retrieved on [2008-02-22]
24. ^ Żammit (2000:241-245)
25. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} Isserlin. Studies in Islamic History and Civilization. BRILL 1986, ISBN 965264014X
26. ^ All forms are written phonetically, as in the source
27. ^ Alan S. Kaye & Judith Rosenhouse. 1997. "Arabic Dialects and Maltese," The Semitic Languages. Routledge. Pp. 263-311.
28. ^ Country report for MINERVA Plus in 2005; Multilingual issues in Malta; Retrieved on [2008-02-24]

References

• Azzopardi, C. (2007). Gwida għall-Ortografija. Malta: Klabb Kotba Maltin. .
• Borg, A. J; Azzopardi-Alexander, M (1997), Maltese, Routledge, ISBN 0415022436
• Brincat, Joseph M. (2005) ( – ^{Scholar search}), Maltese-an unusual formula, MED Magazine, http://www.macmillandictionary.com/MED-magazine/February2005/27-LI-Maltese.htm, retrieved 2008-02-22
• 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
• Mifsud, M.; A.J. Borg (1997). Fuq l-għatba tal-Malti. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. .
• Zammit, Martin (2000), "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
• Vassalli, Michelantonio (1827). Grammatica della lingua Maltese.

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