Maltese language

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Maltese Malti
Spoken in:	Malta, Canada, Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Gibraltar
Total speakers:	371,900 [1]
Language family:	Afro-Asiatic  Semitic   Central Semitic    South Central Semitic     Arabic      Maltese
Official status
Official language of:	Malta, European Union
Regulated by:	Il-Kunsill Nazzjonali ta' l-Ilsien Malti ([2])
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	mt
ISO 639-2:	mlt
ISO 639-3:	mlt
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

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.

Apart from its phonology, Maltese bears considerable similarity to urban varieties of Tunisian Arabic and other North African Arabic dialects. Others however claim that there is a higher similarity to certain Lebanese and Syrian dialects, reflecting a common Phoenician/Carthaginian origin, which predates Arabic, with which it shares its Akkadian origins.^{[citation needed]} In the course of history, the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even morphological and syntactic patterns from Sicilian, Italian, and English.

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.

Contents 1 Grammar 1.1 Semitic grammatical structure 1.2 Romance grammatical structure 1.3 English grammatical structure 2 Vocabulary 2.1 Quranic Arabic roots 2.2 Words of Romance origin 2.3 English loan words 2.4 Semitic form vs Romance form 3 Samples 4 Alphabet 5 External links 6 References

[edit] Grammar

Maltese grammar is fundamentally derived from Arabic, although Romance and Anglo-Saxon patterns are also used.

[edit] Semitic grammatical structure

Adjectives follow nouns, there are no separately formed native adverbs, and word order is fairly flexible. As in Arabic and Hebrew, 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"; cf. Arabic at-tifl-u l-kabi:r, Hebrew ha-na`ar ha-gadol). This rule does not apply to adjectives of Romance origin.

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.

[edit] Romance grammatical structure

The 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.

[edit] English grammatical structure

The 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.

[edit] Vocabulary

Maltese 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.).

[edit] Quranic Arabic roots

Żammit (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.

[edit] Words of Romance origin

It 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:

Maltese	Sicilian	Italian	English
Skola	Scola	Scuola	School
Gvern	Cuvernu	Governo	Government
Repubblika	Ripùbblica	Repubblica	Republic
Re	Re	Re	King
Natura	Natura	Natura	Nature
Pulizija	Pulizzìa	Polizia	Police
Ċentru	Centru	Centro	Centre
Teatru	Tiatru	Teatro	Theatre

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.

[edit] English loan words

It 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:

Maltese	English
Futbol	Football
Baskitbol	Basketball
Mowbajl	Mobile [Phone]
Lift	Lift/Elevator
Friġġ	Fridge
Friżer	Freezer
Wejter	Waiter
Biljard	Billiard
Strajk	Strike
Plejer	Player
Frejm	Frame
Bliċ	Bleach
Fowlder	Folder

[edit] Semitic form vs Romance form

Maltese 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):

• Romance form: It-tempju sitwat oppost il-pjazza tal-villaġġ.

(Italian: Il tempio è situato opposto la piazza del villaggio.)

• Semitic form: Il-maqdes jinsab biswit il-misraħ tar-raħal.

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.

[edit] Samples

English:

Maltese:

How are you? Can you please help me? Do you speak English? Excuse me Good luck Good morning Good night Goodbye Happy birthday Happy new year Have a nice flight Hello Is everything okay? I am fine (OK/ All Right) I am from Malta Nice to meet you No thank you Please Take care Thank you very much What do you do? What's your name? Where are you from? Where are you going? You're welcome

Kif int? Tista' tgħinni jekk jogħġbok? Titkellem bl-Ingliż? Skużani Ir-riżq it-tajjeb (or) Xewqat Tajba Bonġu (or) L-għodwa t-tajba Bonswa (or) Il-lejl it-tajjeb Ċaw (or) Saħħa Għeluq sninek it-tajjeb Is-sena t-tajba Il-vjaġġ it-tajjeb Hello Kollox sew? (or) Kollox owkej? Jien orrajt (or) Jien owkej Jien minn Malta Għandi pjaċir Le grazzi Jekk jogħġbok Ħu ħsieb (or) Saħħa Grazzi ħafna X'tagħmel? X'jismek? Minn fejn int? Fejn sejjer? Ta' xejn

[edit] Alphabet

Below is the Maltese alphabet, with IPA symbols and approximate English pronunciation:

Letter	Name	IPA	Perso-Arabic	Approximate English pronunciation
A a	a (for anġlu (angel))	a	ـَ ، ـَا	similar to 'a' in father
B b	be (for ballun (ball))	b	ب	bar, but at the end of a word it is pronounced as [p].
Ċ ċ	ċe (for ċavetta (key))	ʧ	(چ)	church (note: dotless C has been replaced by K.)
D d	de (for dar (home))	d	د	day, but at the end of a word it is pronounced as [t].
E e	e (for envelopp (envelope)	ɛ	(ـَ ، ـَي)	end
F f	effe (for fjura (flower))	f	ف	far
Ġ ġ	ġe (for ġelat (ice-cream))	ʤ	ج	jump, but at the end of a word it is pronounced as [tʃ].
G g	ge (for gallettina (biscuit))	ɡ	(ج ، گ)	game, but at the end of a word it is pronounced as [k].
GĦ għ	ajn (for għasfur (bird))	ˤ:, ħ:	ع ، ح	has the effect of lengthening and pharyngealizing associated vowels. When found at the end of a word or immediately before 'h' it has the sound of a double 'ħ' (see below).
H h	akka (for hu (he))		ه ، ة	not pronounced unless it is at the end of a word, in which case it has the sound of 'ħ'.
Ħ ħ	ħe (for ħanżir (pig))	ħ	ح	no English equivalent; sounds like a whispered "ah" with the tongue pressed as far back as possible.
I i	i (for ikel (food))	i	ـِ	seat
IE ie	ie (for ieqaf (stop))	iɛ, iː	ـِي	yet, feet
J j	je (for jott (yacht))	j	ي	yard
K k	ke (for kelb (dog))	k	ك	cave
L l	elle (for libsa (dress))	l	ل	line
M m	emme (for mara (woman))	m	م	march
N n	enne (for nanna (granny))	n	ن	next
O o	o (for ors (bear))	o	(ـُ ، ـَو)	like 'aw' in law, but shorter.
P p	pe (for paġna (page))	p	(پ)	part
Q q	qe (for qattus (cat))	ʔ	ء ، ق	glottal stop, found in the Cockney English pronunciation of "bottle" or the phrase "(ʔ)uh-(ʔ)oh".
R r	erre (for reġina (queen))	r	ر	road
S s	esse (for salib (cross))	s	س	sand
T t	te (for tieqa (window))	t	ت	tired
U u	u (for uviera (egg-cup))	u	ـُ ، ـُو	food
V v	ve (for vjola (violet)	v	(ڤ)	vast, but at the end of a word it is pronounced as [f].
W w	we (for widna (ear))	w	و	west
X x	exxe (for xadina (monkey))	ʃ / ʒ	ش	shade, sometimes as measure; when doubled the sound is elongated, as in "Cash shin" vs. "Cash in."
Ż ż	że (for żarbun (shoes))	z	ز	maze, but at the end of a word it is pronounced as [s].
Z z	ze (for zalza (sauce))	ʦ / ʣ	(تْس)	pizza; when doubled may change to gods

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.

[edit] External links

Organisations

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

Technology and Maltese

• Enabling the Maltese Language in Windows XP (PDF)
• Maltese Spellchecker
• English Maltese Dictionary
• Collection of Maltese dictionaries

Literature and Linguistics

• The Technical Committee for Literature within the National Council for the Maltese Language
• Maltese Language in Broadcasting
• Maltese verbal morphology (PDF)

[edit] References

1. ^ Times of Malta, 11 February 2007

• Zammit, Martin (2000). "Arabic and Maltese Cognate Roots", in Manwel Mifsud: Proceedings of the Third International Conference of Aida, 241-245. ISBN 99932-0-044-1. 

Modern Semitic languages
Amharic | Arabic | Chaha | Harari | Hebrew | Inor | Maltese | Neo-Aramaic | Silt'e | Soddo | South Arabian | Syriac | Tigre | Tigrinya

	Official languages of the European Union
Bulgarian | Czech | Danish | Dutch | English | Estonian | Finnish | French German | Greek | Hungarian | Irish | Italian | Latvian | Lithuanian | Maltese Polish | Portuguese | Romanian | Slovak | Slovenian | Spanish | Swedish
Source: European Union website