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Comment by purrcat259 | Hacker News Reader

I read, write and speak Maltese, AMA if you are curious about the language.

Not a question, but - Tatoeba could use your help! It is an open source (both code and data) dataset of parallel sentences and their Maltese data is very lacking. Also it’s pretty fun to just translate a bunch of random sentences into a language you speak. :-)

https://tatoeba.org/

Tunisians claim they can understand Maltese with minimum effort, is it reciprocal? How close is Maltese to arabic / tunisian dialect ?

Not sure which Tunisians are claiming this but they'd definitely need a lot more than minimum effort. Maltese split off from Arabic around 1k years ago. The two languages sound pretty different, and are written with different alphabets.

Also lots of influence from Italian and English.

As an Algerian, I can confirm that Maltese is surprisingly easy to understand. I was genuinely shocked the first time I heard it because the similarities are so obvious. Many Arabic dialects are also written using the Latin alphabet, especially online and on social media, so the different writing systems aren’t really a barrier at all.

Calling BS on this one. I'll let ChatGPT handle it... it says it better than I could:

can arabic people understand maltese?

That’s a really interesting question — and the answer is: *partially, but not easily.*

Here’s why:

### Linguistic roots

Maltese is a *Semitic language*, and its *core grammar and basic vocabulary* come from *Arabic*, specifically from *Siculo-Arabic*, the dialect of Arabic spoken in Sicily and Malta about 1,000 years ago. Because of that, *many Maltese words sound familiar* to Arabic speakers — especially from the *Maghrebi (North African)* or *Levantine* dialects.

For example:

| Maltese | Meaning | Similar in Arabic | | ------- | ------- | ----------------- | | Dar | house | دار (dar) | | Kelb | dog | كلب (kalb) | | Seba | seven | سبعة (sabʿa) | | Xemx | sun | شمس (shams) |

### Influence from Italian and English

However, over the centuries, Maltese absorbed *a lot of Italian (especially Sicilian)* and *English* vocabulary — so modern Maltese is *a hybrid*. Roughly:

* 30–40% of its vocabulary is Semitic (Arabic origin), * 40–50% is Romance (mostly Italian/Sicilian), * and the rest is English and other sources.

That means Arabic speakers might *recognize some words and structures*, but they’ll *struggle to understand full sentences*, especially because:

* Pronunciation has changed, * Grammar evolved differently, * Many everyday words are not Arabic anymore.

### Summary

So:

* *Yes*, Maltese and Arabic share a deep connection — like cousins. * *No*, they’re *not mutually intelligible* today. An Arabic speaker might catch words here and there, but a real conversation would be hard without studying Maltese.

The above is exactly my experience with Arabic speakers by the way. Again, not surprising after 1k years of divergence.

I will let my own experience tell the story instead of chatgpt.

Tunisian dialect must have split of at the same time, because it's as far from arabic as maltese is. most arabs don't understand our dialect (fortunately we also speak standard arabic which we learn at school). I read some research saying maltese/tunisian is a separate language called lingua franca

Nice seeing you around here =) been a while !

call me when you are in Tunis :)

I don't have much personal experience in attempting to communicate with arabic speakers. From others I have heard Lebanese arabic is the closest and you can have a passable conversation.

I recently discovered Maltese existed, and started learning it that day. I find it such an awesome language, and not just because of the letter Ħ

I do wonder what natives think and feel about the longevity of their language? What is taught in schools at what ages (assuming English is in the mix somewhere). Is there enough media in Maltese for Malti to go about the moderns at fully in Maltese? It’s shockingly hard to find any information on Maltese, and even harder to find content.

I’m not sure if’s dying out, or in danger thereof; if there are preservation efforts, or if there is no need.

Native Maltese speaker here. It is thought in schools alongside English, with both being official national languages. Most people locally, that are not foreign born or immigrants speak the language, and it is used in most households as the main language. But everyone grows up bilingual, as English is essential for most everything else that we do as a nation.

How are loan words viewed? Do businesses work in Maltese? Are monolingual speakers of the language regarded differently than those fluent in English? Do young people in Malta listen to Maltese music?

Yes, there's plenty of Maltese spoken and listened to.

I was surprised to hear Maltese radio stations played in taxis, while visiting Malta just a few weeks back

The point of my question was to ask someone who lives there, not someone who visited

Nowhere did you specify that. I suggest being specific about your request

Maltese has been loaded with loan words since forever. 5 points if you can guess where bonġu, bravu and mappa come from. At some point there was some literary council for the language that decided that any new loan words should just be spelled phonetically. Computer became kompjuter.

Businesses do work in Maltese and English. Both are official languages. Its quite rare to encounter a business that deals near exclusively in Maltese. Many prefer Maltese but will fall back to english where necessary.

Regarding monolignual speakers, I think theres a lot of stereotypes for maltese only, english only and code switchers. I think its all a bit silly... So as long as communication can happen I don't fuss.

On Maltese music... There's a lot of low ish quality music then there's a few absolute gems. Look up The Travellers, Lapes, Jon Mallia on YouTube/Spotify.

Interesting, but I get the impression that ubiquitous English loan words in seemingly every language is a lot different than loan word patterns of the past. Do you think? Maybe not?

I don't have much of an opinion I suppose english language cultural dominance has meant that newer words are just imported rather than adapted

I can concur. All older words (think any word that was needed since the older generations), are Arabic based. All the numbers, all older verbs etc. 'Newer' words are latin based.

Not sure if I should be get bonus points for that, but if mappa means map, the ultimate origin is still Semitic. Latin seem to have took the word maappa from a Canaanite language. The word mappa (and it's older version "manpa") is attested in Minshnaic Hebrew (meaning a napkin or a tablecloth), although you could say Hebrew "re-loaned" the cartographic meaning - which is much newer.

I'm actually really curious about everyday usage of the language; is code switching between English and Maltese more common than Maltese on its own? I've seen a few online communities where the vocabulary switches between Maltese and English very often which is interesting but I wonder how much of that is just online / written versus everyday speech.

Depends on where you live and how you were brought up, but for the most part code switching is default.

There was a point about 7 years ago when the overton window shifted to "speak english to strangers first" because of a large influx of foreigners who did not know the language. Since then I've met foreigners who have better Maltese than some natives.

Older folks & geriatrics will sometimes be surprised when they assume someone is foreign and they turn out to be Maltese. "int Malti??" is a statement I get often because I don't look Mediterranean despite being born here.

What is the name of Maltese in Maltese? Like “el español” in Spanish, it’s neat to know what languages call themselves

'ish' is a pretty universal english suffix. So Spanish is just "españ-ish".

Wikipedia says it's "Malti"

Il-Malti to be precise. Il- means "the" and changes its meaning to that of the language. Malti alone would mean a Maltese person.

Source: I'm also Maltese.

The "Il" in Il-Malti is like "al" in Arabic, which Maltese is closely related to as was pointed out above.

Arabic (language): al-‘arabiyyah (الْعَرَبِيَّة).

A term for that concept, by the way, is "endonym":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endonym_and_exonym

How is "Marsaxlokk" really pronounced? I've heard that word a few times, but never from a native. Google translate can't help me here, as it doesn't seem to have Maltese text-to-speech.

Read with English pronunciation, closest would be mar-sa-shlock.

From my experience it will be understood by locals when pronounced like that.

Is there any dialect of Arabic which you can understand without too much effort?

How much do you consider Maltese its own language (as opposed to a dialect of Arabic)?

I know that the reverse understanding isn't too bad from chatting with a Saudi-born member of staff on holiday in Malta.

I don't think anyone would seriously consider it a dialect of Arabic though with its completely different alphabet and half the vocabulary and morphology coming from Italian languages/dialects, even if Malta hadn't spent the best part of a millennium trying very hard not to become part of the Arab world

From what I have heard, Lebanese Arabic is the closest, and still pretty far. Passable conversation is possible.

Maltese is definitely its own language. Arabic roots are there (theres a Semitic joke in there ) but it isn't arabic anymore. Its written left to right with a variant of the english alphabet.

Writing RTL or LTR and alphabet alone don't make a language different.

Hindi and Urdu are 90% the exact same language, and are mutually inteligible (Urdu speaker and Hindi speaker can have complete full conversation with each other) but each is written differently (one LTR the other RTL) and with different alphabets

See also Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian. I also find Chinese to be interesting, e.g. Mandarin and (formal) Cantonese have a near identical written language, while the spoken language is completely different, views on whether or not those languages are different languages or dialects vary wildly.

In my books, the distinction between languages and dialects are so arbitrary that the best method is simply to ask the people that speak those languages/dialects. If they consider them to be different language (which Maltese speakers seemingly do) I call them different languages.

Mandarin-Cantonese is very interesting and a unique (to my knowledge) example where the same written language can be completely different to two different people.

I don't buy the argument of just asking the speakers. There are cultural, political, etc. reasons people may think things which don't conform with reality. Many Hindi-Urdu speakers get insulted by the reality that the languages are pretty much the same because they don't want to identify with people from another country their country is constantly at war with.

Can you communicate with Maltese dogs more effectively?

Only if we have a few Maltesers first

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