Maltese language

Maltese is a Central Semitic language derived from late medieval Sicilian Arabic with Romance superstrata. It is the only Semitic language officially written in the Latin script. It is spoken by the Maltese people and is a national language of Malta, and is the only official Semitic and Afroasiatic language of the European Union. According to John L. Hayes, it descended from a North African dialect of Colloquial Arabic which was introduced to Malta when the Aghlabids captured it in the 9th century. It is also said to have descended from Siculo-Arabic, which developed as a Maghrebi Arabic dialect in the Emirate of Sicily between 831 and 1091. As a result of the Norman invasion of Malta and the subsequent re-Christianisation of the islands, Maltese evolved independently of Classical Arabic in a gradual process of Latinisation. It is therefore exceptional as a variety of historical Arabic that has no diglossic relationship with Classical or Modern Standard Arabic. Maltese is thus classified separately from the 30 varieties constituting the modern Arabic macrolanguage. Maltese is also distinguished from Arabic and other Semitic languages since its morphology has been deeply influenced by Romance languages, namely Italian and Sicilian.
The original Arabic base comprises around one-third of the Maltese vocabulary, especially words that denote basic ideas and the function words, but about half of the vocabulary is derived from standard Italian and Sicilian; and English words make up between 6% and 20% of the vocabulary. A 2016 study shows that, in terms of basic everyday language, speakers of Maltese are able to understand less than a third of what is said to them in Tunisian Arabic and Libyan Arabic, which are Maghrebi Arabic dialects related to Siculo-Arabic, whereas speakers of Tunisian Arabic and Libyan Arabic are able to understand about 40% of what is said to them in Maltese. This reported level of asymmetric intelligibility is considerably lower than the mutual intelligibility found between mainstream varieties of Arabic.
Maltese has always been written in the Latin script, the earliest surviving example dating from the late Middle Ages. It is the only standardised Semitic language written exclusively in the Latin script.

History

The origins of the Maltese language are attributed to the arrival, early in the 11th century, of settlers from neighbouring Sicily, where Siculo-Arabic was spoken, reversing the Fatimid Caliphate's conquest of the island at the end of the 9th century.
The Norman conquest in 1091, followed by the expulsion of the Muslims, complete by 1249, permanently isolated the vernacular from its Arabic source, creating the conditions for its evolution into a distinct language. In contrast to Sicily, where Siculo-Arabic became extinct and was replaced by Sicilian, the vernacular in Malta continued to develop alongside Italian, eventually replacing it as official language in 1934, alongside English. The first written reference to the Maltese language is in a will of 1436, where it is called lingua maltensi. The oldest known document in Maltese, Il-Kantilena by Pietru Caxaro, dates from the 15th century.
The earliest known Maltese dictionary was a 16th-century manuscript entitled "Maltese-Italiano"; it was included in the Biblioteca Maltese of Mifsud in 1764, but is now lost. A list of Maltese words was included in both the Thesaurus Polyglottus and Propugnaculum Europae of Hieronymus Megiser, who had visited Malta in 1588–1589; Domenico Magri gave the etymologies of some Maltese words in his Hierolexicon, sive sacrum dictionarium.
An early manuscript dictionary, Dizionario Italiano e Maltese, was discovered in the Biblioteca Vallicelliana in Rome in the 1980s, together with a grammar, the Regole per la Lingua Maltese, attributed to a French knight named Thezan. The first systematic lexicon is that of Giovanni Pietro Francesco Agius de Soldanis, who also wrote the first systematic grammar of the language and proposed a standard orthography.
The language declined heavily under the British administration of Malta, declining in use compared to English. Following the independence of Malta, language reforms under the Dom Mintoff government saw the language gain an increase in use, and today is used regularly in Malta.

Demographics

Ethnologue reports a total of Maltese speakers: in Malta and in the diaspora. Most speakers also use English, usually the local dialect known as Maltese English.
The largest diaspora community of Maltese speakers is in Australia, with 36,000 speakers reported in 2006.
The Maltese linguistic community in Tunisia originated in the 18th century. Numbering several thousand in the 19th century, it was reported to be only 100 to 200 people as of 2017.

Classification

Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic, a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family. In the course of its history, Maltese has been influenced by Sicilian, Italian, to a lesser extent by Norman, and, more recently, English. Today, the core vocabulary is Semitic, with a large number of loanwords. 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.
Maltese has historically been classified in various ways, with some arguing that it was derived from ancient Punic instead of Siculo-Arabic, and others arguing it is one of the Berber languages. Implausibly, Fascist Italy classified it as regional Italian.

Dialects

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

Phonology

Consonants

Voiceless stops are only lightly aspirated and voiced stops are fully voiced. Voicing is carried over from the last segment in obstruent clusters; thus, two- and three-obstruent clusters are either voiceless or voiced throughout, e.g. is realised "we write". Maltese has final-obstruent devoicing of voiced obstruents and word-final voiceless stops have no audible release, making voiceless–voiced pairs phonetically indistinguishable in word-final position.
Gemination is distinctive word-medially and word-finally in Maltese. The distinction is most rigid intervocalically after a stressed vowel. Stressed, word-final closed syllables with short vowels end in a long consonant, and those with a long vowel in a single consonant; the only exception is where historic and meant the compensatory lengthening of the succeeding vowel. Some speakers have lost length distinction in clusters.
The two nasals and assimilate for place of articulation in clusters. and are usually dental, whereas are all alveolar. are found mostly in words of Italian origin, retaining length. and are only found in loanwords, e.g. gazzetta "newspaper" and televixin "television". The pharyngeal fricative is velar, uvular, or glottal for some speakers.

Vowels

Maltese has five short vowels,, written a e i o u; six long vowels,, written a, e, ie, i, o, u, all of which can be known to represent long vowels in writing only if they are followed by an orthographic għ or h ; and seven diphthongs,, written aj or għi, aw or għu, ej or għi, ew, iw, oj, and ow or ''għu.''

Historical phonology

The Maltese consonant system has undergone several changes when compared to Classical Arabic:
While many of these changes are the result of European influence, others are found in other varieties of Arabic, and may be either independent developments or features of the Sicilian Arabic dialect which Maltese descends from.

Orthography

Alphabet

The modern system of Maltese orthography was introduced in 1924. Below is the Maltese alphabet, with IPA symbols and approximate English pronunciation:

Letter	Name	IPA	Maltese example	IPA	Approximate English pronunciation
A a	a		aħmar		Similar to 'u' in nut in RP; similar to father in Irish English; similar to cat in American English. In some dialects, it may be in certain locations as in what in some American English dialects.
B b	be		baħar		bar, but at the end of a word, it is devoiced to.
Ċ ċ	ċe		ċavetta		church
D d	de		dar		day, but at the end of a word, it is devoiced to.
E e	e		erbgħa		somewhat like face in Northern England English; end. When short, it is often changed to when following, and more often when followed by, 'w'. When at the end of a word in an unstressed syllable, it is pronounced as schwa, as in comma.
F f	effe		faħam		far
Ġ ġ	ġe		ġar		gem, but at the end of a word, it is devoiced to.
G g	ge		gawwija		game, but at the end of a word, it is devoiced to.
Għ għ	ajn		għasfur	,	Has the effect of lengthening and pharyngealising associated vowels. When found at the end of a word, or immediately before 'h', it has the sound of a double 'ħ'.
H h	akka		hu		Not pronounced except in the word hieni; at the end of a word, even after adding the negating suffix ; or at the end of a verb, even after adding pronominal suffixes ; in these cases, it has the sound of 'ħ'.
Ħ ħ	ħe		ħanut		No English equivalent; sounds similar to but is articulated with a lowered larynx.
I i	i		ikel		bite and when short, as bit. Occasionally, 'i' is used to display il-vokali tal-leħen as in words like l-iskola or l-iMdina; in this case, it takes the schwa sound.
Ie ie	ie		ieqaf		Sounds similar to yield or RP near, or opened up slightly towards bed or RP square
J j	je		jum	j	yard
K k	ke		kelb		kettle
L l	elle		libsa	l	line
M m	emme		mara		march
N n	enne		nanna		next
O o	o		ors		as in somewhere between similar to Scottish English o in no like 'aw' in RP law, but short or as in water in some American English dialects.
P p	pe		paġna		part
Q q	qe		qattus		glottal stop, found in the Cockney English pronunciation of "bottle" or the phrase "uh-oh".
R r	erre	or	re		as in General American English butter, or ɹ road.
S s	esse		sliem		sand
T t	te		tieqa		tired
U u	u		uviera		as in General American English boot, or in some dialects, it may be realized as as in some American English realizations of student; short u is put.
V v	ve		vjola		vast, but at the end of a word, it is devoiced to.
W w	ve doppja /u doppja/we		widna		west
X x	xe		xadina		shade, sometimes as measure; when doubled, the sound is elongated, as in "Cash shin" vs. "Cash in".
Ż ż	że/żeta		żarbun		maze, but at the end of a word, it is devoiced to.
Z z	ze		zalza		pizza for

Final vowels with grave accents are also found in some Maltese words, mostly of Italian origin, such as sigurtà, kafè, Marì, però and tiramisù.
The official rules governing the structure of the Maltese language are recorded in the official guidebook Tagħrif fuq il-Kitba Maltija issued by the Akkademja tal-Malti. 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.
The National Council for the Maltese Language is the main regulator of the Maltese language. However, the academy's orthography rules are still valid and official.