The Arabic Language

15.2 Maltese
When in 256/870 the Tunisian Aghlabids conquered the island of Malta, the inhab-
itants were Christians who probably spoke some kind of Romance dialect. During 
the period of Muslim domination, the entire population took over the Arabic 

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Arabic as a Minority Language 
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language. If we believe the report by the eighth/fourteenth century-geographer 
Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Munʿim al-Ḥimyarī in his 
Kitāb ar-rawḍ al-miʿtār
, for some 
180 years after the conquest there were no inhabitants at all and the island was 
repopulated with Arabic-speaking people afterwards (Brincat 1991). In any case, 
the language of the original inhabitants did not leave any traces in the Maltese 
language.
In 445/1054, the Normans conquered the island of Malta, but in the thirteenth 
century two-thirds of the inhabitants were still Muslims according to a contem-
porary source. In the following centuries, these Muslims must have been either 
banished or converted to Christianity, and with their religion the Classical Arabic 
language disappeared as well. Their vernacular language remained in use, and, 
even though Latin and Italian were introduced as the languages of religion and 
culture, the Maltese vernacular was accepted as the language of contact between 
the priests and their flocks. The official language was Italian.
The earliest Maltese text that has been preserved dates from the second half 
of the fifteenth century, the 
Cantilena
of Pietro de Caxaro. The first two lines of 
the text are as follows:
Xideu il cada, ye gireni, ta le nichadíthịcum
Mensáb fil gueri uẹ le nisáb fọ homórcom
‘Witness the situation, my neighbours, about which I am speaking to
you. There wasn’t one like it in the past, nor in your lifetime’. (text and translation in 
Brincat 2011: 171–2)
Yet it was not until 1796 that Maltese was accepted as a language in its own right 
with Mikiel Vassalli’s grammar, 
Ktyb yl klym Malti
(
Book of the Maltese Language
). 
After 1814, when Malta became part of the British Empire, English replaced 
Italian as the official language, but Maltese was introduced in the curriculum 
of the schools. In 1933, Maltese was recognised as the second national language, 
and after independence it became the official language of the Republic of Malta, 
written in a Latin orthography, and with around 400,000 speakers.
Despite efforts in the 1970s and 1980s by the Maltese government to emphasise 
the Arabic character of Maltese and to introduce Arabic in schools as a compul
-
sory subject, most Maltese do not like to be reminded of the Arabic provenance of 
their language. They do not wish to be associated with the Arab world, and prefer 
to call their language a Semitic language. Older theories about the Punic origin 
of the language are no longer taken seriously, but at the University of Malta in 
Valletta the study of Arabic is part of the Department of Oriental Studies and is 
not included in the Department of Maltese Studies.
A number of Arabic consonantal phonemes have merged in the language, but 
are still distinguished in the orthography: /q/ has become /ʾ/, for example, 
qagħad
[Ɂaːt] ‘to sit’ (Arabic 
qaʿada
); /ʿ/ and /ġ/ have disappeared in most positions, but 
are still written as 
għ
, for example, 
bogħod
[boːt] ‘distance’ (Arabic 
buʿd
); /ḥ/ and 
/ḫ/ have merged in /ḥ/, written as 
ħ
; /h/ has disappeared in most positions, but 

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The Arabic Language
is maintained in the orthography, for example,