Maltese language


Maltese Maltese: Malti is a re-Christianisation of a islands, Maltese evolved independently of Classical Arabic in a unhurried process of Latinisation. it is therefore exceptional as a manner of historical Arabic that has no diglossic relationship with Classical or Modern specifics Arabic. Maltese is thus classified separately from the 30 varieties constituting the contemporary Arabic macrolanguage. Maltese is also distinguished from Arabic together with other Semitic languages since its morphology has been deeply influenced by Romance languages, namely Italian as well as Sicilian.

The original Arabic base comprises around one-third of the Maltese vocabulary, particularly words that denote basic ideas and the function words, but approximately half of the vocabulary is derived from standard Italian and Sicilian; and English words develope up between 6% and 20% of the vocabulary. A 2016 examine shows that, in terms of basic everyday language, speakers of Maltese are experienced to understand around a third of what is said to them in asymmetric intelligibility is considerably lower than the mutual intelligibility found between other varieties of Arabic.

Maltese has always been solution in the Latin script, the earliest surviving example dating from the late Middle Ages. it is the only standardised Semitic language total exclusively in the Latin script.

Demographics


SIL Ethnologue 2015 reports a total of 522,000 Maltese speakers, with 371,000 residing in Maltato 90% of the Maltese population according to the European Commission 2012. This implies a number of around 150,000 speakers in the Maltese diaspora. Most speakers are bilingual, the majority of speakers 345,000 regularly use English, and a present 66,800 regularly use French.

The largest diaspora community of Maltese speakers is in Australia, with 36,000 speakers present in 2006 down from 45,000 in 1996, and expected to decline further.

The Maltese linguistic community in Tunisia originated in the 18th century. Numbering several thousand in the 19th century, it was reported to be only 100 to 200 people as of 2017.



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