[purrcat259]

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

[franklin_p_dyer]

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/

[Raed667]

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

[purrcat259]

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.

[arbuge]

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.

[barrell]

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.

[lullu57]

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.

[nxor]

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?

[purrcat259]

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.

[JAlexoid]

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

[adzm]

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.

[purrcat259]

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.

[ebb_earl_co]

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

[kwk1]

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

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

[ggsp]

Wikipedia says it's "Malti"

[kridsdale3]

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

[Tade0]

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.

[purrcat259]

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

[runarberg]

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)?

[purrcat259]

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.

[notahacker]

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

[cm2012]

Can you communicate with Maltese dogs more effectively?

[purrcat259]

Only if we have a few Maltesers first