Maltese Language is Arabic??

[antaeus]

you dont have to be muslim to speak arabic

i'm learning arabic at the moment! and i am far from muslim...

of course there are a number of arab speaking christian communities around the world.. the marionites of lebanon and syria, assyrians in iraq, copts in egypt speak arabic as their everyday language and there's somewhere around 10 million of them. then there's christian arabs in syia, palestine, israel, and other countries across the middle east... most arent ethnic arabs, but arab speaking people of other ethnicity..

then historically there are a sizeable number of christian arab communities - the ghassanids of syria who were a world power in their own right at times... the people of socotra off the south coast of the arabian peninsula were christian as late as the portugese occupation in the 16th century are a couple of example of ethnic arabs being christian...

[KingOfTheIsles]

By punic you probably mean phoenician, punic is just the Latin word for that...

No, generally speaking, Phoenician languages are used to refer to the language spoken originally in the area traditionally known as Phoenicia. Punic refers to the daughter language as spoken in Carthage and its colonies. We don't know an awful lot about it, or how much it differed from its parent language, but they don't mean the same thing in a linguistic context.

[jermagon]

No, generally speaking, Phoenician languages are used to refer to the language spoken originally in the area traditionally known as Phoenicia. Punic refers to the daughter language as spoken in Carthage and its colonies. We don't know an awful lot about it, or how much it differed from its parent language, but they don't mean the same thing in a linguistic context.

Oh my Godness so the Punic language -the native languageof Hanibaal- survived all these centuries till the Muslim conquest of the Island in the 9th century??

[DAVIDE]

Punic language survived in rural villages.. Augustin of Hippo in his book "Confessions II", explains that rural people of Tunisia spoke punic and not latin. So he had to learn it, to talk to them

[KingOfTheIsles]

I've also read that the Arabic geographer al-Bakri recorded the existence of a people speaking a language that was not Latin, Berber or Coptic as late as the 11th century not too far from Carthage. This provides a tantalising glimpse that Punic may even have survived as late as the early middle ages in some parts of North Africa, and it isn't entirely unfeasible that it could have survived on Malta, too.

[jankren]

Very stupid thread. Not all Arabs are Muslims and not all Muslims are Arabs. The Algerians are almost 100% Muslims but their language is heavily influenced by French. So are they blasphemers too?

[jermagon]

Very stupid thread. Not all Arabs are Muslims and not all Muslims are Arabs. The Algerians are almost 100% Muslims but their language is heavily influenced by French. So are they blasphemers too?

hey take it easy man,the thread is all about a small European nation that partly retained Arabic making it the only European nation that speak semitic language
and I never said that Islam and Arabism are 2 faces for the same coin

[jankren]

hey take it easy man,the thread is all about a small European nation that partly retained Arabic making it the only European nation that speak semitic language
and I never said that Islam and Arabism are 2 faces for the same coin

Yeah but you made it sound like the Maltese are not supposed to keep Arabic influence because they are not Muslims. I mean even in the Middle East there are Christians too you know.

[jermagon]

Yeah but you made it sound like the Maltese are not supposed to keep Arabic influence because they are not Muslims. I mean even in the Middle East there are Christians too you know.

of course I know,Iam a middle eastern if you don't know!!,and again you didn't get my point many Arab christians used to speak Arabic even before Islam like in case of the Ghassanids,Lakhmids,and those who didn't speak Arabic did spoke other semitic languages,in the other hand the Malteses were ruled by the Arabs for a relatively short time and after the Normans had conquered the Island,the natie population didn't change their lnaguage,like in the case of Spain,and Muslim Sicily.
Iam trying to make a comparison between Muslim spain,Muslim Sicily and Malta
in the 1st case both Arabic and Islam were vanished,while in the second case Arabic survived

[jankren]

of course I know,Iam a middle eastern if you don't know!!,and again you didn't get my point many Arab christians used to speak Arabic even before Islam like in case of the Ghassanids,Lakhmids,and those who didn't speak Arabic did spoke other semitic languages,in the other hand the Malteses were ruled by the Arabs for a relatively short time and after the Normans had conquered the Island,the natie population didn't change their lnaguage,like in the case of Spain,and Muslim Sicily.
Iam trying to make a comparison between Muslim spain,Muslim Sicily and Malta
in the 1st case both Arabic and Islam were vanished,while in the second case Arabic survived

Actually Spanish has quite a lot of Arabic influence also.

As an example Spanish speaking people still use the word "Ojala" derived from the word "Inshaallah" to say "I wish or God willing".

[Randarkmaan]

Iam trying to make a comparison between Muslim spain,Muslim Sicily and Malta
in the 1st case both Arabic and Islam were vanished,while in the second case Arabic survived

But the languages of all of those places acutally has a very large Arabic influence, especially, as is the topic of the thread, with Maltese which stayed semitic, but it's no longer Arabic either. In the case of Sicilian it's somewhat disputed, at least officially in Italy, whether it's a distinct language or just a dialect, I think "Mafia" comes from an Arabic word actually, in Spain the Andalucian and Murcian dialects for an example have a more pronounced Arabic heritage than standard Castillian Spanish.

You know it's the funniest thing, but I've been to Southern Spain many times (Murcia region and also been to Andalucia) and I've actually come across Arabic roadsigns several times! Though I'm abot 99.99% sure that that's because many Arabic speaking people visit places like Cordoba, Granada and other hot spots from al-Andalus.

Anyway found this on Maltese while looking up Sicilian (and moving from there to Siculo-Arabic) on wikipedia:
"Although Siculo-Arabic died out in Sicily, it survived on Malta and developed into the Maltese language by superimposing onto the pre-existing Sicanian language there, and mixing with Sicilian Italian, Italian, French, and more recently English.[1]"

[mhdsafwanindera]

Maltese is descendent of Sicilian Arabic,Arab conquered and rule Sicily and small part of South Italy and Bari more than 500 year before it fall to Norman,and still Sicilian Arab still lives harmony and tolerated with Christian rule until end of Norman rule when other Christian kick/expel and kills Arab of sicily and south Italy some,fate of Sicilian Arab same like Andalusian Arab in 1492 and still exist to end 1600s but not longer as Muslim and spoke Arabic today Andalusian Arab is totally extinct,malta is part of Sicily Emirate when Fatimid collapese small Emirates emerge,Maltese people still spoke Arabic but heavy influenced of Italian/Latin it evolved into own language called Maltese when British came to control Malta English also have influenced Maltese language today Maltese remove have Arabic language like Hindi remove alot arabic-persian and turkish word and used different writing system only Urdu is still same form of Hindustan,Hindustan developed when Muslim-Mughal control India(Pakistan-India-Bangladesh) it same like Malta today.If no Arab conquest of Malta in 600-700s no Maltese maybe they spoke form of Latin or italian or maybe own language near to Italian.i dont know but when i asked people who spoke arab they said it near to Tunsian arab,and Arab still can understand malta and read malta because arab have no problem read Roman/latin and most know english,if some arab also understand Italian and make 100% understand.what i been told that Maltese have 75% Arabic language 15% Italian and 10% English,I guess that Pure Maltese or Maltese in 1700-1800 are 80-85% Arabic with 20% Italian/Latin.today Maltese people love to used English-Italian Numbers,Word,Day beside Arabic.it mean next future Arabic maybe left only 40% or just below 10 like in Spain

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Mind blown! I thought Maltese was just some Italian thing.

[Keyser]

By punic you probably mean phoenician, punic is just the Latin word for that... but then again phoenicia is just the greek word for that, I confuse myself... Which of the two is closest to the real phoenician word for "phoenician" anyway?

Anyway, I don't really think there was a process to "de-arabize/de-semitize" Malta, there never really was a lengthy reconquest as in Spain, fuelling hate for the invader, and even then they retained a lot of Arabic words.

Two things, first the phoenician called themselves ethnically by the name of their cities and as people from canaan, so their language was canaanite if you want to be as close as possible in elgish as to how they named it themselves.

Then regarding the arabization of Malta, you have to consider that in sicily, apparently, the sicilians were speaking arabs and arabized in something like two or three generations only. In spain, despite the reconquista who brought back romance language in strength, a large part of the native spanish under Al Andalous adopted arab as their language, including people who remained christian (they were known as the mozarabs), i have even read a text by a muslim scholar who complain that the natives don't know how to speak spanish anymore while it's a beautiful language too.

In north africa, it is supposed that the punic substrate may have helped arabic to unroot the burgeonning romance language in Tunisia rather quickly.

So it seems that when the arab conqueros came into all those western mediterranean area, their language and customs were widely and quickly adopted.
They ended being uprooted only after christian reconquest and only after new intolerant policies were adopted (at first a strong "saracen" community remained in sicily and in Spain), if Malta was sufficiently isolated with only a marginal influx of italian migrants and not subjected directly to the harsh later policies towards muslims, they may have converted back to christianism but kept their language.