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Maltese is the national language of Malta, and an official language of the European Union. It is the only Semitic language written in the Latin alphabet in its standard form.
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.
GrammarMaltese grammar is fundamentally derived from Arabic, although Romance and Anglo-Saxon patterns are also used. Semitic grammatical structure
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". This is very well-developed in Arabic. 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. Romance grammatical structureThe 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. English grammatical structureThe 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. VocabularyMaltese 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.). Quranic Arabic rootsŻammit (2000, see references) 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%)). 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. Words of Romance originIt 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, /ʃ/ (English 'sh') is written 'x' and this produces interesting spellings: ambaxxata /ambaʃːaːta/ is 'embassy', xena /ʃeːna/ is 'scene' (cf. Italian ambasciata, scena). Below are just a few examples:
The perverse 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's formal academic writing, but not understand much simpler sentences. English loan wordsIt 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:
Semitic form vs Romance formMaltese 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, intellectual speech 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. Samples
AlphabetBelow 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.
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