<html><head></head><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:16px"><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467556951889_18594"><span>Hi, </span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467556951889_18594"><span id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467556951889_18636">I watched a documentary about Maltese language and it seems it resembles the Arabic of North Africa especially of Tunisia .</span></div> <div class="qtdSeparateBR"><br><br></div><div class="yahoo_quoted" style="display: block;"> <div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 16px;"> <div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> <div dir="ltr"><font size="2" face="Arial"> On Sunday, July 3, 2016 4:07 PM, "Fierman, William" <wfierman@indiana.edu> wrote:<br></font></div> <br><br> <div class="y_msg_container"><div id="yiv8014796905">
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<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal">How Do You Say ‘Welcome to Europe’ in Maltese? Check an Arabic Dictionary</div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal">New York TImes</div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal">What in the World</div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal">By BRYANT ROUSSEAU JULY 1, 2016</div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal">When Christians in Malta go to church, they pray to “Alla.” Their period of Lent is known as “Randan,” a close linguistic relative of “Ramadan,” the Muslim holy month.</div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal">It turns out that about one-third of the words in the Maltese language, not to mention its grammar, are derived from the Arabic that was spoken by Muslim settlers of the Mediterranean islands in the mid-11th century.</div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal">When Malta, an archipelago between Sicily and the North African coast, joined the European Union in 2004, Maltese became an official language of the bloc, meaning that important documents and Brussels paperwork are now available in Maltese
translations.</div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal">Pierre Clive Agius, Malta’s ambassador to the United States, said the language’s similarity to Arabic “personifies all that is Malta: a fusion of our neighborhood, an organic bridge between the north and the south of the Mediterranean.”</div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal">Maltese is very much a living language. More than 90 percent of the nation’s 425,000 citizens speak it at home. Authors writing in Maltese won the European Prize for Literature in 2011 and 2014.</div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal">Over the centuries, other languages and dialects have been layered on top of Maltese’s Arabic core, to the point that Sicilian and Italian words account for about half the vocabulary today, and English, Malta’s other official language,
around 10 percent.</div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal">Since 1934, Maltese has been written in a Latinate alphabet; before then, no standard existed, and people sometimes wrote in a mix of Latin and Arabic letters.</div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal">Some phrases in Maltese use all Arabic-based words, like “il-foqra ssibuhum dejjem maghkom” (pronounced il-FO-ra ssibu-hom DEY-yem MAA-kom), which means “the poor will always be with you.”</div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal">Photo</div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal">Credit Zach Lieberman</div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal">Others employ a heavy mix of all the country’s linguistic influences. For example, consider the sentence “Aggornata: il-Gvern se jappella d-deciżjoni dwar żewg siggijiet ohra lill-Partit Nazzjionalista.” (It’s pronounced aj-jor-NA-ta: il-gvern
se yap-PEL-la d-de-chiz-YO-ni dwar zewj sij-ji-YET OH-ra lill-par-TIT na-tsyo-na-LIS-ta, and it means “Updated: the government will appeal the decision on two more seats for the Nationalist Party.”) Seven out of the 12 words in that Maltese sentence are from
Italian or Sicilian.</div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="yiv8014796905MsoNormal">“For me,” said Michael D. Cooperson, a professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of California, Los Angeles, “the fascination of it is that every sentence seems to sum up the history of the Mediterranean.”</div>
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