Maltese language

The Maltese language (in Maltese il-Malti or also l-ilsien Malti, the Maltese language) is one of two languages Malta's official languages along with English and is considered the national language of Malta, as well as being one of the official languages of the European Union.

It is a Semitic language derived from Arabic, mainly Maghrebi Arabic, which has received a strong Latin influence in about 60% of its vocabulary (mainly Italian and Sicilian). This language has undergone a peculiar evolution and has good amount of loanwords from other languages, so it is often said to be a mixed, Semitic, or Creole language. Some linguists say that Maltese is unclassifiable.

It comes from Sicilian colloquial Arabic, a dialect of Maghrebi Arabic that has disappeared today. Its isolation from the Arab world, for political and religious reasons, led to its development as a distinct language, adopting many borrowings from Greek, Italian, Sicilian, Catalan, Spanish and English. For some time the hypothesis of a Phoenician origin was handled, but this theory was based more on political than linguistic considerations and today it is discredited.

It is the only Semitic language officially written with Latin characters. Maltese became the official language of Malta in 1936, along with English. Previously, until 1530, the official language had been Sicilian and, later, Italian.

Historical, social and cultural aspects

Geographic distribution

The geographic domain of Maltese is restricted to the Republic of Malta, although there are some Maltese emigrant communities that speak the language in Italy, Tunisia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Colombia, Australia, Argentina, Mexico, Spain, Brazil, France, Belgium and New Zealand, among others.

Official Status

Maltese is the language of the more than 416055 inhabitants (2014 estimated data) of the three islands (Malta, Gozo and Comino) that make up the Republic of Malta, located 97 kilometers from the southern coast of Sicily. It is the national language of the country and one of its official languages, along with English. It is also the language of the families that emigrated (more than 200,000) to countries such as Australia (which has newspapers, magazines and radio broadcasts wholly or partly in Maltese), the United Kingdom, the United States (New York, Detroit, California) or Canada. There is no data available about the knowledge of the language on the part of the second or third generation of these emigrants. According to Ethnologue, Maltese is spoken by approximately 522,000 people in all countries.

Maltese is used in Parliament, law courts and churches, as well as being the medium of instruction in state primary and secondary schools. Some private schools, however, prefer the use of English, as do most departments at the University of Malta.

English is the second language of the middle and upper classes (it even becomes the first language in some cases), and its number of speakers is very important within the sector of workers dedicated to tourism. English is not as well known among the less skilled workers living in rural areas, who only speak Maltese.

Italian, which was the official language of Malta for many centuries and up to 1934, is also quite widespread among the higher classes, especially in professional families, as well as being the third language widely taught in the schools. This situation, together with the popularity of Italian television programs, accessible to the Maltese audience for more than a generation, has raised the status of Italian after having suffered a considerable decline in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Dialects

Despite Malta's small geographical area (316 square kilometres), the existing dialectal variety is striking, more pronounced in phonology. Two main groups of dialects are distinguished: the first group comprises the prestigious dialects of the educated classes, located mainly in the country's capital, Valletta, and in the overcrowded middle-class residential areas of Sliema and its surroundings. One of its main characteristics is the constant alternation between Maltese and English.

The second group, located fundamentally in the towns (mostly dedicated to agriculture) and in the industrial districts around Porto Grande, is characterized by presenting differences in the vowel system; the preservation, in one or two cases, of individual consonants typical of the 'central' Arabic dialects (which the rest of the Maltese dialects do not preserve) and the presence of a greater number of words of Arabic origin.

The dialect of Gozo differs slightly from that of the main island.

History

The country has always been a strategic island-fortress between the eastern and western shores of the Mediterranean. The Maltese language originates from Arabic, with Turkish loanwords for naval terms, although it has evolved into a new language, and is the official language on the island of Malta. Its writing system is not currently Arabic but, from the XVIII century, Roman, although until the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 Maltese was occasionally written in Hebrew characters. Due to its isolation, from the 13th century it is free of all diglossia.

Aside from Malta and Gozo, only one or two place names can cautiously be ascribed to periods preceding the Arab conquest of 870. This shows that the islands were inhabited or harbored a number reduced in population during much of the Arab domination (approximately from 870 to 1090). Between their capture by Norman rulers of Sicily and the arrival of the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem (1090–1530), the islands belonged to both Sicilians and Spanish. During the second half of this stage, Sicilian was a widespread language among the highest levels of the Church and the laity, and probably also among skilled merchants and craftsmen. The vocabulary of today's Maltese is full of Sicilianisms; in fact, most of the lexicon related to fishing and construction activities is of Sicilian origin.

The oldest Maltese text, titled Cantilena, is a 20-line poem. Composed around 1460–85 by Petro de Caxaro. There are also other texts from around the second half of the XVII century, but more than a hundred years would have to pass before writing in Maltese was a systematic activity. Mikiel Anton Vasalli (1764-1829) was the intellectual who argued that Maltese was an important part of Maltese culture and that it should be the national language, which is why he is considered "the father of the language Maltese" for his contributions both to the linguistic study of Maltese and for his fight for the dignity of the language. In the XIX century, local writers and foreign administrators, such as J. Hookhain Frere, encouraged the literary use of Maltese. At the beginning of the XX century, it began to mature and set a standard model, the work of the Għaqda tal-Kittieba tal-Malti (Maltese Writers' Alliance), whose grammar and spelling was generally accepted. Authors recognized for their quality arose such as Dun Karm Psaila (1871-1961), considered the national poet of Malta. After independence (1964), the rate, breadth and quality of publications in Maltese has increased considerably. Today there are daily, weekly and other publications in Maltese (in addition to three daily and three Sunday papers in English).

The oldest lexical samples survive in place names and nicknames found in notarial and other documents (written in Sicilian and Latin) dating from the turn of the century XIV. For more clues about the description of the late medieval language, we have to resort to the study of contemporary Judeo-Arabic documents of Maltese origin; however, it would be rash to equate the language present in these texts with Maltese. The arrival of the knights in 1530 was soon followed by the Tuscanization of Sicily, and from this date a Tuscan-based Italian supplanted Sicilian as the language of culture and administration on the islands. Italian played this role throughout the period of the Knights of Malta (1530–1798) and for much of the years of British colonization (1800–1964), but English gradually began to displace it in the XIX of the administration.

Linguistic description

Phonology

Vowels

The Maltese language has 6 vowels, long and short, where the long vowel is ie [iː] and the short ones are a [a/ɐ], e [ɛ/ɛː], i [i], o [ɔ/ɔː] and u [ʊ/ʊː].

The diphthongs are: aj [ɐɪ], aw [aw], ej [ɛɪ], ew [ɛw], iw [ɪw], oj [ɔj] and ow [ɔw]

Consonants

Grammar

Gender is masculine or feminine by virtue of natural gender; for other nouns it is the ending that determines; broadly speaking, nouns and adjectives that end in a consonant are masculine.
Typically feminine endings are -a, -ti, -i (the last two endings being characteristic of Italian loanwords).

There are three numbers: singular, plural and dual, reserving the latter for body parts that are even and certain measures of time; for example: idejn ('the hands'), sentejn ('two years'). The plural is formed in two ways: by adding final particles, such as -n, -at, -ijiet, - iet, as Malti ('Maltese'), Maltin ('Maltese'), omm ('mother'), ommijiet ('mothers'); or by breaking (plural fracto), as ktieb ('book'), kotba ('books'), bint ('daughter'), bniet ('daughters').

The numbering is the same as in Arabic. Sentence order is: subject, verb, and object: L-omm taqra l-ktieb ('the mother reads the book').

Adjectives and Nouns

Adjectives are placed after nouns, both taking an article if the adjective is of Semitic origin but only the first if it is of Romance origin: Il-kelb il-kbir ('the big dog'), but kelb kbir ('a big dog', 'big dog'),

Nouns can be singular, plural, or dual. Plurals are formed by adding suffixes like “-iet/” or “-ijie” when they are regular. Irregulars are formed by changing internal vowels (plural fracto): raġel, irġiel ('man, men'). Nouns from Romance languages are generally pluralized in two ways: by adding “-i” or “-jiet”. For example: lingwa, lingwi ('language, languages'). Those of English origin form the plural by adding o "-s" or "-jiet", as: friġġ, friġis, from the English word fridge. Some words can form their plural in several different ways.

Adjectives must agree in gender and number with nouns

Definite Article

The definite article in Maltese is il-, regardless of gender or number. Preceded or followed by a vowel, this article becomes l-.

• l-omm (mother)
• il-missier (the father)

The definite article in Maltese can in some cases take the form of the consonant that follows it ("lunar consonants"):

• petit: imicikkulata (the chocolate)
• D: id-dar (house)
• N: in- (fire)
• A: ir-razzett (the farm)
• S: is-serrieq (the saw)
• T: it-tifel (the child)
• X: ix-xemx (the sun)
• Ż: ż-żarbun (the shoe)
• Z: iz-zalzett (the sausage)

Maltese has no indefinite article.

Verbs

Verbs are conjugated with prefixes, infixes, and suffixes. There are two tenses: present and perfect. The Maltese verbal system incorporates verbs of Romance origin and adds Maltese suffixes and prefixes to them.

Writing system

The alphabet used is a modified model of the Roman, established in the 1920s and officially adopted in 1934. This model uses diacritics, digraphs, and redundant letters from the Roman alphabet to denote sounds that it did not conventionally represent.

This alphabet (in Maltese l-alfabett Malti, the Maltese alphabet) consists of 30 characters:

of these, three (3) are consonant letters with diacritics: Ċ, Ġ, Ż, and two (2) are digraphs: GĦ, IE.

Vocabulary

There are a huge number of Sicilian Romance loanwords into Maltese.

Sample text

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Il-bnedmin kollha jitwieldu.ielsa u ugwali fid-dinjità u d-drittijiet. Huma mog.nija bir-ra injectionuni u bil-kuxjenza u g.andhom i Learningibu ru.hom ma' xulxin bi spirtu ta' a.wa.

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights and, endowed with reason and conscience, they must behave fraternally with each other."