Pantesco dialect

Pantesco is the Sicilian dialect of the island of Pantelleria between Sicily and Tunisia. It is notable among Romance varieties for an unusually high degree of influence from Arabic, reflecting a variety close to Maltese. Arabic loanwords, mainly nouns, include words such as hurrìhi "nettle" < ħurrayq (Maltese ħurrieq), vartàsa "hornless (goat)" < farṭās, hèddi "calm wind" < hādiʔ, as well as many place names around the island, including the name Pantelleria itself. In such loans, the glottal fricative h (unusual for a Romance dialect) is preserved as a reflex of Arabic laryngeals h/x/ħ and sometimes even q.

Pantesco uses unstressed subject pronoun clitics to form durative aspect.

A dialectal dictionary was published by Giovanni Tropea in 1988.