Maltese is a unique language that is the only Semitic language that is the official language of the European Union. The Maltese language is spoken by around 520,000 people mostly from Malta, the island country.
It is believed by some people that Maltese is a descendent of ancient Phoenician, an extinct Semitic language spoken at the eastern end of the Mediterranean territories. But actually, this notion has been proved by any linguistic evidence.
On the other hand, you might wonder learning that Maltese language2 is a descendent of the Arabic language that evolved from the Siculo-Arabic or Sicilian-Arabic dialect. But throughout its evolution as the Maltese language, there has been a quite divergence from Arabic over the last thousand years.
In linguistical terms, the syntax and the grammar of Maltese still the same as the Arabic while about one-third of Maltese vocabulary developed from Arabic which includes most of the grammatical function words as well as a lot of the basic vocabulary. Undoubtedly, on the other side, the Maltese has almost half of the Italian and Sicilian vocabulary while English and French unitedly make up about 20% of Maltese vocabulary.
Despite varying in its development from certain language branches mostly from Romance languages (Italian, Sicilian, French) after the Semitic (Arabic), it is still considered the Semitic language because of its Arabic origin and grammatical structure. However, with so many Romance loanwords, the Maltese is essentially a hybrid language with some kind of Semitic, Romance, and Germanic hybrid.
Historical Background
So, you might think about how the Maltese language became a hybrid and what made it so divergent and a mixture of various language branches? of course, delving into the history of the Maltese language is the best option which reveals its emergence as a distinct language.
The Arab Empire under the Fatimid Caliphate of North Africa (present time: Egypt, Libya, Sudan, etc.) conquered the Sicily Island in the Mediterranean at the end of the 9th century and brought their Maghrebi and North African dialects of Arabic with them. Later, these Arabic-speaking Muslim settlers arrived in Malta (an island in the Mediterranean Sea, 200km from Sicily in the south) in 1049 CE and began to establish a community there.
In 1091 CE, the Normans who were the Christians from Normandy (present-day France) defeated the Arabs and took over Sicily and later reached to take control of Malta from the Arab Empire by the Normans. Under the new rule of Normans, the strength of the settlers doubled who began to arrive in Malta from Sicily and brought their language with them as well.
Even though the Normans were Christian by faith, the population of Sicily was still a mixture of Muslims and Christians who spoke Arabic alongside the Sicilian language. After the fall of Normans, the new Sicilian regime expelled the whole Muslim community from Sicily as well as Malta which became a significant event in various terms especially in the linguistic sense as it essentially cut off the Siculo-Arabic dialect from the Muslim Arabic speaking world as well as it also cut it off from the classical Arabic, the language of Quran (the Holy book in Islam). While as you might be knowing that the Quran has always been a conservative force that preserved Arabic from taking too much influence of other languages and dialects.
Read more: Various Dialects of the Arabic Language
By contrast, in consequence of Muslims expelling by the Sicilian regime, this conservative force was no longer connected with the local Arabic dialect of Malta, thus the dialect was free to drift off and diverge to its own direction, and later a distinct language.
Although the Siculo-Arabic dialect (the Arabic dialect of Sicily) died very soon, interesting it remained in use and continually evolved in Malta. As Malta remained to be a part of the Sicilian Kingdom for several hundred years and a string of rulers controlled the Mediterranean islands, this also led to bringing the languages of the Sicilian language & vocabulary into Malta as well as the influence to develop a new language in Malta.
Among the noteworthy events to influence and develop Maltese as a hybrid language was the rule of Malta by the Order of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller of St. John which was a powerful military order to protect and assist Christian pilgrims on their way to and from the Holy Land.
In 1530 CE, the Knights Hospitaller were handed over the island of Malta as an outpost to help prevent an Ottoman invasion of Rome from the South. During their control, the Order of St. John made Italian the official language of the island which remained the official language until 1934. Thus, consequently, a large amount of Italian vocabulary came into the local language.
During the Napoleon invasion of North Africa in 1798 CE, the island of Malta came under the occupation of the French kingdom which though only lasted to two years until 1800 CE, brought quite a bit of French vocabulary into the language of the island too.
In later years, from 1800 to 1956, the island of Malta became a British protectorate (a client state under imperial protection of British armed forces, represented by British diplomats) that obviously led to the adoption of a lot of English words into Maltese.
So, in simple terms, Maltese is an Arabic dialect that has become Latinized and to a certain extent Anglicized, presently represents itself as a hybrid language.
Script
The Maltese language is always written in the Latin script, even the earliest surviving shreds of evidence of the language from the Middle Ages are found in Latin script. Most interestingly, the best thing that makes Maltese charming and quite alluring is that it is the only standardized Semitic language that is written exclusively in the Latin script.
Also Learn: How the Arabic language evolved?
Maltese as a language Today
If one has a bit knowledge of the Arabic language, it is easier for them to recognize the word and grammatical setting of Maltese which is basically an Arabic structure, despite not making any sense of the sentences because of mostly foreign words, Romance vocabulary in particular.
The Maltese language undeniably is most similar to the Maghrebi dialect of Arabic, the dialects of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, especially it resembles the Tunisian dialect. Therefore, a lot of Tunisians interestingly easily understand the Maltese. Here, this fact can be taken into account that Tunisian Arabic itself has a lot of Italian loanwords because of the Italian colonial over Tunisia in previous centuries.
Accordingly, those who are quite well in an Arabic dialect and proficient in Italian as well, do not find any difficulty to read and understand the Maltese language. In addition, it is also claimed that with some adjustments learning Maltese is quite fairly easier for an Arabic-speaking person. Further, for Arabic and Italian learners, it might be fun to dabble in some Maltese and they see what they make.
Also read: The Arabic Language: Dialects and Variants
In the end, we hope you have enjoyed this article and come to explore the unique variant of the Arabic language which you didn’t know earlier perhaps.
