Maltese language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Maltese Malti
Spoken in:	Malta, Canada, Australia, United States, United Kingdom
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/FDIS 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, however in the course of history, the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even some grammatical patterns, from Italian, Sicilian, and English.

Maltese became an official language of Malta in 1936, alongside English. Before that year, the official language of Malta was Italian. Today, there are an estimated 371,900 Maltese speakers, mostly residing in Malta, although a number of Maltese expatriates in Australia, the United States and Canada can still speak the language.

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.

1 Grammar
- 1.1 Semitic grammatical structure
- 1.2 Romance grammatical structure
2 Vocabulary
- 2.1 English loan words
- 2.2 Semitic form vs Romance form
3 Alphabet
4 External links
5 References

[edit] Grammar

Maltese grammar is fundamentally derived from Arabic, with a very large influx of Romance vocabulary, especially Sicilian and Norman French. Maltese grammar generally shows two patterns, a Semitic pattern and a Romance pattern, usage being selected by word origin and tradition. An Anglo-Saxon pattern in the form of English words adapted to a Maltese structure is a recent linguistic phenomenon.

[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 'al-'arḍu l-muqaddasa, Hebrew ha'arets hakkedoša). This rule does not apply to nouns and 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, eg. 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 Italian lingua, lingue.

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] 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.). It is estimated that, at present, the origin of Maltese words is 40% Semitic, 40% Romance (mostly Italian and Sicilian) and 20% English.

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 are of Arabic origin, whereas more 'learned' words, having to do with new ideas, objects, government, law, education, art, literature, and general learning, are derived from Sicilian or English. (These learned Sicilian words are usually identical or very similar to their Standard Italian counterparts, with minor differences such as unstressed u and i instead of o and e).

Thus basic words like raġel man, mara woman, tifel boy, dar house, xemx sun, sajf summer, are of Arabic origin, while words like skola school, gvern government, repubblika republic, re king, natura nature, pulizija police, ċentru center, are derived from Sicilian.

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) 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.

Romance words usually reflect Sicilian and not Tuscan pronunciation. Thus final 'o' becomes 'u' in Maltese, after Sicilian (e.g. tiatru not teatro as in Tuscan). Also, final Italian 'e' becomes 'i': arti art, fidi faith, lokali local (cf. Italian arte, fede, locale). /ʃ/ (English 'sh') is written 'x' and this produces interesting spellings: ambaxxata /ambaʃːaːta/ is 'embassy', xena /ʃeːna/ is 'scene' (cf. Italian ambasciata, scena).

[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
Fulapp	Full up
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 sentence The temple is situated opposite the square of the village:

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-misrah 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, partisan politics, especially those of the Nationalist Party are heavily dosed with Romance words. Intellectual speech also 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] Alphabet

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

Letter	IPA	Approximate English pronunciation
A	a	similar to 'a' in father
B	b	bar, but at the end of a word it is pronounced as [p].
Ċ	ʧ	church (note: dotless C has been replaced by K.)
D	d	day, but at the end of a word it is pronounced as [t].
E	ɛ	end
F	f	far
Ġ	ʤ	jump, but at the end of a word it is pronounced as [tʃ].
G	ɡ	game, but at the end of a word it is pronounced as [k].
GĦ	ˤ:, ħ:	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		not pronounced unless it is at the end of a word, in which case it has the sound of 'ħ'.
Ħ	ħ	no English equivalent; sounds like a whispered "ah" with the tongue pressed as far back as possible.
I	i	seat
IE	iɛ, iː	yet, feet
J	j	yard
K	k	cave
L	l	line
M	m	march
N	n	next
O	o	like 'aw' in law, but shorter.
P	p	part
Q	ʔ	glottal stop, found in the Cockney English pronunciation of "bottle" or the phrase "(ʔ)uh-(ʔ)oh".
R	r	road
S	s	sand
T	t	tired
U	u	food
V	v	vast, but at the end of a word it is pronounced as [f].
W	w	west
X	ʃ / ʒ	shade, sometimes as measure; when doubled the sound is elongated, as in "Cash shin" vs. "Cash in."
Ż	z	maze, but at the end of a word it is pronounced as [s].
Z	ʦ / ʣ	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

Image:Wikipedia-logo.png

Maltese language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Organisations

Technology and Maltese

Literature and Linguistics

[edit] References

Zammit, Martin (2000). “Arabic and Maltese Cognate Roots”, 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

Image:European flag.svg	Official languages of the European Union	Image:European flag.svg
Czech \| Danish \| Dutch \| English \| Estonian \| Finnish \| French German \| Greek \| Hungarian \| Italian \| Latvian \| Lithuanian \| Maltese Polish \| Portuguese \| Slovak \| Slovenian \| Spanish \| Swedish
from 1/1/07 also: Bulgarian \| Irish \| Romanian
Source: Official EU website