User:Drmaik/maltese

Maltese is the national language of Malta, and an official language of the European Union. It is descended from Maghrebi Arabic (ref. Heine, Comrie,) but is not considered by Maltese or linguists to be a Arabic dialect. It is the only Semitic language written in the Latin alphabet in its standard form.

Apart from its phonology, Maltese bears considerable similarity to urban varieties of Tunisian Arabic and other North African Arabic dialects. In the course of history, the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even morphological and syntactic patterns from Sicilian, Italian, and English.

Some Maltese people maintain that it descended Phoenician, but this view nowadays has no support from linguits, whether Maltese or not.

Alphabet
Below is the Maltese alphabet, with IPA symbols and approximate English pronunciation: