The Maltese language, a linguistic crossroads

Published on 23/03/2011

Martine VANHOVE

For a long time, linguists wondered about the disappearance of any trace of a previous language—Punic, Latin, or Greek—in Maltese toponymy. Similarly, archaeologists were surprised by the absence of remains from the Arab period in Malta, with the oldest vestiges dating back to the time when the Normans had already retaken the Archipelago from the Arabs. The recent discovery by Joseph Brincat (1991) seems to finally lift the veil on these mysteries: in the Beirut edition of the geographical dictionary by al-Himyarî (1494), it is indeed mentioned that the island of Malta was emptied of its population following the Arab conquest and repopulated only by Muslims and their slaves from 1048-49 onwards. The account of al-Himyarî provides enough to definitively put an end to all the speculation that prevailed until the 19th century among grammarians regarding a Phoenician, Punic, or "Canaanite" origin of the Maltese language—a theory that still today enjoys the favor of a large part of the Maltese population, so strong are the prejudices against anything that may have a connection with the Muslim religion in this deeply Catholic country. It seems possible that the Archipelago was repopulated from Sicily. The Muslims would thus have ruled unchallenged over the Maltese archipelago for only 42 years, until 1090, the date on which the Norman count Roger reconquered the island for Christendom.

More than a century and a half later, Emperor Frederick II would expel, in 1249, the last Muslims, who were perhaps still in the majority according to an estimate dating from 1241. These two centuries of Muslim presence were decisive for the linguistic history of Malta, since it is still a variety of Arabic that is spoken there, likely close to that of the old urban dialects of Tunisia. Advances in studies on Sicilian Arabic may help clarify the linguistic links between the two Mediterranean islands.

Practically eight centuries of near-total separation from the Arab-Muslim world in favor of close ties with the neighboring Christian world (with encouragement of Italian immigration, and sometimes even deportations of populations) naturally paved the way for many foreign contributions to the language. First from Sicilian until the 17th century, then from Tuscan Italian, perhaps also through the intermediary of a lingua franca, and finally from modern Italian and English, though the latter came at a much more recent date, its real influence on the Maltese language dating from the mid-20th century. Sicilian, Italian, and to a much lesser extent English, have left their mark on every level of the language—phonetic, morphological, lexical, and syntactic—to varying degrees, but not to the point where it would be impossible to immediately recognize an Arabic dialect. On the other hand, what gives Maltese a special status, a legacy of these contacts, is the adoption of an alphabet in Latin characters, proposed in 1921 by the Association of Maltese Writers and made official by the government in 1934. Moreover, Maltese has become the sole national language of the Archipelago, a unique case for an Arabic dialect, as well as the official language, jointly with English.

Although the Siculo-Italian and later English contributions have been significant, the fact remains that Maltese did not simply borrow raw elements but often adapted them to its own linguistic structures inherited from Arabic. It is in this respect that one can speak of a "crossroads." However, one should not neglect—although it is extremely difficult to assess—the conservative role that the presence of large numbers of Arab-Muslim slaves on the island may have played. Thus, at the end of the 17th century, the Maltese grammarian and lexicographer M. A. Vassalli could write about the dialect of La Valette and the neighboring towns: "the influence of Arabic [is] quite clear, perhaps because of the too great number of Muslim prisoners." It is also known that classical Arabic was taught in Malta from 1632, first in religious orders for proselytizing purposes, then in the university and school system during the 19th century with uneven success. One can thus better understand the influence of Arabic on Maltese intellectuals and on Maltese literature, whose beginnings, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, were strongly marked by a so-called "Semitizing" tendency that led to the creation of numerous neologisms drawn from Arabic, many of which have become incomprehensible.

Source: Le Carrefour Maltais – RMMM n°71 – Edisud

Published with the kind permission of Martine VANHOVE