Talk:Maltese language/Archive 1

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)

@Vermondo - if you're claiming that Maltese is an arabic dialect then you really know nothing about maltese. I'm a maltese native and study the maltese language (Malti) at advanced level. Besides i don't know from where you got the fact that we understand Tunisian or whatever. I certainly don't for one. Basically what is true is that our grammatical roots are from the semitic languages. However the semitic part only constitutes 40% of our language. If you had to take words such as grazzi (thank you), spara (fire) etc they all are romance words and certainly not semitic. There are also a bunch of words from english and a few french (Bonġu). Currently the Maltese Language is only being influenced by the english language. All the technological words are all derived from english. We currently have a lot of influx of english replacing old semitic/romance words even going far enough to adopt the s plural.. such as film --> films. Basically all this can be found in "Lingwa and Linguistika" a book we study here in Malta. So regarding dialect and not a dialect. Maltese is the National Language of Malta. Stop inventing stuff.. its not a dialect like american is to english. So stop all this crap please.--Gian (talk) 13:45, 11 May 2008 (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)

Maltese is derived from the Semitic family to be precise. However I think its the only language derived from the semitic languages. Although I'm sure there are many dialects derived from semitic languages.--Gian (talk) 14:19, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Gian, that's an unsound remark. All Semitic languages, other than the dead ones that differentiated directly out of Proto-Semitic are, by definition, derived from other Semitic languages. All the Arabic languages and/or dialects today (regardless of one's philosophy on the languages/dialect question)&#8212Moroccan Arabic, Lebanese Arabic, Yemeni Arabic, etc., as well as Maltese— are derived from the Arabic of its pre-Islamic speakers, which in deemed to derive, along with Hebrew, Aramaic, and Ugaritic, from Central Semitic. —Largo Plazo (talk) 16:57, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Genetics

Please refer to these two sections:

• http://www.qudswiki.org/?query=Semitic_languages#Northwest_Semitic_languages
• http://www.qudswiki.org/?query=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)

ila you're listing the semitic derived ones but if i had to list the english and romance ones.. i won't stop. So listing these things doesn't justify anything. Just to give an idea.. all the words of culture, music and traditions all come from romance and all technological things all come english. So basically my point is that you're wasting time looking for such words. --Gian (talk) 14:27, 11 May 2008 (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.

---

First of all sign your comment. Secondly i'd like to point out that most of the dialects were lost after the second world war since people from the south had to move north due to the bombardment concentration on the south of the island. This caused interactions and basically the small dialects that remain are very small. The only differences are in pronunciation and not in the spelling or something. Standard Maltese (Malti Standard) is the official grammer structures accepted by the Kunsill Nazzjonali tal-lingwa Maltija. The Kunsill is made up of people from all over Malta not from Valletta. Recently Bondi Plus screened a program regarding this subject. They basically discussed that we need to regulate words coming into Maltese. "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."

hmmm i wonder from where you got the C.. this shows you purely don't understand the language. In Maltese we don't have a c.. we only have a ċ and they are surely not spelt like that.. Kuġin, Kċina etc.

Your last paragraph saying that we are offended or whatever is totally not true. Its a pure fact that us Maltese are Europeans. Are Chinese European?.. they obviously reply no.. not because they are offended but because it is true. Our culture and traditions showcases this. --Gian (talk) 14:09, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

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)

I agree that such figures such as 40% shouldn't be entered in the article. However us maltese make use of such estimates in order to stop people from claiming maltese as an arabic language or whatever when more than half of it isn't composed of. Professor Aquilina isn't the only school of thought regarding this issue. Professor Serraċino Inglott also gives his views and many others. The basis of Maltese is a mystery in itself. Some words like mqaddes etc are thought to be from Lebanon. Practically its a huge mix forming a healthy distinct language. My point is that it would be incorrect to enter Professor Aquilina's interpretation since its neither accepted nor rejected theory. So i suggest we enter all the thoughts of all the well known Maltese scholars. --Gian (talk) 14:37, 11 May 2008 (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)

Maltese became an official language of Malta along English in 1934. Not 1936. Before 1934. Italian was the language of administration and for public uses etc etc and Maltese was used for not important dialogues. That's why Dun Karm the national poet started writing in italian first and it was after that he started using maltese. --Gian (talk) 15:34, 11 May 2008 (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)

I don't know who invented that there are actually people talking maltese in Gibraltar. As far as we maltese know, we only have a large amount of relatives in australia( in fact prime minister gonzi last year went to visit the maltese society there, whilst he was abroad opposition leader alfred sant went to visit mater dei..) and canada USA and Gibralter etc are simple no no's. --Gian (talk) 16:07, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Gian, there isn't any reason why Maltese would be the experts on where else in the world Maltese is spoken. Someone reporting on-site from Gibraltar is, all other things being equal, in a better position than someone from Malta to know what's being spoken in Gibraltar. —Largo Plazo (talk) 17:02, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Largo Plazo there. I am from Gibraltar and I know that Maltese is indeed a minority language of the territory. How can someone who has never experienced this simply say it is not true? There are various cultural ties between Gibraltar and Malta. About a third of the surnames found in the Gibraltar Telephone Directory are Maltese (Azzopardi, Bugeja, Buttigieg, Camilleri, Caruana, Cassar, Galea, Grima, Mifsud, Teuma, Vassallo, Zammitt, among many others) and some of these families still speak the language. --Gibmetal 77^talk 17:41, 11 May 2008 (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)

I only suggest, Malta, Australia and Canada.. USA and stuff remove. Those are the places that a flow of emigrants went to in the 60's. When the country was in economic instability. --Gian (talk) 14:15, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Mainly Libya and Tunisia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by IrzamAhmad (talk • contribs) 21:39, 11 May 2008 (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)

I agree with this maltese guy. I'm maltese like him and can confirm whatever he's saying. Now Rhialto you know its impossible to find such sources. I think until you find sources (which i doubt) its better to trust us maltese rather than all these discussions leading to nowhere. Anyway its one of the pillars of wikipedia to assume good faith ;) --Gian (talk) 15:18, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Maltese is Arabic! How many times must I repeat myself! —Preceding unsigned comment added by IrzamAhmad (talk • contribs)

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)

Maltese is certainly a language and not a dialect. Dialects develop dependently on their mother language whilst languages develop on their own. Maltese certainly develops on its own. It certainly cut all its ties with its mother language and developed into an individual language. --Gian (talk) 11:03, 12 May 2008 (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)

Thank you! one other person who realises Maltese is Arabic. The rest of you are trying to lie! —Preceding unsigned comment added by IrzamAhmad (talk • contribs)

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)

I'm not too sure either: I speak the language (sort of) but wouldn't feel comfortable offering a definitive answer one way or the other. Kalindoscopy (talk) 06:50, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Very good, all the Arabic letters should be included on this page —Preceding unsigned comment added by IrzamAhmad (talk • contribs)

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)

This source shows a good stance that Maltese is Sicilian and Italian influenced as much as it is Arabic.[6] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.145.139.94 (talk) 18:48, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Determining a language's classification and therefore its roots uses more than just vocabulary statistics. Looking at the language's history, core vocabulary, inflection, and grammar also are key indicators. I know nothing of Maltese but I imagine that it's well established that it's an obvious semitic language, even if it does have quite a few Romance loan words. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:08, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes although that is true, the vocabulary is a factor too. A more correct way of wording the article would include that it has partially semitic and partially romantic status. I have studied romance languages and european studies for almost four years at university level now, and wording the text as it is just seems plain ignorance and POV to me. 78.145.139.94 (talk) 19:16, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I am going to enter that into the article, unless someone can give me a really good bunch of references which state otherwise, that maltese is not significantly romantic. In addition to this, the article does not put enough emphasis on the Siculo-Arabic content of Maltese, that is to say, the parts of the Maltese language which are arabic due to the inputs from the Arabic-influenced parts of the Sicilian language. In my oppinion this article is rather unbalanced at the moment. 78.145.139.94 (talk) 19:27, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

you seem to misunderstand what Siculo-Arabic: a now extinct variety of Arabic which lent many words to Sicilian, which, according to some (and they're probably right) linguists such as Agius, Maltese himself, would have been very close to Maltese. Drmaik (talk) 09:32, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

A more correct way of wording the article would include that it has partially semitic and partially romantic status. That is exactly how languages are not classified; i.e., they are not classified based on the number of loanwords they've incorporated into their lexicons. Otherwise, English would be Romance, or "Romance-Germanic" according to your logic. This topic keeps cropping up. Please see older discussion. — Zerida ☥ 20:05, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Please do not assume that I am using Original Research, as the number of years I have dedicated in my life to languages (and i do not just mean university) is not something you can just assume away as "OR". You are not breaking WP:CIV, but you are not exactly being the politest either. As you have correctly pointed out, the topic seems to appear numerous times. This must surely show you something? Even if it is not Romance-Semitic, it should still be mentioned as Semitic with large Romance influxes if what we are basing this is on is true. However, it is not. The Maltese language is not just romantic in its vocabulary, it is in fact largely so in its syntax, grammar, alphabet (although yes agreeably the alphabet does not make it so), phoneme variety, morpheme structure, morphology, agglutinativity compared with fusion... and the list goes on. There is no doubt in anyone that has a greater understanding of linguism that Maltese is certainly not a direct descendant of Arabic. There are of course ties with it, it would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise, but no where near as much as the POV has pushed so far in this article. Maltese is closer in more ways to Sicilian. I would not say so much Italian, and in fact yes, it is probably closer to Arabic than Italian, but Sicilian by far is the closest, and this needs to be reflected in the article.

I have now mentioned on the article, how the majority of the vocabulary is not Romantic, although in fact, there is more to discuss than this. The discussion that you mentioned raised various good points as far as i can see. The user was suggesting that if Maltese eventually became 90% Romantic vocabulary, then would it still be "Semitic". I would in fact like to know what you would say about this? Because from where I stand, it seems like even though the majority of the language is Romantic, your POV is pushing it to be something which it is not.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.145.139.94 (talk • contribs)

"There is no doubt in anyone that has a greater understanding of linguism that Maltese is certainly not a direct descendant of Arabic"

Really? Because Janet Watson in The Phonology of Arabic (2002) seems to think it is. A cursory look at Jstor shows William Cowan (1962) saying in a review of Papers in Maltese linguistics (1961) by Joseph Aquilina: "Nevertheless, Maltese provides more elbow room than most Arabic dialects, and one need not labor to establish a mountain of rigorous statements to bring forth only a small nest of changes." (331) and that although Maltese doesn't descend from Classical Arabic, he cites Ferguson's (1959) description of an Arabic Koiné as having the properties of Maltese's "proto-language." In a review of another of Aquilina's books, Cowan starts off by saying "Among the uniquenesses that set Maltese apart from other dialects of Arabic..." and goes on to say that Aquilina is of the view that "Maltese is indeed a dialect of Western Arabic, but with structurally significant changes brought about by its contact with Romance." (180) No scholar worth his salt seems to have offered the joint-classification you're promoting and Aquilina's view contrasts other scholarly hypotheses that Maltese is derived from Punic or Syrian. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:34, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Well it seems I've come across another fellow linguist... I respect that. However, if you read what I said carefully, I said that no one would say it did not come from Arabic originally... but it is no longer a direct descendant. Also, you did not answer my question regarding the hypothesised future increase of Romantic Vocabulary. 78.145.1.62 (talk) 09:35, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

There seems (on the anon's point of view) to be a basic misunderstanding of linguistic origin. English also has more Romance words than Germanic, but it is a Germanic language which has borrowed a lot: same goes for Swahili, a Bantu language, with a lot of Arabic borrowing (I've never heard it proposed as a Bantu-Semitic language). Drmaik (talk) 09:38, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Classification has more to do with historical origin than anything else. I don't see how a language can at the same time have descended from Arabic and not "directly" descended from it. From what I understand, scholarly opinions on the origin--and therefore the classification--of Maltese are among different Semitic languages. Because the Romance influence is more recent and has been, to a certain extent, documented we know that Maltese doesn't have a Romance origin.

I suppose in the future that a "Maltese" with 90% Romance vocabulary and even many different grammatical aspects attributable to Romance varieties that one could describe the linguistic situation as one with a Semitic substrate affecting the incorporation of a Romance superstrate in similar ways to the adoption of English in Ireland or of Latin amongst the Franks. We're not at that point for Maltese, though. I concede, though, that such distinctions can be subjective at the fuzzy points, which is why attributing interpretations to scholorly sources is a good idea. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 09:54, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I think that the best idea would be to represent both sides of the arguement in the article. From looking over past discussions, I can see that this has already come up literally dozens of times. Therefore, it is not just in my oppinion that the current revision of the article is partially misrepresentative. If the article mentions how there is some sort of unclarity with regards to the status of the language due to its large Sicilian influences, although historically it came from Arabic, then i think that would settle the dispute. Do you agree? Also, you say "we're not at that point for Maltese, though", but I would partially like to disagree. The Maltese language is already approximately 60% Romantic, which from my limited mathematics doesnt push me hard to realise this is a majority. All I am saying is that both sides of the arguement need to be reflected to achieve neutrality. Thank you. 78.145.1.62 (talk) 11:01, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm all for representing both sides of the scholarly/sourced/academic argument, not both sides of the Wikipedia editors' argument. In my cursory search, I couldn't find a source arguing that the Romance elements affect the classification of Maltese but maybe you've got more sources under your belt that can help in covering the issue. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 11:11, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

[7] This source is just one that says that verbs in Maltese come majoritively from Sicilian, and that verbs are one of the most important parts. This surely shows something with regards to the Romantification of the language. 78.145.1.62 (talk) 11:19, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

But User:Crystalclearchanges (I wonder why you removed the signature from your contribution above? This could be interpreted as sockpuppetry) from an academic point of view there aren't 2 sides to an argument. If you can find an academic source that says what you're saying, please cite it. Even in that case, it would not be academic consensus. Yes, there's plenty of Romance vocab, but in linguistics origin is transmission from parent to child, not borrowed vocab. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drmaik (talk • contribs) 11:19, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

[8] This site shows that Maltese is Phonecian mixed with Old Sicilian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.145.1.62 (talk) 11:23, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Drmaik. We need scholarly sources to back up the controversy that you're arguing exists. Anonymous websites are dubious in accuracy and not reliable sources. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 11:26, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

[9] This shows that the Arabic that Malta inherited was in fact the Sicilian version of Arabic. Also, you canot just discredit the sources I am using.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Crystalclearchanges‎ (talk • contribs)

Indeed, Crystalclear, as I mentioned above, this is a popular theory, which has credibility. But Siculo-Arabic was an Arabic dialect. That many speakers came from Sicily does not have any relevance to the Semitic status of Maltese. Drmaik (talk) 11:42, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, if it is clear, as you say, that Maltese comes from SiculoArabic and Sicilian, then surely, its entire composition has passed through sicily? yes? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.145.1.62 (talk) 11:45, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

There seems to be little attempt to listen here. I did not say from Sicilian, but Siculo-Arabic. It's a credible theory, though whether Maltese arrived directly from Tunisia or via Sicily is irrelevant to its status today. Interestingly, User:Crystalclearchanges removed my 3rr warning from his page, along with evidence of him being the above IP, and declared himself retired, but has carried on editing. Drmaik (talk) 11:52, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Little attempt to listen? I am the one who is listening, and trying to get across a neutral point of view. Surely, in the initial paragraph, the idea of the siculo-arabic origins should be represented? and also how the majority of vocab is romantic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.145.1.62 (talk) 11:55, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

[10] I think this is really the only reliable source we need. It shows that the Arabic malta got was from Sicily. Now do you still say that I am not providing reliable sources? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.145.1.62 (talk) 12:05, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I am now going to enter this into the text ok? along with, as the reliable source correctly states, that with regards to vocab, "32.41% are of Arabic origin, 52.46% are from Sicilian and Italian, and 6.12% are from English". "Grammar is mainly Arabic, although drastically simplified, but syntax, possibly through the influence of schooling, is more akin to Italian and English". Does anyone disagree with this before I put it up? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.145.1.62 (talk) 12:09, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that the siculo-Arabic theory needs to be in the lead, though it should be in the paper. You'll find Agius supporting this, while Versteegh and one book on Maltese (the one cited in the article) say Tunisia, though people (and I've been to conferences where they could) don't really get too excited about this. It was probably from both, so I'd want to keep some nuancing in there: either via Sicily or Tunisia.

On vocab, proportions of vocab, as I've noted, can be misleading if not presented in context, as they are below in the article. Re grammar vs. syntax, Prof Brincat is not using the usual distinction here. I think he means morphology when he says grammar (which usually covers both synatx and morphology). And his comment re syntax... well, it's true that Maltese syntax is v. different from Classical Arabic, but it is remarkably similar to Maghrebi Arabic: the same goes for the 'grammar'/morphology: simplified with respect to classical, yes, but not if you compare it with Tunisian. And that's been a problem with older Maltese-Arabic comparisons, comparing with the wrong thing, and I think that's a problem here. But he is a respected scholar, so quoting his words should be OK. Drmaik (talk) 12:33, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and look at English language: it doesn't mention vocab right at the beginning, as this could lead to confusion: its origin is Germanic. The vocab proportions are discussed in context, not in the lead. Drmaik (talk) 12:37, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Well I'm glad we're at least beginning to find some sort of common ground. I see that you are very well up on your sources, some of which I have not even heard of, so bravo to you. Right have we agreed that it should be mentioned that the Arabic is disputed to be either Siculo-Arabic or Tunisie-Arabic origined?

With regards to the english language page, that is a slightly different scenario, as English is a language which has a lot more important features to it than its vocabulary (I'm talking about its spread throughout the world, which is why that is in the lead for that page). I am not suggesting moving the whole vocab section into the lead, just a quick summary of how much percentage maltese is of each of its origins. I am not saying to remove about its historical origins, but including this will give it a fair all round no-point-of-view read, ok?

Oh and one last thing, if we add up the percentages of the vocab origins: 32.41% + 52.46% + 6.12% = 90.99%. So where is the other 9.01%? The text here itself says this: "It is estimated that English loanwords, which are becoming more commonplace, make up 20% of the Maltese vocabulary, although other sources claim it's only 6%". Therefore, does this mean that the rest of the percentage is English? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.145.1.62 (talk) 12:47, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Also, this is a quote from the Tunisian Arabic page: "Tunisian is also closely related to Maltese, which is not considered to be a dialect of Arabic for sociolinguistic reasons." Wow, I am just blown away at how much consensus there seems to be Maltese being a dialect of Arabic! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.145.1.62 (talk) 13:46, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Sarcasm won't get you far. I don't think we're arguing that there is consensus that it's a dialect of Arabic, but the Arabic dialect theory is legitimate. I don't see a problem with including the vocabulary information. The other 9 percent is probably "other" languages or maybe unattributable. Nobody would say 6% when they meant 15% and expect you to understand that with incomplete percentages. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:45, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

the topic seems to appear numerous times. This must surely show you something? Yes, that the topic is frequently approached from the vantage point of Maltese politics, not any type of academic linguistics. Ditto for the claims that Maltese, or Lebanese, is a modern descendent of Phoenician (not discounting influences). — Zerida ☥ 02:09, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Are you suggesting Zerida that I am doing this for political reasons?! And Aeusoes1, I think our edits together have brought the article to a more neutral position. I am happy with it for the moment but I will continue to monitor it. Oh, also, I have been doing some research, and the remainder of the percentage is French. 78.145.126.247 (talk) 09:01, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

More of the vocabulary is Arabic!

French

Crystalclearchanges, I removed the French information because an advertisement at a commercial flight website is not a reliable source and even if it were, there is no percentage given. There's no way that Maltese can get all of its vocabulary from just five languages, especially when its in contact with so many so it's sort of silly to assume that the remaining 10% would be all one language, especially when the BBC source (which I'd say gives probably the accurate of the percentages) doesn't mention French. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:12, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Well I will try have a look for a better one :) 89.241.219.79 (talk) 10:02, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

This one mentions French, but not the specific percentages. choosemalta.com 89.241.219.79 (talk) 10:24, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

This site seems pretty full of info that we could use: http://www6.gencat.net/llengcat/noves/hm04primavera-estiu/a_badia1_3.htm 89.241.219.79 (talk) 12:16, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Italian as the official language before Maltese and English

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

I thought it was 1936, not 1934? Are there any references to show this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.145.139.94 (talk) 18:53, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I have so far found many different sources saying both ways. Which one is the correct? 78.145.139.94 (talk) 18:57, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Really... we need to find out whether it is 1936 or 1934... i've even found areas of wikipedia where it contradicts itself. What is the correct figure??? 89.241.219.79 (talk) 12:17, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

 Done 1934 is the correct answer.In 1934 Maltese and English became the two official languages of Malta, with english taking the place of italian. Please replace them cause 1934 is the correct date for sure. (its on all maltese books and notes.. etc etc) and its basic knowledge here in Malta.--Gian (talk) 15:12, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

other languages section

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

This section is not relevant. It should be replaced with a mention of Languages of Malta in a 'see also' section. Just wanted to post my intent before doing so... Drmaik (talk) 15:54, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

This article is about MALTESE, NOT the languages of Malta. (Taivo (talk) 16:33, 11 April 2008 (UTC))

I am in disagreement. An article about the "maltese language" warrents at least one section about the "Languages of Malta". Fishcakeparty (talk) 17

06, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

No, actually. Look at the article on Amharic language, for example. There is no mention of other languages of Ethiopia. Look at the article on Shoshoni language. There is no mention of other languages of the United States. Look at the article on Moroccan Arabic, there is no mention of other languages of Morocco except only cursorily. This is not the function of a "language" article. It is the function of a "languages of" article. (Taivo (talk) 17:12, 11 April 2008 (UTC))

I agree that the Other Languages section doesn't belong. Should the Hindi article list all the other hundreds of languages spoken in India? The set of languages spoken in Malta is already in the Languages section of the Malta article, where it belongs. —Largo Plazo (talk) 18:22, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

hey mate you know that the Maltese Language is a distinct language like English, German etc etc.. so it warrants an article for itself.. if you had to do an article regarding languages of Malta.. then you have to write regarding maltese and english since they are the only languages we use although we have a wild knowledge of italian thanks to tv. anyway this discussion page needs to be cutdown from such comments by an admins cause its getting out of hand. My appeal to those non-maltese is to comment diligently. Its already difficult for us maltese to keep up with you cause you want it your way with our language article when 3/4 of it is wrong. --Gian (talk) 15:03, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

 Done The scope of this section was reached. The Other Languages section doesn't belong here. --Gian (talk) 11:11, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Semitic form vs Romance form

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Regarding the example "The temple is situated opposite the village plaza:

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

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

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

user:128.135.230.236 added (diff):

"It would, however, be a mistake to say that both of these sentences mean the same thing. Tempju refers to a temple site such as Stonehenge, for example, whereas maqdes may more often be used to describe a church. Moreover, a Maltese speaker is more likely to translate raħal as "village" and villaġġ as "small town." In fact, neither of the above sentences is likely to be said naturally by a native speaker, as both of them involve a collision of normally separate speech registers."

And he removed:

"Both sentences are in Maltese and have exactly the same meaning. Generally though, no one form is ever spoken exclusively, and sentences are usually made up of words from both influences."

All other contributions by this editor were joke edits (or vandalism, if you prefer), but I decided to post this here anyway. As I don't speak Maltese, I don't know whether the user has a point or not, but if he does, the example sentence should perhaps be modified. ---Sluzzelin talk 15:48, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

It's true, I promise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.135.230.236 (talk) 20:15, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand the merits of this section. It's like adding a section to the English language article called "Anglo-Saxon form vs. Romance form" noting that Modern English vocabulary has a large Romance subset in addition the large native Anglo-Saxon one, and sample pairs of sentences like "The boss ate his meal quickly before going to bed" and "The chief consumed his repast rapidly prior to retiring," as though English speakers consciously choose between Anglo-Saxon "style" and Romance "style" when speaking and writing. —Largo Plazo (talk) 16:18, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Oppose - Agree with Largoplazo, your example is so not true . Us native maltese will say : "It-tempju jinsab in-naħa l-oħra tal-pjazza".

So please forget such sections such as Romance vs Semitic. What i suggest (its something we study at college) we do a section on Bilingwiżmu. (Bilingualism). In Malta it appears there was always Bilingualism of some sort.. for example in the 15th century latin and sicilian were the official languages and Maltese used by people without school. In the 16th Century Maltese was used by people without school, whilst Tuscan Italian, Latin and Sicilian were used for the administration. etc etc.. Would be quite interesting really. --Gian (talk) 15:39, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I would agree with Gian's suggestion. But should such a section as "bilinguism" not go on the Languages of Malta page? MagdelenaDiArco (talk) 16:37, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

 Done - The scope of this section was found not to be viable as a proposal. Thanks Largoplaza. Yes the bilinguism proposal if needed should be discussed on the languages of malta talk page. Can anyone archive this section like the alphabet one please? Thanks--Gian (talk) 22:07, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Alphabet section

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

I am sorry, but I see no benefit whatsoever of including the arabic alphabet here. One might just as well include Korean hangul then. I am removing them, on the reasoning that they contribute no benefit to the article, and are irrelevant to the section. It is comparable to including the Scandinavian modified alphabets alongside the "Latin alphabet", in the English language article. If anyone wishes to replace them, please discuss here, and await comment from others, before taking the action. Thanks. MagdelenaDiArco (talk) 15:58, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Support

Support - (Author Default vote - Support) User:MagdelenaDiArco

Support - agree --Gian (talk) 16:17, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Support - agree —Largo Plazo (talk) 17:05, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Support - while it's beneficial to point out sound correspondences between Maltese and closely related Semitic languages (esp. Arabic), using it through the latin alphabet isn't a good way to do it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:23, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Support - Maltese is descended from Arabic, it is NOT Arabic anymore. Maltese is also NOT English or Italian. Its grammar is generally of Arabic origin and its primary vocabulary (the only vocabulary that counts for linguists) is generally of Arabic origin. That makes it clearly a Semitic language descended from Arabic (but NOT still Arabic). The words that the previous poster cites are not primary words of the language--they are words borrowed into many languages of Europe--all these words have been borrowed into Ukrainian as well, but that doesn't make it any less of a Slavic language. (Taivo (talk) 14:46, 12 May 2008 (UTC))

Oppose

Oppose - Most major writers of dictionaries on the language will include Arabic script equivalences in the section detailing the Maltese alphabet, and there's no reason we should have a lesser standard here. Rhialto (talk) 14:35, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

DISAGREE! Maltese is arabic, and the arabic translations should be kept! How dare you!

And also, I have some bones to pick with the article! It lies and pretends Maltese is part Italian and English. WRONG! It is Arabic through and through! Irzam —Preceding unsigned comment added by IrzamAhmad (talk • contribs) 21:32, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Other Comments

(in reaction to IrzamAhmad Oppose post)

No its not, I'm Maltese and my language is certainly not Arabic. Only its grammatical roots are semitic. In fact in Arabic you have 15 forms of verbs. We only took 10 forms of those. (if not 9 since the 4th form only composes of one word mainly - wera). The rest is all italian and english.. so for example words like teatru, muzika, televixon, telefon, kompjuter, mowbajl, ballun, metall etc etc are arabic to you??? think not..--Gian (talk) 10:47, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Rhialto, are you saying you do support its removal, or you don't? And who's that Irzam guy/girl? He/she's commented all over the page. MagdelenaDiArco (talk) 15:37, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

To clarify, I think Arabic script equivalences should be included in the alphabet section. Rhialto (talk) 20:12, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

But there isn't any reason to. The Maltese language is written with Roman letters. The article is written in a language that uses Roman letters. The section is not called, "Phonetic correspondences with Arabic and other Semitic languages", it's called "The alphabet", that is, the Maltese alphabet. As for phonetic representation, IPA is the conventional means of doing that, not the arbitrary use of writing systems from languages that happen to be related. Likewise, I wouldn't expect the article on the Polish language (which is written using a modified Roman alphabet) on English Wikipedia to demonstrate the phonetic values of the letters using Cyrillic script just because some other Slavic languages are written with it. —Largo Plazo (talk) 20:53, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

A "phonetic correspondences with Arabic" section would be a nice addition to the article. Trying to fit it into the alphabet section wouldn't do the issue justice. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:01, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

False analogy. Polish dictionaries written by professional lexicographers don't include comparisons with Arabic script. Maltese dictionaries written by professional lexicographers DO include comparisons with Arabic script. Rhialto (talk) 21:02, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I assume you mean that Polish dictionaries don't include comparisons with cyrillic (comparing Polish to Arabic would be absurd). Can you give an example of a Maltese dictionary that does so? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:05, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I have changed your vote to "oppose", Rhialto, as "support" means that you support taking away the arabic alphabet. And no you don't find Arabic in a Maltese dictionary. And if you are going to follow that principle, you should be including a North Germanic diacritically altered Scandinavian Latin alphabet in the English language article alongside comparison with the English latin alphabet - which, is something that should obviously not be done, and the same applies here. The Maltese alphabet has nothing to do with the Arabic alphabet, and as I said, it is comparable to introducing the Korean hangul alphabet alongside the Maltese one - the two are unrelated. MagdelenaDiArco (talk) 21:08, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

My analogy is fine. The bit about what "professional lexicographers" do is irrelevant. It doesn't matter that someone else does it. What matters is whether there's any reason to do it. Otherwise, you're opening the door to doing pointless things just because someone else is doing pointless things. Besides, these "professional lexicographers" you're talking about--who are they writing for? Why are they showing Arabic correspondences? If they have reasons, are their reasons relevant here? Of course, I'm only supposing that you aren't making this up altogether—I have no Maltese dictionaries in front of me to go by and I'm relying on your veracity, but I see below that Gian and Magdelena contradict you. It's pretty much up to you at this point to provide references if you want your claim to be taken seriously. —Largo Plazo (talk) 21:26, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I have 4 Maltese dictionaries here at home and neither of them do. Just to confirm for you non-maltese out there. --Gian (talk) 21:13, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I have never in my life come across a Maltese dictionary with the arabic alphabet in it. MagdelenaDiArco (talk) 21:15, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I think this discussion is closed. There is 5 support, 1 oppose (I am not classing Irzam's vote, since he was a troll that was blocked for going round every single maltese article claiming that Malta was still an Arabic, Islamic nation). Settled? So we can all move onto the discussion below. MagdelenaDiArco (talk) 21:24, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Oops! Saw this too late. —Largo Plazo (talk) 21:27, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

 Done Yes Go Ahead MagdelenaDiArco you have the authorization to delete the arabic alphabet. (Support won) Make sure when you are editing in the edit summary specify that it was discussed on the talk page. Yes i agree with you that we need to move on because there is a lot to be done. Thanks for your suggestion. --Gian (talk) 21:31, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The arabic was removed when the discussion was started (remember, I removed it, then invited discussion for whether it should return or not, but it would remain off the page until a conclusion was decided). I will have a look at the topic below. :) By the way, is it possible for someone to archive this thread please? - So we don't keep having constant comments on it weeks after it's closed ;) MagdelenaDiArco (talk) 21:35, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.