[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.

[unscaled]

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.

[lullu57]

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.

[nxor]

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?

[purrcat259]

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