The sole official Hamito-Semitic language in Europe.

[SOMALI GENERAL]

To the Arabic speakers of Sspot, is Maltese largely intelligible to you?

Here's a sample:

 

[a y a n]

To the Arabic speakers of Sspot, is Maltese largely intelligible to you?

Here's a sample:

why does it seem like italianized arabic ???

 

[Medulla]

Structure seems like arabic but smashed with italian with small pockets of arabic

 

[Nostalgia]

Sounds more like hebrew.

 

[SOMALI GENERAL]

why does it seem like italianized arabic ???

Maltese descends from the Siculo-Arabic dialect which in turn was heavily influenced by Tunisian/Maghrebi Arabic, since most of the conquerors in the Emirate of Sicily were Arabised Berbers from Tunisia.

Fast forward a couple hundred years, Christian Europeans reconquered Sicily & Malta from the Muslims, therefore Siculo-Arabic became extinct in Sicily but morphed into Maltese in Malta as it became more Latinized.

 

[Maximus]

.

The numbers are definitely arabic influenced with a different ‘italian’ pronunciation.

The greetings and some of the dialogue are definitely in Arabic but with Mixed Italian


The lords prayer definitely has a lot of arabic. Even within the grammar, Arabic pronouns are used

Ahfrilina dunubeina (We say something similar)—> Forgive us for our sins
Khubzina—> our Bread
Miserina—> Our Fate /destiny
Samma—>Sky
Deni-> denbi—-> sins
(The ‘na’ at the end means ‘our’)

There’s also a lot more but those are the main ones

 

[Apollo]

Interestingly, Maltese has something in common with Somali in that Arabic, Italian, and English are the three main sources of loanwords in Somali. Funny coincidence.

 

[Aurelian]

Maltese descends from the Siculo-Arabic dialect which in turn was heavily influenced by Tunisian/Maghrebi Arabic, since most of the conquerors in the Emirate of Sicily were Arabised Berbers from Tunisia.

Fast forward a couple hundred years, Christian Europeans reconquered Sicily & Malta from the Muslims, therefore Siculo-Arabic became extinct in Sicily but morphed into Maltese in Malta as it became more Latinized.

You can clearly hear the Tunisian Arabic accent in it.