Maltese - for the Perplexed - An Introductory Presentation on the Maltese Language: its History, Lexicon, and Grammar
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Maltese – for the Perplexed
An Introductory Presentation on the Maltese Language:
its History, Lexicon, and Grammar
1
This is the republic of Malta. It is roughly in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea,
80km south of Sicily and 1100km SE of Aix-en-Provence.
2
The republic of Malta consists of 3 islands. Malta is the largest with an area of
about 250 sq km; then comes the island of Gozo where I come from; it is about 1/4 the
area of Malta. And then there is the tiny island of Comino – 6sq km – with one family
living on it. Overall population: 400,000
3
The Maltese language is today the only living vestige of medieval dialectical Arabic
spoken on European soil, surviving by many centuries the extinction of the medieval
Arabic vernaculars of Sicily (12th century), Spain, and Pantelleria (16th century). It is
by no means however an Arabic dialect.
The fact that Maltese is an autonomous language depends above all on its
influence not just by Semitic languages, but also especially by Romance languages,
especially Italian. But fairly recently, also English. Moreover, the Arabic aspect in
this language in turn evolved in line with its own internal logic, drifting away from
the norms of spoken Arabic. Maltese bears linguistic elements of both Southern and
Northern countries, and yet it also differentiates itself from them.
Philologists today deny the possibility of a simple definition of Maltese. Giovanni
Mangion speaks of it as ‘materia semitica in bocca romanza’, while for Alan Hubert-
Bonnal and Anne Tronche, it is a ‘hybrid language which, with its numerous additions
of Romance terms, stands today as a truly unique linguistic mosaic’. Above all else,
these factors have been the inevitable result of the Maltese history. Drawing light on
its succeeding epochs, we will be drawing light on the language itself, its necessary
formation. The inexorable and overall importance of history on Maltese is due to the
fact that ‘since it was first colonised […] [Malta] has never been very far from the
centre of events and has often played a critical part in the making of history’.
4
A hypothesis that Malta was ‘l’île sacrée de la Mediterranée’ – an important sacred
island where people from the surrounding countries gathered for ritual and rite.
Indeed, the finest historical remains of Malta and Gozo are prehistoric. These are the
world-famous megalithic temples. Remains of such temples can still be seen forinstance in Hagar Qim, Mnajdra, Hal Tarxien, and Hal Saflieni. Ggantija temples in
Gozo (c 4000BC) are the oldest free standing structure in the world, predating
Stonehenge in the UK and the Pyramids in Egypt.
5
The evidence is purely in stone and not in language. The degree of civilization that
prevailed in prehistoric Malta assumes a high level of linguistic self-expression. It
must have been a rich language to express the ideas and aspirations of the Maltese,
who built temples to the gods in huge blocks of imperishable stone. But that is all I
can say – no signs of that old language remain.
Around 1000 BC the most famous sailors and traders of the old world were the
Phoenicians. Their navigators were the first people to appreciate the strategic position
of our islands. They took shelter in the natural harbours of the principal island and
called it Malet, meaning refuge. Later the Greeks turned the name into Melita, which
eventually became Malta. The Phoenician name for Gozo was Gwl, meaning a round
ship. Gozo is the island where the legendary nymph Calypso kept Ulysses for 7 years.
6
We may divide the history of the Maltese islands into a number of periods of
foreign occupation. Each one had an impact on our language.
Of course we may start with the Phoenicians and Carthaginians (800 BC)
Then there were the Romans (218 BC)
The Arabs (870 AD)
Aragonese/Spanish (13 th century AD)
The Knights of St. John (1530)
The French (1798)
and finally the British (1800)
Malta got its independence in 1964 and became a republic in 1974
Evidence of the presence of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians consist of a few
inscriptions found in various parts of Malta showing a Punic community. This reminds
me of a word of Phoenician origin. Qala is an old coastal village in Gozo, the name
standing for inlet.
The Phoenician era was followed by that of the mighty Romans under whom Malta
had its own senate and assembly with the right of sending legates to Rome.
7
The greatest event that took place during the Roman rule in Malta was the
shipwreck of St. Paul - 60 AD. This had a great influence on the religious vocabulary
of the Maltese, their Christianity dating back to this period. Indeed Malta and this
event are mentioned in the Bible by St Luke. The hospitable Maltese were referred to
as barbarians, meaning that they could neither speak Greek nor Latin. Most likely thelanguage used was still Punic. Much of the influence of the Phoenicians,
Carthaginians and Romans on modern Maltese has been lost.
It was the invasion of the Arabs in 870 that had the most profound effect on our
language. Indeed Maltese is a Semitic language and the only one written in the Latin
alphabet.
8
The alphabet consists of 30 letters of which 24 are consonants and 6 are vowels.
a, b, , d, e, f, , g, g , , h, i, ie, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x,
, z
sounds as ch in church
sounds like j in jar
g is silent except at the end of a word like ahh!
h is silent like h in heir but sounds like h in hat
ie sounds like ee as in peer
sounds like z in buzz
the vowels are a, e, i, ie, o, u y is not used
In linguistics, Semitic refers to a language family of Middle Eastern origin. The
family includes ancient and modern forms of Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Maltese
amongst others. Specifically, Maltese evolved from the north African Arabic dialect
area or Maghrebine dialects.
9
The vocabulary in Maltese derived from Semitic is usually related with objects,
ideas, needs, and feelings of the primitive, simple life. Some examples are:
ilma – water ba ar - sea
xita – rain adid - iron
deheb – gold fidda - silver
kelb – dog ti ie a - hen
aw a – peach inbid - wine
alib – milk fer – happiness
ui g - pain
10
The main characteristic of the Semitic element in Maltese is trilitteralism. This is
derived from the simplest form of a Maltese verb which is the third person masculine
singular of the past tense. This is called the verb stem and the consonants are referred
to as the roots. Maltese verbs are mostly based on 3 roots, and less often, 4 roots (in
this case, quadriliterralism).kiser k—s—r (he) broke
libes l—b—s (he) put on
xorob x—r—b (he) drank
feta f—t— (he) opened
kiteb k—t—b (he) wrote
seraq s—r—q (he) stole
The roots of a verb remain the same and in the same order whatever the pronoun or
tense used, e.g. kiteb:
Present tense
jien nikteb I write
Int tikteb you write
hu jikteb he writes
hi tikteb she writes
ahna niktbu we write
intom tiktbu you write
huma jiktbu they write
huma jiktbu they write
Past tense
jien ktibt I wrote
int ktibt you wrote
hu kiteb he wrote
hi kitbet she wrote
a na ktibna we wrote
intom ktibtu you wrote
huma kitbu they wrote
huma kitbu they wrote
11
The trilitteral system has the capability of creating new words from the verb which
exhibits such a root, e.g. mitjar (airport) from the root T-J-R or semmiegha (a listening
audience) from the root S-M-Gh. Moreover, many words of non-Arabic origin have also
been incorporated into Maltese through the use of this linguistic model. For instance,
the order of the roots P-T-R from Pittore (Italian for ‘painter’) are extracted and used
to derive many of the tenses, verbs, and nouns of this same word, e.g. pitter (he
painted), PiTTuR (painter), and tPiTTeR (he is painted). From the S-R-P of serpe
(Italian for ‘snake’) are derived, amongst others, SeRP (snake), SRieP (snakes),
SeRReP (he snaked), SSeRReP (he is snaked).
12
Here are some sentences utilising verbs designed from trilitteralism:
Jien naqra l-ktieb I read the bookInt tikser it-tazza You break the glass
Hu xorob l-ilma He drank water
Hi fet et il-bieb She opened the door
Maltese has extended trilitteralism in an autonomous fashion and has continued to
generate from native roots inherited in Arabic, new words that do not occur in
Classical or vernacular Arabic, e.g. ‘ndaa l’ – ‘he interfered’, ‘ndi :l’ – ‘interference’
from ‘daa l’ – ‘to enter’.
13
The numbers are also derived from Arabic:
1- wie ed 2 – tnejn 3 – tlieta 4 – erbg a 5 – amsa
6 – sitta 7 – sebg a 8 – tmienja 9 – disg a 10 – g axra
11 – dax 12 – tnax 13 – tlettax 14 – erbatax 15 – mistax
16 – sittax 17 – sbatax 18 – tmintax 19 – dsatax 20 – g oxrin
In the numbers after 20, the units precede the tens:
Eg. 21 is wieed u g oxrin
unlike French and English which is the other way round – vingt et un(e)
Also unlike French we have one word for each of the following:
70 sebg in
80 tmenin
90 disg in
14
Like the French, an adjective follows the noun it qualifies and agrees with it in
gender and number. However the adjective sits after the noun.
Jien naqra sitt kotba kbar - I read 6 large books
Maria hi mara twila - Maria is a tall lady
15
Under the Arabs, the Maltese were obliged to pay heavy taxes and were deprived of
their former privileges, including self-government and matters related with Christian
religion, such as the building of churches and the reading of the Gospel.Count Roger was the cousin of William the Conquerer, King of England. Heading
an army of Normans, he waged war against Sicily. After conquering the island, he
sailed southwards with his fleet to Malta in 1090. He was well received by the Maltese
who were fed up of Arab rule. The Normans brought Sicilian with them and well
influenced the language of the natives with whom they shared the common bond of
Christianity. Tradition has it that Count Roger gave the national flag to the Maltese
by taking off a strip from his own banner.
Unfortunately, feudal lords together with their Norman followers gradually poured
from Sicily into Malta, and as time went on new words and new styles of speech were
introduced. The Romance vocabulary was progressively added by the Angevins during
the period of Charles Anjou (1266-83), the Aragonese (1283-1410) and the Castillians
who successively governed our islands. Arabic linguistic influences lasted till 1224.
Up till then, through Count Roger, the Arabs had been allowed to live in peace in
Malta. Tradition tells us that a peasant girl accidentally discovered an Arab meeting
being held in the vicinities where she used to tend her flock. The Arab plot comprised
of a general massacre of the Maltese and it was fixed in Holy Week, when the Maltese
would be busy engaged in their devotions. The plot was thus exposed and the Maltese
revolted against the Arabs. Full information of what had happened was sent to Sicily
and the King, Frederick II, expelled the Arabs from Malta as a punishment for their
revolt.
16
Henceforth, the effects of Semitic linguistic isolation on Maltese seems to have led
to a recycling and restructuring of its former Arabic linguistic rules. An example of
this particular strategy of relexification occurs in the realm of function words, adverbs,
etc, many of which have been locally generated via lexical fusion of discrete Arabic
elements. Examples include
Maltese Literal Translation Meaning
madankollu with all of this nevertheless
ga lfejn whereto why
mina bba out of love of because
The originality of Maltese in recycling Arabic lexicon also comes into play in the
form of semantic shifts:
Maltese Arabic
a fna much a fna handful
wisq too much wasq cago (Cairo)
Interestingly, despite its extraneousness to the Arabic-speaking world, Maltese
retains certain old Arabic words attested in Classical Arabic but completely lost in the
contemporary Arabic dialects:
Maltese Meaning Old Arabic
mindu since munu /muqatt never qattu
seta, jista to be able ista: ‘, yusti:’
17
The Knights of St. John were a religious order that began as a hospital for pilgrims
to Jerusalem (c1070). During the crusades they took on a military function but the
Moslems finally expelled them from Palestine and Rhodes where they had settled.
Being in such dire straits, King Charles V of Spain and Holy Roman emperor, offered
the Order the islands of Malta for the yearly presentation of a falcon to the Viceroy of
Sicily.
It was 1530 and the Order under French Grandmaster l’Isle Adam took over the
islands. The Knights, all of noble birth, were divided into 8 Langues according to their
nationality; there were those of Aragon, Auverne, Castille, England (including
Scotland and Ireland), France, Germany, Italy and Provence. Each Langue had a
separate building called Auberge, where the members of that Langue held their
meetings. The symbol of the Order was an 8-pointed cross, bearing relation to the 8
Langues and to the 8 chivalric virtues: loyalty, piety, frankness, bravery, glory and
honour, contempt of death, helpfulness to the poor and the sick, respect for the
Church. These correspond to the eight beatitudes. The cross is now known as the
Maltese Cross and carries high national significance, eg. Our national airline –
Airmalta and our euro coins carry the Maltese Cross
18
The most notable event during the Order’s stay in Malta was the Great Siege of
1565. Under the French grandmaster Jean Parison de la Valette, 700 knights and
9000 Maltese repelled a massive attack by the Ottoman Turks – a 40,000 strong army.
Malta was called “the island of heroes” and the “Bulwark of the Faith”. To honour
him, King Philip of Spain proclaimed La Valette, ‘The greatest hero of his age’ and
presented him with a sword, now in the Louvre in Paris. A new city was built.
Named Valletta, it remains the capital city of Malta to this day. More than 250 years
later, Benjamin Disraeli was to call Valletta, with its magnificent cathedral, ‘a city of
palaces built by gentlemen for gentlemen’. Today it is a world heritage site.
Under the administration of the Order, literary Italian became the established
language of the courts and among the legal profession. The established character of
Italian as the language of culture in Malta more than ever influenced and enhanced
the Romance aspect of Maltese, especially in the realm of non-basic lexicon, such as
sacred objects, natural objects that are non-existent in Malta, metals and precious
stones, places and buildings related with a modern city, sophisticated meals, etc. The
arrival of many Sicilians and Italians needed for the building of Valletta served
especially to further such influence. In such times, there were also frequent Italian-
Maltese marriages, resulting in bilingual children. Indeed, it was precisely in this
epoch that the vernacular of the Islands was generally referred to as ‘Maltese’ rather
than ‘Arabic’ (Wettinger 1993: 154).
19Some Romance loanwords include:
familja - family sopran – soprano
pinnola - pill musi ista – musician
pjazza - square kwart - a fourth
villa - villa vjolin - violin
sala - hall letteratura - literature
tornavit - screwdriver nota - note
kaptan - captain sunett - sonnet
20
Moreover, many Maltese verbs started taking over the Romance linguistic rule of
concatenated morphology, where the principal part of a free morpheme is created
through a morphemic stem that does not change, and with which are added prefixes or
suffixes. Thanks to this system, Maltese could create its own words from foreign
(usually Italian) verbs that did not lend themselves to triliterralism (or
quadrilitteralism) due to their relatively larger stems.
to pretend (present tense)
Prefix Morphemic Stem Suffix
jien nip pretend i
inti tip pretend i
huwa jip pretend i
hija tip pretend i
ahna nip pretend u
intkom tip pretend u
huma jip pretend u
to pretend (past tense)
Prefix Morphemic Stem Suffix
p pretend ejt
p pretend ejt
p pretend a
p pretend iet
p pretend ejna
p pretend ejtu
p pretend ew
21
to consult (present tense)
Prefix Morphemic Stem Suffix
nik konsult a
tik konsult a
jik konsult atik konsult a
nik konsult aw
tik konsult aw
jik konsult aw
to consult (past tense)
Prefix Morphemic Stem Suffix
k konsult ajt
k konsult ajt
k konsult a
k konsult at
k konsult ajna
k konsult ajtu
k konsult aw
22
The 17th century saw better fortifications for the Maltese islands. It was also
during this century that the first serious attempts at writing in Maltese took place,
the learned having preferred so far to write in Italian. Amongst these writers were
Frangisk Wizzino, Pelagju Mifsud, and Mikiel Anton Vassalli. It was Vassalli who
wrote the first Maltese dictionary and a comprehensive grammar to teach the Maltese
how to write and read in their native tongue.
As years rolled by, discipline within the order declined, young Knights even
breaking their monastic vows of chastity, obedience and poverty. Increase in taxes
brought dissent among the population.
In 1798 Napoleon turned his eyes on Malta and while on his way to Egypt, he
stopped off the coast with 470 ships and 37000 troops. As there were many Knights
who were pro-French, resistance put up by Grandmaster Hompesch was practically
futile. No single cannon ball was fired. Surrender was signed by the Order on board
Bonaparte’s flagship, ‘Orient’.
23
The period of French rule in Malta is of little linguistic significance but the
following words probably go back to this period:
a i s from chassis - chasings of a door or window
sjett from assiette - small plate
bon u from bonjour
bonswa from bonsoir
surtun from surtout - a tailcoat
French rule in Malta was hectic, lasting only 2 years. Against the will of the
population the rulers tried to raise money for their Napoleonic wars by looting the
churches. The revolution was triggered on the 2nd of September when some Frenchdeputies went to Notabile (the old capital city) for the purpose of selling a tapestry of
the Carmelite Church. The inhabitants came to know about this affair and
slaughtered them. In a few days, Maltese from every part of the island joined in the
uprising, and the French troops were compelled to close themselves inside Valletta.
With the help of the British, the French were compelled to exile the Islands.
The turn of the century (1800) saw the start of British rule. Initially this had no effect
on our language. This was because the rural Maltese, being uneducated, had little
contact with the British, while those who lived in the cities and were educated, up to
WWII, continued to use Italian as a resistance weapon against the Islands’ possible
Anglicization. The cult of Italian as the language of culture among the Maltese had
been retained throughout the British colonial administration, often at the cost of much
friction with the colonial regime.
24
A revealing growing dissension in the inter-war period revolved on the Maltese
language itself. Its isolation from the sources of Semitic speech, and interaction with
Indo-European, created a ‘Semitic-Romance polarization’ in the minds of many
Maltese speakers as is witnessed by the movement of these times advocating the use
of ‘Malti safi’ ‘pure Maltese’.
The feeling that Maltese was being inundated by foreign lexicon is not new; it
echoes views first expressed in the 18th century by the Maltese linguist and orientalist
Mikiel Anton Vassallo (1764-1829), who earned for himself the title of ‘father of the
Maltese language’ for his efforts at arousing a national linguistic consciousness and a
responsible attitude on the part of the Maltese community of his time towards their
language.
What happened during the inter-war years more than before, was that when in
practice, two separate words – a native term and an Italian equivalent – were
available in Maltese for a particular concept, e.g. native ‘ia a jr’ and the loan term
‘rringraccya’ from ‘ringraziare’, both meaning ‘he thanked’, the selection process on the
part of the individual native speaker or writer tended not to be a random one, but
often reflected his cultural aspirations, educational background, and political
affiliations. With regard to the latter point, it was generally recognised that the
newspapers of the two principal political parties had developed distinct linguistic and
rhetorical styles: the Labour organ inclines to the use of Semitic, while the Nationalist
one is more receptive to Romance loans. An example of Maltese inclined to either
Romance or Semitic words can be seen in the two versions of the following sentence:
‘Il-el lieda qalbiena kisbu reba kbira ga l Malta’ and ‘Is-suldati kuraj ui
akkwistaw vittorja grandjua lil Malta’ – ‘The courageous warriors won a great
victory for Malta’.
For the first seventy years of their rule on the Islands, the British did not seek to
impose English as an official language. However, after the unification of Italy (1870)
and Britain’s awareness of the several Irredentists present at that time in Malta,
Britain, which knew the importance of possessing a naval base in Malta, sought to
substitute Italian to English. 25
This triggered in Malta what is known as the ‘Language Question’, mostly due to
the fact that Italian had a social distinction while English was the language of an
empire that could offer work to people who learnt its language.
Again, this polarization, which gradually took the form of enmity, was manifested
especially between the political parties. The Labour party insisted on the preference
of English to Italian, while the Nationalist party insisted on the ‘paripassu’ system,
whereby English and Italian would be placed on a relatively equal footing, and
strongly defended Latin culture against the attacks of their rivals, insofar as they
considered the Latin culture more congenial to Maltese tradition.
More than anything, the outcome of WWII had the effect of undermining the
former position of Italian and preparing the way for its replacement by English. In
these times was established an obligatory education for everyone, where children were
to be taught English as from a very young age in primary schools. The importance of
Italian as an official language gradually waned away until nowadays, although many
Maltese can speak it more fluently than English, it has no crucial importance
whatsoever in the country. The importance of English, on the other hand, increased
with the introduction of diverse new words related with recent inventions, but also
due to the strong social and cultural changes that Malta has undergone these last fifty
years.
26
The 2nd. half of the 20th century saw the English language becoming more
important for people seeking jobs. Hence, its influence on Maltese was considerable;
we find loanwords associated with
Sports – futbol, plejer
Jobs – mekkanik, elektrixin
Technology – kompjuter, kalkjulejter
Furniture - dek er, kabord
Entertainment – disko, parti
27
English verbs found their way into Maltese, when needed, once again through the
concatenate system. Since English verbal stems are more or less small unlike Italian
(e.g. test, run, shock), it would have been possible, had Maltese not been influenced by
Romance languages beforehand, to integrate its words into the Semitic trilitteral
system. Maltese verbs derived from English tend to be characterised by the addition
of the consonant ‘j’ in the last syllable immediately after the morphemic stem. A
gemination of the first consonant also occurs. The vowel ‘i’ then always precedes the
consonant gemination while ‘a’ always follows the ‘j’.
to test – it test ja
to run – ir rann jato shock – ix xokk ja
to weld – iw weld ja
to type – it tajp ja
Verbs derived from English are also capable of generating other forms of words from
those same verbs through Romance suffixes and in the case of nouns even through
English suffixes.
ittestja – testjatura – tester – testers
irranja – rannjatura – rannjar
iwweldja – weldjatura – welder – welders
28
After a lot of political debating, Maltese finally became the national language of
Malta in 1934 and an official language of the EU in 2004. To the present day, Malta
has nonetheless retained its bilingualism, which is essential for international
purposes. English now constitutes its second language, and its practical usage vis-à-
vis Maltese varies from effective code-switching to an exclusive proficiency in either
one of the two languages, but also to the interesting phenomenon of Manglish – a way
of speaking that is intrinsically a hotchpotch of Maltese and English languages, that is
also developing a pronunciation unique to itself. Interesting to note is the fact that
Manglish itself branches into several varieties depending on which of the two
languages is the dominant one. Needless to say, Maltese raised speaking in this way
can find difficulties in gaining a full proficiency in either of the two languages, in
being exposed to a fragmentary way of speaking that intrinsically impairs them from
truly learning one language or the other.
29
An estimate on the origin of Maltese words: Arabic 40%
Romance 40%
English 20%
Maltese had very humble beginnings – from an Arabic vernacular it evolved in line
with its own internal logic, maintaining a Semitic base and letting it work in a self-
autonomous fashion upon extraneous (non-Arabic) elements, developing a Romance
and Anglo-Saxon superstructure that has altered it mainly in the realms of phonology,
syntax, and lexicon. What thus makes Maltese a language in its own right is the
cumulative impact of autonomous development and language contact. As with all
other languages, it is the offspring not just of foreign impression but of the ever-
changing expression of the inhabitants of Malta. It is the most revealing phenomenon
of the national consciousness. Alongside the patron saint village feasts, the rivalry of
band clubs, the traditional food such as the ‘pastizzi’ and ‘qubbajd’, the personalities,
the ways of thinking, the traditional song of ‘ghana’, the ancient fortifications, the
fireworks, the religion, and the literature amongst other things, is Maltese - that
includes it all.Several of the pronominal suffixes used in this context are derived from the Semitic
ones, though others are not.
In the imperfect tense for instance, many Italianate-derived verbs that in Italian end
with ‘–are’, started conjugating themselves like the verb ‘nesa’, while those verbs
whose Italian counterparts end with ‘-ere’ or ‘-ire’, started conjugating themselves like
the verb ‘mexa’. Like Italian, the conjugation of some Maltese verbs started becoming
dependent on their last vowel.
Nesa Kanta Mexa Offra
(cantare) (offrire
jien ninsa
inti tinsa
huwa jinsa
hija
ahna
intom
huma
Lingwistika Generali
Semitic languages coming from Noah’s son Sem
The Maltese aren’t of a Semitic race though the language is Semitic.
Bilinguilism: The variety of languages in Malta – code-switching, the domain
Dialectology: a general outlook of the dialects in Malta and Gozo
Use of Maltese and English: is Malta really a bilingual country?
Folklore (first writings on Maltese folklore)
Influences on folklore and language – Romance (Sicily, Italy, Spain, and Rhodes) and
Semitic (Turks, Saracens, Mori, states of Barbary); words related to folklore are
Semitic (nature, tools, professions, etc); ghana (its study started in 1791 – Malte par
un voyageur francais); taqbiliet (bilingual e.g.); hrejjef (Arabic beginnings);
Romance influences in prayers.
Ir-Razza u l-Lingwa f’Malta
The independence of race and language
Social barrier between the Maltese and English
Maltese has Arabic grammatical characteristics (especially the dialects of upper
Africa) but also a Sicilian element in vocabulary and idioms, and also in syntax. It is a
mixture of both Romance and Semitic languages. Semitic and Romance surnames.
Il-Bilingwizmu f’Malta
The necessity, since the earliest historical times, of Malta being bilingual
Reasons for the change of the native tongue to Arabic
The language question (Italian or English)
Il-Malti bhala Lsien Imhallat
A brief summary of all four types of Maltese verbs – maybe insert these types
into their respective historical period in presentation.Language (Alexander Borg) The unusual circumstance that Maltese, a Semitic language, found itself isolated from the sources of Semitic speech, and in close interaction with Indo-European (movement in inter-war period). In practice, when two separate words - a native term and an Italian equivalent - are available in Maltese for a particular concept, the selection process often reflects cultural aspirations, educational background, and political affiliations. The newspapers of the two principal political parties have developed distinct linguistic and rhetorical styles. Habitual, free codeswitching between Maltese and English The Maltese Islands constitute a fairly complex dialect area. The north African Arabic dialect area or Maghrebine dialects as the dialects from which Maltese evolved from Other Maltese traits that are unknown in the Maghreb Separation from the realia of mainland Arab culture has meant in part a massive borrowing from the geographically closest language, Italian, particularly in the realm of non-basic lexicon. The most clearly discernible linguistic isolation is in the way the language has recycled and restructured native Arabic to expand the lexicon, e.g. lexical fusion of discrete Arabic elements, semantic shifts, a tendency towards linguistic conservatism, The diverse reasons of Italian (and Sicilian before) influence under the Knights of St John. The Maltese aFccommodation of Sicilian linguistic elements from the Normans to the Knights. Influence of Italian in the times of the Knights: Dun Karm, and its fall due to the outcome of WWII. The Malta Language Question: A Case Study in Cultural Imperialism (Geoffrey Hill) The (sixfold) lexical stratification of Maltese Maltese as simultaneously Semitic and Romance – see quotes. National Identity (Oliver Friggieri) A theory related to the pre-historic temples depicting Malta as ‘l’ile sacree de la Mediterranee’. The importance of religion, ritual, and rite, and the artistic and architectural skills of the megalithic temple-builders themselves. The influence of Catholicism on the Maltese identity Malta as a quasi-theocracy during the times of the Order; the feasts and traditions that the Knights instilled in Malta; Lingwistika: Storja u Lingwa (Tarcisju Zarb) Consult for other types of Semitic influences in Maltese 2. The Maltese language is today the only living vestige of medieval dialectical Arabic spoken on European soil, surviving by many centuries the extinction of the medieval Arabic vernaculars of Sicily (12th century), Spain, and Pantelleria (16th century). It is by no means however an Arabic dialect. The fact that Maltese is an autonomous language depends above all on its influence not just by Semitic languages, but also especially by Romance languages, especially Italian. But fairly recently, also English.
Moreover, the Arabic aspect in this language in turn evolved in line with its own internal logic, drifting away from the norms of spoken Arabic. Maltese bears linguistic elements of both Southern and Northern countries, and yet it also differentiates itself from them. Philologists today deny the possibility of a simple definition of Maltese. Giovanni Mangion speaks of it as ‘materia semitica in bocca romanza’, while for Alan Hubert-Bonnal and Anne Tronche, it is a ‘hybrid language which, with its numerous additions of Romance terms, stands today as a truly unique linguistic mosaic’. Above all else, these factors have been the inevitable result of the Maltese history. Drawing light on its succeeding epochs, we will be drawing light on the language itself, its necessary formation. The inexorable and overall importance of history on Maltese is due to the fact that ‘since it was first colonised […] [Malta] has never been very far from the centre of events and has often played a critical part in the making of history’.
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