Talk:Maltese language

Message board

• Hi! Please consider visiting the Wikipedia:Malta-related topics notice board. (should this be in a little box or something?) Srl 05:01, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

an article on the origins

As the subject of Maltese origin is an interesting topic, on which different views are expressed (normally without much evidence, though the evidence is out there), might that be a good article. It would need people who know about Maltese, various Arabic dialects, and ideally Phoenician, so would benefit from a wiki approach, with people contributing what they know and can document. I can do a reasonable job from the Tunisian side, and a little North African. Bernard Comrie did a paper somewhere on how Maltese can help us in evaluating Proto-Indo-European, as it has lost various throaty sounds (OK: pharyngeal, laryngeal and uvular), but some distinctions are carried on the vowels instead. It's interesting stuff, believe me.

And we could add Arabic correspondences in the alphabet section in the existing article.

--Drmaik 11:51, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Derivation

Maltese is derived from an Arabic dialect and not ancient Phoenician? I had been under the impression that Phoenicians had been the original settlers of Malta. Was their language completely displaced by a dialect of Arabic, or just heavily influenced by it, among other languages?

Good question; I had a similar one. A guidebook I have says that Maltese is basically Phoenician, yet I've also heard that it's basically Arabic. Both are Semitic, but it'd still be interesting to know the full story. -- pne 06:21, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm afraid Maltese is, essentially, the North-African dialect of Arabic, with lots and lots of European loanwords.

As a Maltese, I studied history both in school and off it. It seems that when the Arabs arrived in Malta (around 870 AD), there is a period of time around a century long where there is no evidence of inhabitants in Malta. So perhaps the population was replaced or heavily supplemented. Which would account for Maltese being an Arabic language by descent. It's basically Arabic, but by personal experience you can only understand a few words from spoken Arabic, since there are many words of European origin. Interestingly enough, many terms used in Roman Catholicism have Arabic origin. Lent, for example, is known as Randan (from Ramadan). Christians are known as Insara (from Ansar, servant of God), and God is known as Alla [sic].

Of course, God is not only referred to by the Moslem name "Allah". Semitic Hebrew have the distinctive claim to the first recorded use of the name for the word "God". In fact, every instance of the Bible - a superbly accurate historical reference - describes the word "God " as the english equivalent of the word "Elohim". Of course, small "g" god, does not mean "Elohim", as that word can be attributed to anyone - or any thing, such as an idol.

The first recorded use of the word "Christian" was in Antioch, around 30 years after the Death and resurrection of Jesus. The word was simply, "Chrisianos", (Greek) which literally means "Follower of Christ". It is not a derivaticve in any way of the word "Ansar".

It is easy to differenctiate between Hebrew and Arabic when using words, regardless of the language. One doesn't need to speak many languages to follow the orgin of a word. Nor should we allow semantics to dictate history. History is far more important, and also doesn't require a mix of languages to understand it. Thankfully, we have translations for that!

"What is unusual about the Maltese verb system is that it incorporates Romance verbs and adds Arabic suffixes and prefixes to them (e.g., idde?idejna "we decided" < (i)dde?ieda 'Romance verb' + -ejna 'Arabic 1st person plural perfect marker'). Arabic and Hebrew only rarely do this, although several Arabic dialects do."

Modern Hebrew actually does it quite all-the-time, albeit oftentimes from Slavonic or Germanic roots, ie. "lepancher" (to puncture) "letalpen" (to telephone), "lehartsot" (to lecture, from german "erzählen"), all fully inflected in hebrew Binyanim and Mishkalot. I remember reading somewhere recently about it being about 40% of new verbs accepted since the 1970s. I see it myself in everyday use all the time, I wouldn't say 'rarely'.

No, modern Hebrew does not do this: *le-telefon, ata *te-telefon, ata *telefont (the asterisk means that this is not real Hebrew) -- that's the point. Maltese does: ittelefona, ittelefonajt, tittelefona.

" If irregular, they fall in the pluralis fractus category, in which a word is pluralized by internal vowel changes: ktieb, kotba "books", ra?el, ir?iel "men". This is very well-developed in Arabic and also exhibited by Hebrew (sefer, sfarim "books")."

again, I have a little problem with the 'hebrew' reference, since this is not an 'irregular' in hebrew, but rather regular phonetic 'segol' -> 'shwa'

I am just annoyed about all these "know it all" who try to coin the maltese language as Arabic, or North African, or even some, of Hebrew conncection.

In order to understand the origin of the Maltese Language, all you have to know is learn 1) the spoken langauge of Lebanon, 2) the spoken language of Sicily, 3) Arabic,

Lebanese is a mix of Phoenician and Arabic Maltese is a mix of Phoenician and Old Sicilian (and I mean old)!

I happen to speak Lebanese, Arabic, Italian, and plenty of Sicilian. I am just amazed at the similarites, and divergences of the two spoken languages of Malta and Lebanon,

I am building a site fo rresearch on this subject. http://malta.lebaneseclub.org

Recent genetic research underwritten by Natinal Geocraphic is showing genetic similarities between the inhabitants of Lebanon and Malta, to prove that both people came from the same root!

Raymond

Maltese is not Arabic, nor Hebrew, nor North African

I am just annoyed about all these "know it all" who try to coin the Maltese language as Arabic, or North African, or some even, of Hebrew conncection.

just in case you're not informed, Phoenician language==Hebrew language (well, 'almost'), just try reading any phoenican inscription vs. hebrew bible. Many of the cited roots on your site, are Arabic rather than Phoenican.

(Phoenician is also a Semitic language like Hebrew, they have the same roots, but it does not mean they are 'almost' the same. Many European languages are from the same root, but I don't easily understand other languages. Mallerd 08:54, 9 September 2007 (UTC) )

In order to understand the origin of the Maltese Language, all you have to know is:

1) the spoken language of Lebanon, 
2) the spoken language of Sicily, 
3) Arabic (so you can tell what is Arabic and what is Pdistinctly Phoenician),

Today's Lebanese is a mix of Phoenician and Arabic. Today's Maltese is a mix of Phoenician and Old Sicilian (and I mean old)!

I happen to speak Lebanese, Arabic, Italian, and plenty of Sicilian. I am just amazed at the similarites, and divergences of the two spoken languages of Malta and Lebanon,

I am building a site for research on this subject. http://malta.lebaneseclub.org

Recent genetic research underwritten by Natinal Geocraphics is showing exact genetic similarities between the inhabitants of Lebanon and Malta. This further proves that both people came from the same roots! The shores of today's Lebanon, not Carthage!

Carthagians are also Phoenicians, warrior phoenicians that settled in North Africa and spoke the same Phoenician language (which in today's Tunis, probably mixed with the local Berber / Arabic).

Maltese were merchant sailors, not warriors. They came directly from Lebanon. They led a peaceful and neutral life.

When Carthagians lost the Punic wars against Rome, survivors must have fled north and settled with their Phoenician cousins in Malta!

I am no historian, nor pretned to be. but I am very much interested in studying the common Phoenician roots of the Lebanese and Maltese spoken languages.

Raymond

You know Lebanese, Arabic, etc., but you don't know Phoenician. If you look at any book or article on Phoenician, you'll instantly see that although Lebanese and Classical Arabic and Maltese are pretty similar to each other, Phoenician is very, very different from them.

Good refernce Paper

Hi,

I tend to agree with you although I have to admit, that besides catching 10% of conversations between Palestinians and Lebanese I also tend to understand tunisians quite well. However I never looked into this seriously. The other day a Colleague mentioned that the famous linguist Mark Aronoff had a go at the subject. Et voilà... his paper is online. It's a PDF file: The verbal morphology of Maltese

Do you live in Lebanon? in Our University Library we have an old Maltese-Italian-Arabic Dictionary which was printed in Lebanon in the 30's. As far as I know after 75 years such books loose their Copyright. I'll try and find the address and you might check out if the publishing house still exists. I'm not sure if we could prcocess it through an OCR, but we might distribute parts of the book to mt wikipedians and the job should be done manualy within a year or two :)

it's clear that maltese is an arabic language, i'm from morocco.., i was surprised when i read the maltese version of wikipedia.., it's totally derived from arabic and i can say that north africans need just one week to understand maltese language

Template Addition

I added the language template to the article, so if anyone sees any mistakes they're welcome to make them. 6:47 EST Haverton

I am going to add that Maltese is spoken in the US; I would think the number of speakers is approximately the same as those in Canada and Australia. There are significant Maltese communities in the Midwestern US.128.227.191.106 06:41, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Unique, just like the others...

That phrase where (to paraphrase) "Maltese is unique in Europe in having dual number except for Slovene, Icelandic, & Sorbian" should be re-written. It is either unique or it isn't, and in this case, it isn't. I'm unique in that I have two eyes--not counting all the others who have two eyes, of course.Ōđ

Language codes in template

I think the language codes are wrong or inverted, the first one should be a two letter code and the second one a third letter code.

bil-Malti

Why is it that when the mt code appears as well as in the Maltese Wiki, bil-Malti is used? it is pointless! it is the same as saying "in English"! I could give a bit of reason to "il-Malti" as it is used as such in spoken Maltese (i.e. giving it an article), though this still looks very untidy. But I can see no conceivable reason why "bil-Malti" is being used.

As to ethymology, I think you should use Maltese research such as by Dr Aquilina or by the Akkademija tal-Malti.

VodkaJazz 03:21, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I finally got around to getting this fixed. It has been corrected in the underlying MediaWiki software. Srl 04:59, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Number of Speakers

How can there be only 330,000 Maltese speakers when the population of Malta is 400,000? Basic maths mate. 203.134.135.94 12:01, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

As an Australian with Maltese ancestory, I think that the number of Maltese speakers is grossly underestimated given there are massive Maltese communities living around St. Albans/Sunshine/Broadmeadows/Preston in Melbourne, and Cabramatta in Sydney. Since the influx of immigration in the 50's and 60's, a total of 100,000 Maltese emigrated to Australia; So the number of Maltese speakers is possibly around the 500,000 to 600,000 mark.

One side effect of the bi-linguistic nature of Malta is that immigrants to Australia of that era would also speak English and would therefore find no need to teach Maltese to their children, to the point that the Maltese speaking population in Australia is declining.

(UNSIGNED)

Its not easy to trace the number of speakers Maltesedog 18:42, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Could someone please provide a source for the number of speakers? According to Ethnologue [1] there are 371,900 total speakers of Maltese. While that number may not be accurate, it at least comes from some sort of at least vaguely reliable source. I am going to change the number in the article to reflect Ethnologue's number, but if you have another source for the number of Maltese speakers please feel free to include it in the article. NoIdeaNick

The estimate given is from a paper written in 1983. We need a better source! _└ ^VodkaJazz / _talk ^┐ 10:22, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

language or dialect?

Malta now says that Maltese is basically an Arabic dialect .... Maltese language says it is derived from Arabic (but presumably a language). Which is it? Shouldn't it be consistent? I understand (from the talk page) that it is debated, at least here. Just trying to minimize confusion to users of wikipedia. Srl 10:53, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

The latter description is the better. It uses 'derived' to suggest a genetic relationship. The word 'dialect' has a number of problems, and has very little linguistic value. As it is a subjuctive word it should not be used to make objective statements. --Gareth Hughes 13:39, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

History_of_Malta#Arabs also says derived from. Srl 16:44, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Maltese is a language NOT at a dialect. It is not only made from the semitic language, but also composed of words from the romantic languages and also the Anglo-Saxon language. Maltesedog 19:11, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Disagree with the clasification of the language. even though its a semitic language, its not an arabic language. see above Maltesedog 09:09, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

(See Talk:Akkademja tal-Malti) I tend to agree that it should be under Semitic and not Arabic proper. 「ѕʀʟ·！」 16:49, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

It would be correct to say that Maltese is not Arabic, and it would also be correct to say that Maltese is not an Arabic language (even less correct, Arabic dialect). However, as a Semitist, I know how imprecise it would be to leave Arabic out of the genetic classification. The Arabic language is a South Central Semitic language -- this is the next level up -- and Maltese does not sit as an even partner in this group: it has to be placed under Arabic. This refers to the diachronic development of Maltese: it is descended from Arabic, but has become sufficiently different from it to be called an Arabic language no longer. The classification is telling a linguistic truth about Maltese: it's from Arabic, not of Arabic. --Gareth Hughes 17:16, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Garzo, in looking at the categories, I think what might be a little odd is that the hierarchy goes: Semitic languages→Arabic language→Arabic languages, the latter seeming to be mostly different dialects. However, once visiting any of the pages which reference Maltese the explanations are adequate. I do wonder if Arabic language and languages are in the reverse order in the hierarchy. Varieties of Arabic is interesting, and in fact I wonder if some summaries of Joseph Aquilina's work in this area (re: Maltese) might be interesting to put here. 「ѕʀʟ·！」 18:23, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

If you see the semetic article.. Maltese falls under a category on its own and not arabic.. Maltesedog 18:42, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I was looking at the infobox, and I think that's all right. About the categories, I think the 'Arabic languages' one could be removed: after all, the 'Maltese language' category is a subcategory of it already. In the Semitic languages article, Maltese is figuratively placed besides Arabic, under the heading South Central (Arabic) languages. --Gareth Hughes 18:53, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Good point.. i removed the cat as redundant. 「ѕʀʟ·！」 00:48, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

what about the infobox Maltesedog 07:55, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

The infobox is diachronic so placing Arabic above Maltese simply says that the latter is derived from the former; it does not necessarily imply that it is the former.

I understand your point but this does not show that its not just derived from Arabic. Nowadays some argue that most of the words used are dervied from English and Italian. Maltesedog 16:39, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Linguistically, Maltese is derived from Arabic, and influenced by other English and Italian. I find Spanish (a Romance language) vocabulary easier to understand than Norwegian (a Germanic language), because Spanish vocabulary is more alike to English vocabulary. However, English is a Germanic language, and so is linguistically closer to Norwegian. For the Maltese, Italian and English may feel more akin, but actually the roots are in Arabic. In 870, people settled in Malta not speaking South Central Semitic, but Arabic, and Maltese is derived from their language. The some that argue are not linguists if they deny Maltese is derived from Arabic. --Gareth Hughes 17:01, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I have made an enquiry at the Akkademja tal-Malti on the matter. Will be back shortly with a response Maltesedog 19:13, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

maltese may have many words derived froma araboc amd simalarites, but according to the article it seems to be arabic completley.

The difference between language and dialect is not a linguistic one but depends upon non-linguistic factors. As a matter of fact, Maltese IS an Arabic dialect. The very fact that Maltese understand Tunisian Arabic and are understood quite well by Tunisians is a sufficient proof that both languages (or dialects, or speeches or wht you call'em) belong to the same conceptual category. I have taken part in an AIDA (Association Internationale de Dialectologie Arabe) congress and all scholars there spoke of Maltese just in the very same way as any other Arabic dialect.
The question is, Maltese aren't muslim and are culturally much more oriented towards the European culture, so they simply adopt their spoken language as an official language and dont'bother looking for its genetic ties or categorization. On the other hand, the so-called "Arabic countries" who adopt Arabic as their official language are ideologically oriented towards the "Arabic world" and stress this by recognizing only "classical Arabic" (or something alike) as a language which must be taught in their schools and used in official documents, and consider the language everybody speaks as a "dialect". Of course, just as Maltes possesses a lot of European vocabulary, also Tunisian dialect has a lot of Frenche and Italian borrowings and so on.

--Vermondo 12:59, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

A language is a dialect that hs an army and a navy. Maltese has an air force too. The difference is purely political, and all the relevant political groups recognise Maltese as an actual language distinct from Arabic. Rhialto 20:49, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Maltese National Identity and the Position of the Maltese Language

To all the Maltese folks here Kif Int. I would like first to state that this post should not be taken as a flame. It is just my analysis of the situation of the Maltese Language. Maltese is definitely derived from Arabic and the structural and lexical relation it has with the Arabic Macrolanguage is similar to the relation that many Arabic dialects have with the this Macrolanugage. I am a native speaker of Western Libyan and, to cite my own experience, have been several times to Malta. For me Maltese was not very difficult to understand. However, conversing with the common people I found that the idea of Maltese being Semetic (and not Arabic) is highly popularized. This can be understood by considering the socio-political position of Malta. The national pride of the Maltese rests a great deal on historical events that have to do with driving the Muslims (hence Arabs) away and defending the cross - See History_of_Malta#Arabization_and_the_Maltese_language and Siege of Malta (1565) I have nothing against this as any nation is free to assign symbols to express their identity. But this Islam-Christianity-opposition-based identity has left the Maltese in a tension of either being Christian, and thus non-Arab (not even linguitically), or admitting to being liguistically Arab and risk defiling their Christianity-centered identity. Fro me this is highly understandable but I don't think it should block the advancement of accurate research-baced knowledge. I have nothing against Maltese poeple but I am strongly convinced that this accurately describes the Identity tension that leads to the bitter denial of the origins of their language in Malta. Saħħa w gratsi (not sure about the spelling though) Hakeem.gadi 12:49, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

In Malta, we'd spell that 'Saħħa u grazzi'. Fair try though! Kalindoscopy (talk) 05:06, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Derivation?

Is Maltese the only language in the world derived from Arabic? Stallions2010 20:24, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Genetics

Please refer to these two sections:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages#Northwest_Semitic_languages
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages#Arabic_languages

While to my knowlege Maltese is much more inclined towards Aramaic rather than Arabic, I shall not contest this as my knowledge is limited. What I would like to point out is that the genetic tree can be improved from the article above. VodkaJazz 19:38, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Various

Hi everyone,

1. Re: the origins of Maltese: I am currently working on a PhD thesis on the subject. I will try to put together a few paragraphs on the subject and submit it for peer review.

2. Re: Phoenician: for the last time: Maltese IS NOT derived from Phoenician. It is - as already said - essentially a dialect of Arabic with a large Romance (mostly Sicilian and Italian) vocabulary.

Raymond: we "know it alls" are also known as scientists and we engage in something called "research". That is how we arrive at our conclusions. Maltese is related to Lebanese Arabic about as much as English is related to Dutch. And neither Maltese, nor Lebanese Arabic are derived from Phoenician. While there is some evidence for your claim about Maltese originating in the Levant, today's population of Malta most likely originated from Sicily.

3. Language or dialect: I believe the old maxim "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy" applies here. Linguistically, Maltese is a dialect of Arabic. Politically, Maltese is an independent language.

---

I have to disagree here: if by Arabic we mean Modern Standard, then considering the level of difference and issues of intelligibility we have clearly different lanaguages, just as for the difference between Modern Standard Arabic and Tunisian Arabic, for example: not inherently mutually intelligible, cognate lexicon not more than 60%. The reason we count Tunisian (Arabic) as a dialect of Arabic is primarily because of the diglossia in the society, and what Tunisians feel about what they speak (most feel it is Arabic). However, Maltese, a bit more divergent from MSA than Tunisian, does not have diglossia with MSA, and people *definitely* don't feel they are speaking Arabic. But there is an Arabic origin: different issue. --Drmaik 17:47, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

---

Drmaik: thank you for your comment. To clarify, by "Arabic" I do not mean MSA. The issues of intelligibility and divergence are synchronic, while I believe the whole situation must be viewed diachronically. In that respect, both Tunisian Arabic and Maltese evolved from the same source (let's put aside the well-known controversies and call it Classical Arabic for now), as did MSA. You are right in pointing out that the reason we count Tunisian (and Egyptian and Iraqi and Sudan) Arabic as a dialect are social. Diglossia, together with the lack of official status, is the main difference. As for the linguistic differences, Maltese is certainly a bit more different from than, say, Tunisian or Syrian. But on the other hand, to an average speaker of Tunisian Arabic or Syrian Arabic without any education in MSA, MSA is as unintelligible as it is to a speaker of Maltese. It would then seem that only criterion for distinguishing between a 'language' and a 'dialect' is a social one, in which case my comment above still applies.

Speaking of "Arabic origin" is, in my opinion, rather confusing, as is the usual "Maltese is a mixed language" comment. Maltese is either the result of a normal language transmission (Thomason & Kaufman 1988), in which case it is genetically identical with Tunisian, Moroccan and Yemeni Arabic. The fact that it has been heavily influenced by Sicilian/Italian is rather irrelevant here. All modern Arabic dialects differ considerably from their source language(s) and have been influenced by other languages (e.g. Iraqi Arabic by Farsi), some even as strongly as Maltese (e.g. Cypriot Arabic by Greek). I recommend Alan S. Kaye's article in Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik 27(1994) on the issue.

The other option would be that Maltese has undergone a process similar to creolization or partial creolization (also called partial restructuring; Holm 2004). This is essentially the subject of my PhD thesis, but I am still far from any definitive conclusions. --Bulbul 17:08, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

4. Re:Arabic languages: there is only one Arabic language. Those vernaculars used in Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq etc. are generally referred to as dialects. Since there is only one written Arabic language, this kinda makes sense.

5. Maltesedog: you said "nowadays some argue that most of the words used are dervied from English and Italian." Who in their right mind would ever say that? The core vocabulary is still of Arabic origin. Besides, the morphology of Maltese is largely Semitic (perfect vs. imperfect, pluralis fractus etc.). Plus, I hate to pull rank, but this is an encyclopedia, i.e. a work of science. We should care about what scientists have to say, not about what common people think. After all, if I have a cold, I see a doctor, I do not conduct a poll.

6. Stallions2010: depending on how you define a language (as opposed to a dialect). I personally believe - along with, say, the late Joshua Blau, Geoffrey Khan of Cambridge University or Otto Jastrow - that Judeo-Arabic, Juba Arabic and Ki-Nubi are another languages (as opposed to dialects) derived from Arabic. This time, however, the criterion is not political, but more of a question of intelligibility and ortography.

7. VodkaJazz: no, Maltese is not inclined more to Aramaic than Arabic. The verb forms, the phonology, the words - everything points to Arabic origins of Maltese.

8. I will be more than happy to provide a selected/comprehensive bibliography of scholarly research on the Maltese language and related issues. For those of you wishing to do your own thing, I recommend the Linguistic Bibliography at www.blonline.nl.

--Bulbul 01:22, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Whether or not you're right (I believe you have your points, though some of them conflict), that's really no way to talk to people who you haven't met before. Adam Mathias 02:47, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Dear Adam, having reviewed my comment, I do not see what has prompted your reaction. But ff you or anyone else feels insulted by what I wrote, I sincerely apologize. --Bulbul 15:32, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

The description of Maltese as an Arabic underlying stratum with a heavy overlay of Romance vocabulary is interesting (and apparently noncontroversial here; disagreements seem to be on fine points) -- particularly in that it resembles the common description of medieval Lingua Franca (Sabir) that arose around the 11th century with the increase in Mediterranean trade. Has there been any study of Sabir influence on Maltese? This might be interesting, since Malta has always been a major center of the Med's sailing/trading culture. -- Craig Goodrich

I looked up only five words (love, head, hand, world, life) in this English-Maltese dictionary [2], and all Maltese words closely matched their Arabic counterparts (habb - Haubb) (ras - ras) (id - eed) (dinja - dinya) (hajja - Hayya). If Maltese is derived from Aramaic and not Arabic then how did all these Arabic words find their place in the Maltese language? I'm convinced that Maltese is an Arabic dialect! Just my 2 cents. --Inahet 07:24, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

More words: (you - inti- inta or inti [fm]) (doctor - tabib - tabib) (man - ragel - rajul or rigal) (woman - mara - mara) (book - ktieb - kitab) (work - xoghol - shogl) (people - nies - nas) (one - wiehed - wahid) (two - tnejn - ithneyn) (three - tlieta - thiletha) (four - erbgha - erba'ah) (five - hamsa - khamsa) (six - sitta - sitta) (seven - sebgha - seb'ah) (eight - tmienja - thimenya) (nine - disgha - tis'ah) (ten - ghaxra - 'ashara). The majority of words I looked up are Arabic. What are the Aramaic words? -Inahet 07:41, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Correction

In the section on plural, I corrected "or -in (cf. Arabic -ēn and Hebrew -im)" to "or -in (cf. Arabic -īn and Hebrew -im)". In some modern Arabic dialects, "-ēn" is a dual marker ("āni" in Classical Arabic), while Maltese "in" is derived from Arabic "īn" (in Classical Arabic "ūna" in casus rectus and "īna" in casus obliquus). --Bulbul 15:54, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

What is the big deal?

I find the discussion of the origins of Maltese rather odd. Most languages whether classed as I.E or Afro-Asian or some other group are bastards and standardised dialects, English is a typical bastard and standardised dialect. Most of you discussing the Maltese language don't know, but there are Maltese dialects. The Standard Maltese is the dialect of Valletta and the written form is based on Valletta pronunciation. It matters not whether the muslim North African invaders, who incidentally came via Sicily and probably born there, imposed their form of North African Arabic on the Maltese or whether Maltese is a modern survivor of some Punic language. The Maghrebi Arabic connection can be proven, but the Punic one cannot as Punic is a dead branch of Semitic while Arabic vernaculars abound. Maltese people cannot understand any Arabic vernaculars, just odd words. The Maltese language is the result of native Maltese trying to get on with foreign overlords whether Carthagenians, Romans, a ragbag of Christian knights, Napoleanic French or arrogant? Britishers. This getting on is evident in the language. The loss of pronouns, the simplification of the language, loss of Semitic throaty sounds, the mix of Semitic family and domestic words with Romance ones. Example Omm/mother, Missier/father, Cugin/cousin, Cucin/kitchen, Banju/bath. As English lost its inflexions and became simplified due to the mixing of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Normans with native Britons. Maltese before the muslim invaders was probably a mix of Greek and Romance on which Maghrebi Arabic, modified by a generation sojourn in Sicily, lead to the simplified, with loss of most Semitic sounds, as seen in modern Maltese which only became written (fixed) comparatively recently. Maltese is essentially a patois like the language of the Bounty descendents. Pre muslim invader Maltese combined with Maghrebi Arabic and reintroduction of Sicilian Italian plus later additions of French and English. Incidentally Maltese people do not like Arabs and non Europeans in general. They also equate Arabs with non whites and barbarism. They are extremely offended by being lumped with non Europeans like Arabs because of their unusual for Europe language. The result of muslim and non European colonialism in the centuries following the death of Muhammad.

art (land) is Semitic

When giving plurals, 'art' is implied to be Romance, but it's perfectly Semitic as a word, apart from its plural. (though at least the -et part is Semitic in origin). Could someone provide a better example? It's an interesting example of a word, however (Arabic plural ara:đi)

Hmm, no. You're mistaking one word for another. Please notice that the word referred to is arti(art), not art(earth, land). Arti is derived from Sicilian arti, whereas art is indeed from Arabic, but not the word in question.200.208.131.106 22:56, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

The roots of Maltese

Professor Aquilina's brief definition of Maltese is certainly the most correct. Including material such as: "Maltese is roughly 40% Arabic and the rest being Italian and English with a few Sicilian loanwords." is, to say the least, incorrect. Where did the writer get his/her information from? How can you include information such as "roughly 40%" in an encyclopaedia? Is it 39% or 41% (sarcasm intended)? This sort of playing around with numbers is more suited for a magasine article, or for a discussion on the basis of Maltese, than for a serious encyclopaedic entry. Moreover, playing around with percentages without carefully analysing the entire structure of Maltese is not the sort of material which should be included in an encylopaedia. One should include information which has a scholarly origin and which is backed by the opinion of Maltese linguists.

Moreover, the following information - "Maltese grammar is fundamentally derived from Arabic, with a very large influx of Romance vocabulary, especially Sicilian and Norman French. Although influenced by Romance languages, Maltese grammar is still strongly Semitic." - is all neatly given by the Professor Aquilina definition. An encylopaedia isn't about giving your own interpretation of what is widely held to be fact. It is about giving the exact fact. Every word counts, and adding extra words, such as those added by the above quotes sentance, is not the best way of displaying information. Writing that "Maltese grammar is still strongly Semitic" is a subjective interpretation - one must write the fact objectively - the basis of Maltese is semitic and the superstructure is Romance - that is all that should be written. The brief defition is accepted as correct and was taught to me by my professors at the University of Malta. Adding or changing this definition does nothing but hinder correct information.

MaxCosta 03:48, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

"the basis of Maltese is semitic and the superstructure is Romance". This may very well be true, but it's not clear what it really means. I'm sure that Prof Aquilana went on to extrapolate what he meant by these terms. But to the general reader this means very little. So I'm replacing this section again with what was there before (not my own words, by the way, but I do think they give a good summary which makes things clearer than what you have written). And apart from the failure of various adjectives to agree in definiteness with their nouns, can you think of any other area of Maltese grammar which is not Semitic? --Drmaik 18:56, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Correction needed

If you take a look at this, someone had changed the Maltese phrase but not the Arabic nor the Hebrew. Do we revert the edits? --Inahet 05:01, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

It has been almost 2 weeks since the edit was made and no one has made a correction, so for the sake of not confusing anymore readers I reverted the inconsistency. But it was quickly reverted without being corrected. How about we leave in the consistent comparison until we find another or correct the other comparison? It's so severly inconsistent that it should be removed immediately from the article until a better replacement is found. --Inahet 00:16, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Im another person, just to ask the Maltese people who know Maltese... what do you think about the word "bewsa", which means "kiss". Where does it come from? In Arabic to kiss is something like "yabous"... however "beso" is spanish! Any ideas? How can we definitely say it's from one source and not the other?

Afraid I'm not Maltese, but Tunisian Arabic for a kiss is bu:sa. I think that makes the origin clearer... --Drmaik 18:17, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah "bewsa" is definitely of semitic origin. You can always tell whether a word is of romance or semitic origin: just compare the word to the Italian word, in this case it would be "bacio". "Bewsa" is spelt and pronounced utterly differently, hence it's not of romance origin. Marcus1234 18:31, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm that "other person", I have a few other words to discuss. "Ejja" (to come, pronounced ay-uh), who knows definitely where this word comes from? I've just discovered that "come" in Latin is written EIA and pronounced equally. Could this be a latin word? I mean it's equal!

Yep, it is. "Ejja" can also mean "Well!", as an expression of surprise or happiness. It is generally used only colloquially though. I believe "eia" is an obsolete Sicilian word (not sure if it's still in use), so that explains why it's part of the Maltese language. Marcus1234 19:12, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Another thing; I happen to know for a fact that the Cremonese dialect (Cremona is a city in Lombardy, northern Italy), "look!" is not "guarda!" as in Italian, but; "ARA!". I thing this is a surprising fact for all those who thought 'ara' is a semitic word. I mean Cremona can't possibly have semitic influences in it's dialect, it's too far north!!

This is doubtless a coincidence. The verb "rajt" (to see/look) is of Semitic origin as far as I know. Marcus1234 19:12, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

How can you be so sure? I mean "ara" is totally the same. Who determines where a word comes from? I don't agree with your saying "doubtless a coincidence". I don't believe in coincidences; rather there is a reason why ara in cremonese and ara in maltese are totally the same. I've lived with people from Cremona who speak in their native dialect and I was suprised by the great many words that are very similar or equal to Maltese words which are not so perfectly in standard Italian.

Well determining where a word comes from is really simple, one must merely look at the Semitic/Romance version of the word and compare the two. In this case, the Maltese word "ara" comes from the verb "tara" (to see), which is Semitic. Now, considering the standards of the Cremonese dialect, the word "ara" could very well come from the word "guarda", which in Cremonese could perhaps be pronounced "guar'a" or "uar'a", where the "d" and/or the "g" is basically muted, so it sounds similar to the Maltese "ara". Therefore, its most probably (not doubtless) a coincidence. Of course, I could be wrong. Marcus1234 13:38, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Semitic language?

I noticed that on the English Wikipedia that the Maltese language is labelled as a "semitic language", yet on the Italian wikipedia it is described as merely having semitic origins, and on the Maltese wikipedia it is described as having a "semitic basis." This undoubtedly makes more sense especially since more than half of the modern Maltese vocabulary is not of Semitic origin, so how can it be described as a Semitic language? I think it should be described as a "language of semitic origins" rather than a "semitic language." Opinions please. Marcus1234 09:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

That depends on what perspective you're looking for. As has been pointed in previous discussions here, linguistically, Maltese is not only Semitic but an Arabic language in the same sense that English is a Germanic language. Maltese is more specifically part of the dialect continuum of Maghreb Arabic. This is the diachronic development of Maltese and it is generally not disputed in Arabic linguistics. English has an enormous amount of Romance vocabulary (French and Latin), yet it is still structurally Germanic not Romance. Another example is modern Persian whose core vocabulary is almost 50% Arabic, but has almost none of the Arabic grammatical processes that are productive in Maltese. Persian is still essentially an Indo-European language unrelated to Semitic. Maltese is not the only descendant of Arabic which has incorporated a massive amount of foreign loanwords. It's actually very similar in that sense to other West Arabic languages which have all been significantly influenced by any combination of French, Spanish, Italian and Berber. I think the use of the word "Semitic" (as opposed to Arabic) actually came about as a compromise given the socio-political factors involved in classifying Maltese (the same factors involved in classifying Moroccan, Tunisian, Algerian and Libyan as merely "Arabic dialects"). — [zɪʔɾɪdəʰ] · ☥ 21:48, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Just to agree with zerida: we're talking origin and charcteristics, not where most of the words come from, though that is also relevant to mention. Drmaik 09:25, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough, but isn't it still best to describe the language as having Semitic origins rather than merely "a Semitic language"? Yes, grammetically the language is mostly Semitic (or Arabic), but at least 60% of the vocabulary is Romance and probably 5-10% is English (I have asked the Akkademja tal-Malta regarding this and I'm currently awaiting a response). If, hypothetically, in twenty years' time, 90% of the vocabulary was Romance and English, could we still say that the language is Semitic/Arabic? Perhaps you could enlighten me on the subject since I do not know much. Thanks. Marcus1234 11:42, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Zerida already mentioned the case of English: if you look in a dictionary you will find most of the vocab is Romance (from French or Latin), but that does not change the classification of English as a Germanic language (which has then heavily borrowed from other languages). A more extreme example is Albanian which forms its own branch of Indo-European, despite the fact that only around 500 words are from that branch: the vast majority of the vocab is from other language families (in particular Slavic). But its classification is still 'Albanian (family)' rather than Slavic etc. So the categorisation of a language depends on its 'genetic' (used metaphorically!) history, rather than the vocab (and even the occasional grammatical structure: English has picked up at least one Romance structure). Drmaik 05:24, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

On Wikipedia. the English language is described as "a West Germanic language that developed from Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons. English, having its major roots in Germanic languages, derives most of its grammar from Old English. As a result of the Norman Conquest, it has been heavily influenced, more than any other Germanic language, by French and Latin." Therefore, shouldn't the description of the Maltese language be more than merely "a Semitic language written in the latin alphabet? That's all I'm saying. Marcus1234 06:03, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Il-waranofsinhar it-tajjeb

This looks like a machine translation of "good afternoon". I admit my Maltese is far from fluent, but is this something people actually say? Rhialto 01:51, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Nope. The average person usually says "Good afternoon." There's no real Maltese equivalent. Marcus1234 08:55, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

OK then, I've removed that line. Rhialto 09:27, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

official

"Maltese became an official language of Malta in 1936, alongside English."

Well and what before? The official was another language?

And I'm curiours, why 1936? Chance, or some more important event? And why English too? --euyyn 00:13, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I expect it was a government decree, one of many that would have been made that year. This is how languages become official languages. As for why that year, I suspect it could have been to more firmly tie Malta into the UK side of the alliance in a war that many wiser politicians suspected was brewing. Previously, Italian was the language of 'culture' and the most important foreign language to learn among the Maltese elite, although most of these probably spoke Maltese too. Rhialto 05:25, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Cool material to mention in the article. Is there a source anywhere? --euyyn 18:47, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Only what my grand father told me, and despite my views on teh matter, WP does not consider him reliable :( Rhialto 13:05, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Written Maltese

What I've written is from memory and should be considered a first draft. I've added this section because I feel that it should not be ommited from this article.Lebanese blond 11:41, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

It's an interesting, certainly relevant entry, but please provide a few citations to back up the info. Unfortunately this article already lacks the required references. Marcus1234 12:43, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I fully agree with you on that, but unfortunately since I don't come to Malta much anymore I don't have access to the necessary resources to find these references. I made a start so that there is at least something there, I was basically hoping that with time other better informed contributors would come across this article and add these... Lebanese blond 13:23, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Gibraltar

I know Gibraltar, and I doubt seriously that there is anyone left alive who speeks Maltese, as the last migrants from Malta would have come in the early century. There are many people of Maltese descent, like Chief Minister Peter Caruana, but they will speak English and Llanito, not Maltese. There are some similarities with the Maltese accent, but that's about it. Quiensabe 14:59, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Quiensabe, I am from Gibraltar and I know that there are many families of Maltese descent which still very much use the language, despite the fact that most Maltese ancestors migrated about a century ago. Considering the population of Gibraltar, the percentage of Maltese speakers in Gib is high which seems notable enough. I am currently trying to find an article I found some time ago on the matter. Gibmetal 77^talk 23:55, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm also wondering whether the other places (apart from Malta and the European Union) should have their flags: the better language articles list where the language is spoken and transmitted, where it belongs, not where there are some immigrant communities. Of course, that line is not always easy to draw, but here I think it is. Thoughts anyone? Drmaik 18:04, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Spoken in

I think the countries listed in the spoken in section of the infobox is a little dubious. While I don't doubt that Maltese is spoken in those countries, the percentage of people who speak it with any regularisty in some of those (such as the USA) must be vanishingly small. With the popularity of EFL teachers there, a strong case could be made that, as a percentage of the population, there are more English speakers in Japan than Maltese speakers in the USA. Yet English isn't generally noted as being spoken in Japan. I think we need to be a little more objective in noting countries in that infobox. Rhialto 22:56, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I just removed the USA. based on Ethnologue's 371k speaker, and Malta's population of 400k, and USA's 300m population, there's no ay the Maltese speaking population in the USA could reasonably account for more than 0.01% of the population there, which is not a statistically meaningful amount. Rhialto 17:58, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Maltese

So Maltese are Arabic language??

so Population of Malta Consider themselves arabs or what ....new race??

. .

I am Maltese and when I hear a Libyan speaking in his native tongue I merely understand a word of what is being said, on the other hand they get to learn the Maltese language fast in order to integrate and communicate with the locals for it is a normal occurrence which happens with immigrants in foreign countries and not because the languages are identical. On the contrary, when a Maltese hears a Lebanese or Syrian speaking in his/her language most of the time they can be understood by Maltese people and to be frank the similarities are uncanny. A myriad of my friends have also noticed the same thing and are becoming very much active to compare these languages with ours. This bicker that the Maltese language is derived from Arabic is totally a political issue invented by Ultra Italian Nationalists who try to disprove Maltese as a Punic language. In fact if one looks at the some Maltese dictionaries under the term Feniċju (which means Phoenician in Maltese) one finds the following: 'a language which has absolutely nothing to do with our language' which definition is biased and surpasses the realm of an ordinary dictionary definition. Maltese people are genetically proved to be Phoenicians (see DNA tests carried out by Wells and Zalloua) and the language which they speak is Phoenician/Punic and if there are some resemblances with other North African languages is because the latter have been influenced by the Phoenician/Carthage culture and their language. Moreover Malta was never conquered but it was always ceded in good faith and a fact which is rarely mentioned in history textbooks but still narrated by the original Maltese people is that when the Maltese ceded Malta to the Arabs the former were ordered to build underground as not to surpass the Arabs buildings, this is evidenced by the fact that there are still houses which are built underneath ground level and were later used as farms and war shelters. This is an indication that there was no want of communication by the Maltese and consequently infuriated the Arabs and the only influences which were left in Malta and Gozo are the names of the places. Maltese and Gozitans have kept the Phoenician gene pool alive by marrying locals only and shunned the idea of marrying an ‘outsider’ as was the custom at those times. There will be a time when people will start to think and use their heads rather than follow blindly what the educational institutions wants others to believe especially the University and realize that the answer to the origins of our language is not an Arabic dialect.

Thank you for your opinions. Unfortunately, it appears to be original research. Get it published in a respectable and citeable source, and then it can be considered for wikipedia. Rhialto 21:32, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Language or dialect

What does it mean : "It is descended from Maghrebi Arabic, but is not considered to be an Arabic dialect."? Who does not consider Maltese as an Arabic dialect? As far as I know, it IS one. I keep in touch with some members of AIDA ("International Association of Arabic Dialectologists"; once I even attended a congress), and Maltese is considered by everybody as an Arabic dialect. The fact is, that when people speak of Arabic many other non-linguistic issues arise. The vast majority of so-called "Arabic speakers" don't SPEAK the Arabic language (the "classical" one), they speak an Arabic language (Moroccan, Egyptian, Syrian and so on), but the so called "Arabic countries" maintain (for purely ideological reasons) that the language of their population is not a language, is a dialect. The only country where the local Arabic language is considered a language and not a dialect is Malta. As a matter of fact, it is the only Arabic country where the religion is not islam, so they don't feel the need to keep a link with the language of the Qur'an. (That's also why many Maltese reject an "Arabic" origin of their language, feeling that "Arabic" could be understood as "Muslim"). In my opinion the phrase I quoted should be changed in "From a linguistic point of view it is an Arabic dialect belonging to the Maghrebi Arabic dialectal cluster. It is the only Arabic dialect recognized as a national language" --Vermondo 14:12, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree pretty much with all of the above, and there have been discussions about this in the past. At least the statement should be amended to reflect why it is not considered an Arabic dialect/language by some (most?) of its speakers. There appears to be a strong sentiment among Maltese speakers that the language bears no relationship to Arabic, so I suspect that any attempt to include the linguistic classification will be quickly reverted. On another note, I believe Hassaniya is considered a national language in Mauritania. — Zerida 19:46, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Language vs. dialect is always a tricky issue, but the fact is it is decided on sociolinguistic criteria, not just linguistic ones: such a definition is made almost impossible in cases where there's a dialect continuum. As a former member of AIDA myself, I can't agree that everyone considers Maltese an Arabic dialect, as a matter of sociolinguistic fact. But when, as lingusts, we discuss Arabic dialectology, we include Maltese becuase of its origins and similar patterns. There are at least three arguments against considering Maltese a dialect of Arabic...

1. lack of easy mutual intelligibity with any Arabic variety... yes, Tunisians don't find it too hard, but it takes a little adaptation time.
2. No diglossia with standard Arabic, which is one of the things that decides that e.g. Moroccan is a variety of Arabic. Because of this, Maltese has developed the functions and vocabulary of an independent standard language, which e.g. Tunisian hasn't.
3. Sociolinguistically 'standard languages' and 'dialects' look different, do different things, and Maltese has become a standard language.
4. Also, what people feel they speak is an important part of the defintion of a language.

So I'd be strongly against a statement such as 'From a linguistic point of view it is an Arabic dialect'. That just doesn't fit with academic sociolinguistic definition of what a dialect is. However, I would agree with finding a way of putting Maltese into the Arabic varieties template, perhaps tweaking it to the rather cumbersome 'Arabic varieties and descendants'. May be there should be a section in the Maltese article discussing the origins and identity more clearly. Drmaik 04:53, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

"As a matter of fact, it is the only Arabic country where the religion is not islam". As far as I am aware, Malta is not considered an Arabic country. Gibmetal 77^talk 10:41, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Drmaik, the template already lists Maltese as it should (shhhh <smile>). Actually, I agree that "Maltese is an Arabic dialect" would not be an appropriate statement, but I suspect Vermondo has the same reservation as I, namely that saying it is not an Arabic dialect is a bit ambiguous in that it suggests it's not Arabic. That of course is not correct despite how some Maltese speakers may feel about it. It descends from Arabic in the same way that all the Arabic varieties/languages/"dialects" do as well. BTW, most of these varieties themselves have standards, just not written standards (although with Egyptian, a written standard can be said to have developed over the last 100 years). For me, only linguistic criteria could be said to be objective criteria in making a distinction (and even that's not wholly clear), as personally I would not consider how speakers feel about their language. Otherwise Maltese and Lebanese would be dialects of Phoenician. A while ago I was going to edit the statement to something along the lines of Maltese is a West Arabic language or a descendant of Arabic, but I stopped short of the 'Save page' button. I still feel this statement should be edited and perhaps add the section you proposed. BTW, this is only based on personal experience, but I find Maltese more intelligible than Moroccan. — Zerida 02:54, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the correction. Re standard language, it's not just a 'standard form', but also the functions. (see Stewart, William. 1968. A sociolinguistic typology for describing national multilingualism. In Joshua Fishman, ed., Readings in the Sociology of Language (The Hague: Mouton), pp. 531-545, also stuff in one of Fasold's sociolinguistics books) And concerning what speakers feel about their own language... I don't mean the genetics, but the identity. Hindi and Urdu, at basilectal level, are fully intelligible, but people will self identify differently. And there's also the acrolectal difference, which backs up this disctinction, which is also a factor here. No diglossia -> not part of the Arabic language system (well, it's a factor anyway). BTW, I'm not surprised you understand more Maltese than Moroccan: while Maltese has lost/merged lots of consonants, Moroccan has had a vowel deletion party.

In any case, can we agree a (surely controversial) section on identity and origins would be appropriate? Drmaik 09:32, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for all the info. Yes, it would be nice to have a section that would elaborate on the topic. Alas, as you can see [3] this might not go so well with some editors. I think at least we should qualify the statement in question with "for sociolinguistic reasons." — Zerida 04:08, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

I see that Drmaik reverted my try of changing the text of the article. I ended up writing two lines in the article, since we cannot keep the absurd statement "It is descended from Maghrebi Arabic, but is not considered to be an Arabic dialect". I feel that most of Drmaik's objections concern the status of "dialect", not the fact that Maltese "belongs" somehow to Arabic. It seems to me that "It is the only Arabic dialect recognized as a national language" explains in a sufficient way that here "dialect" should be considered in a loose way. If you don't like "dialect", say "speech", "variety", "language" or what you prefer, but try to realize that the version you like to keep ("descends from but is not considered") is simply absurd. (by the way, all 4 points which should demonstrate that Maltese is not an Arabic dialect are only "sociolinguistic", not plainly "linguistic". The only linguistic instance was # 1, which is not true: as Zerida pointed out communication with other Arabic speakers is not more difficult than, say, Moroccan "dialect") --Vermondo 15:19, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I do agree that a change is in order to avoid the ambiguity in this statement, though as I suggested, it's best to avoid using the dreaded "d-word" since it will probably attract disputes anyway. I would personally agree to "The only descendant or variety of Arabic to have established itself as an independent standard language" or something along these lines. I imagine we could mention that in a different sociolinguistic context (i.e., in the ME/NA), it might have been considered an Arabic dialect, but that it is not for the reasons that Drmaik mentioned. On a similar note, Cypriot Maronite Arabic appears to be situated in a similar sociolinguistic environment, and has undergone similar sound changes as Maltese, but the former is still considered Arabic by its speakers as far as I know. — Zerida 03:17, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

According to Versteegh (2001), the Maltese government initiated efforts in the 70s and 80s to make Arabic (as in MSA, I presume) compulsory study in schools, and to "emphasise the Arabic character of Maltese." These efforts were not met with success for the reasons discussed before. I thought that this might be interesting to mention as well. — Zerida 03:27, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Glad the talk's carrying on... I have to be very brief, and don't really have the time to write this... look in any (well, English language) book on dialect vs. language: socioinguistics has a larger role... And the Versteegh comments are to do with origin, I believe... many Maltese believe that the language is descended from Phoenician, and the governement gave up on that only recently. I heard (at an AIDA conference, BTW) the Maltese prime minister saying something like 'and we now recognise the Arabic character (or origin?) of Maltese': it was (I am told) a difference between the 2 political parties at one point. I think the lede (lead) is fine, but more could be put in a new section. Drmaik 05:20, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

There is no clear criteria to determine the difference between a language and a dialect, therefore all this discussion is futile. We could easily argue that all modern languages are merely dialects, after all they all descend from other languages. So, what criteria is being used here? There are acedemics who claim that Maltese is indeed a dialect, while other claim that it was a dialect prior to the Romance and English influences [4][5]. I suggest we leave the article as it is. Marcus1234 14:50, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

IPA

Could someone please add the IPA pronounciation of the word Maltese? Most other language articles include it both in the infobox and in the lead. --Gibmetal 77^talk 11:20, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

my family is of italian and maltese descent (on my mums side anyway)

I cannot speak maltese, but I am ok with Italian. When I see maltese written down (or less often, when spoken), I am able to understand large quantities from Italian. I know that this in itself is not a reliable enough source to prove that it is not a 'dialect of semitic language,' but I am addressing the point it is by no means simply semitic on its own... in fact, i would even say that as time has gone by, it has been steadily romanticising, with new words and structures entering the language from Italian, Sicilian, and French... also from English majorly as well, but English is not a romance language. Yes, it is true that long long back, the start of the maltese language would have been a variant of semitics, but at the point where it actually became the 'maltese language,' this was no longer true. hope this helps Iamandrewrice 12:22, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

The Maltese-Arabic language connection has been well-established by the late Aquilina, who was without doubt the world's greatest authority on the language. If you are going to flatly contradict his research on teh subject, you need a better cite than a pdf file stored on a free website, and preferably one written by someone with at least as good academic credentials in the field. Rhialto 17:23, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

no no i did not say there was no arabic link... (although to be technical... it is in fact more punic than arabic... with arabic being an overview... you had no rite also to delete all my work! it was all correct... i did not change the articles meaning! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Iamandrewrice (talk • contribs) 19:27, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that all the edits I made were perfectly acceptable and valid! i provided a reference... I suggest restoring all the hours of work i spent doing... over some mere whim by someone to delete the whole lot! Iamandrewrice 20:05, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

The established scientific consensus on the origins of the Maltese language is that it is derived from Arabic, specifically an urban western dialect of Arabic. Punic is, if anything, an eastern dialect of Arabic. To claim that Maltese is derived from Punic is to directly contradict a great many respected and published writers in this field. I did examine everything you wrote, and, to be honest, I couldn't really find anything much worth salvaging, but if you wish to highlight a specific item (except the Punic references, which I have just explained), I will explain why I removed it from the article. Rhialto 20:16, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

well, Punic defintely isn't a dialect of Arabic of any sort, but leaving that to one side, I have to agree with all of Rhialto's reverts. The 'meaning' of the article was most defintely changed, and away from academic consensus. Drmaik 20:38, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

recent edits obfuscating the origin

An anon editor has recently been replacing the statement of origin of Maltese in the lead, with one on proportion of vocab. I have reverted these edits twice, as they add nothing (this info is further down in the article), and remove important information for the reader, and was accused by said anon (who would seem to be an established editor) of removing info. Well, it was the other way round: adding nothing, and making the origin unclear. So I'll revert again... Drmaik (talk) 19:24, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The revert would be justified as the issue has already been discussed at length. Every language article typically specifies the language's origins in the lead. Perhaps the anonymous editor could add to the discussion before deleting this useful information again. — Zerida 22:19, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Dual semitic plurals

I think a paragraph in the semitic grammer section on semitic words having two possible plurals would be pertinent, e.g. tapit -> tapiti = twapet; and maybe on the recent tries of the Academy on eliminating one of them. _└ ^VodkaJazz / _talk ^┐ 16:29, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Ajn

I have included a reference to the Maltese 'ajn' in the Ayin article but it really should be looked at by somebody who knows what they're doing. Anybody willing to help? Kalindoscopy (talk) 05:51, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I've edited it a bit, but someone who knows more could probably improve it further (is there a rule about it being pronounced only after a long vowel (or was it short?) at the end? - not sure) Drmaik (talk) 14:21, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

From the text:

"An analysis of the etymology of the 41,000 words in Aquilina's Maltese-English Dictionary shows that words of Romance origin make up 52% of the Maltese vocabulary, although another source claims 40%"

Does this mean that Maltese is roughly half Sicilian/Italian? Therefore, it is not true that it is entirely "Semitic". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.145.139.94 (talk) 18:32, 21 February 2008 (UTC)