Maltese became an official language of Malta in 1936, alongside English. Prior to that season, a official language of Malta was Italian. In todays world, there are an judged 330,000 Maltese speakers. There are the important total of Maltese exile around Australia, the United States and Canada who can however speak a language.

A oldest known document around Maltese is "Il Cantilena" , a verse form from either a 15th century written by Pietro Caxaro. For even centuries, Maltese was about alone the spoken language, by having writing existence neutralise Arabic or, late, Italian.

Grammar

Its basis is Arabic, using the super big inflow of Romance vocabulary, especially Italian and Norman French. Although influenced by Romance languages, Maltese grammar is still strongly Semitic. Adjectives follow nouns, there are no on an individual basis formed native adverbs, and word sequentially is fairly flexible. When within Arabic and Hebrew, both nouns & adjectives (people of Semitic origin) take a definite article (e.g. L-Art l-Imqaddsa, lit. "The Land the Holy = The Holy Land"; cf. Arabic Al-Ardh al-Muqaddasa, Hebrew ''Ha'arets Hakkedosha''). This rule doesn't use to nouns & adjectives of Romance origin.

Nouns come pluralized & likewise have a dual marker (rare among modern European languages, others including Icelandic, Slovene and Sorbian). Verbs however indicate the triliteral Semitic pattern, in which the verb is conjugated with prefixes, suffixes, and infixes (for example ktibna, Arabic katabna, Hebrew katavnu "we wrote"). There are ii tenses: present and perfective tense.

A Maltese verb formulas incorporates Romance verbs & adds Arabic postfix & prefixes to the two (e.g. iddeċidejna "we decided" < (i)ddeċieda 'Romance verb' + -ejna 'Arabic first person plural perfect marker'). Arabic exclusively seldom does this, although many Arabic dialects like Tunisian do.

Maltese grammar usually shows deuce system, the Semitic pattern & the Romance pattern, usage existence selected by word origin & tradition. An Anglo-Saxon pattern in the form of English words altered to the Maltese structure occurs as recent linguistic phenomenon.

A Romance pattern is usually simpler. Words of Romance originside come ordinarily pluralized in both manners: addition of -we or even -jiet (e.g. lingwa, lingwi "languages"; arti, artijiet "arts"). Semitic plural form, nonetheless, come lot other complex; in case it is regular, it is marked by -iet/-ijiet (cf. Arabic -at & Hebrew -ot) or even -inside (cf. Arabic -een & Hebrew -im). Whenever irregular, it fall in the pluralis fractus category, where the word is pluralized by internal vowel changes: ktieb, kotba "books", raġel, irġiel "men". This is very easily-developed inside Arabic & as well exhibited by Hebrew (sefer, sfarim "books").

Vocabulary

Maltese vocabulary occurs as hybrid of Arabic Semitic roots and Sicilian (rather than Tuscan Italian) words. Therein respect these are similar to English (Germanic-Romance mix) & Persian (Indo-Iranian/Arabic mix).

Normally words expressing basic construct & ideas come of Arabic origin, whereas sir thomas more 'learned' words, sustaining to launder with recently ideas, objects, government, law, education, art, literature, & general learning, come from either Sicilian. So words rather raġel human, mara woman, tifel tike, dar home, xemx sun, sajf summertime, come of Arabic origin. When words such as skola school, gvern government, repubblika republic, re king, natura nature and severity, pulizija police force, ċentru center, teatru theater, differenza difference, come from either Sicilian. These are calculated that 60% of a vocabulary is Semitic, the rest existence Romance.

Romance words unremarkably reflect Sicilian & non Tuscan pronunciation. So final 'o' becomes 'u' inside Maltese, when Sicilian (e.g. teatru non teatro when around Tuscan). Likewise, final Italian 'e' becomes 'we': arti art, fidi faith, lokali local (cf. Italian arte, fede, venue). This burden is likewise observed within Brazilian Portuguese. is 'scene' (cf. Italian ambasciata, scena).

English loan words come cliche, including strajk strike, daljali dial, along using union (when around trade union), leave and bonus, which are then non transliterated.

Phonology

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