Claim: The Maltese language emerged before Semitic languages.
Evidence: Maltese -LRB- links = no -RRB- is the national language of Malta and a co-official language of the country alongside English , while also serving as an official language of the European Union , the only Semitic language so distinguished.
The most widely spoken Semitic languages today are -LRB- numbers given are for native speakers only -RRB- Arabic -LRB- 300 million -RRB- , Amharic -LRB- 22 million -RRB- , Tigrinya -LRB- 7 million -RRB- , Hebrew -LRB- unknown ; 5 million native and non-native L1 speakers -RRB- , Tigre -LRB- 1.05 million in 2006 -RRB- , Aramaic -LRB- 575,000 to 1 million largely Assyrian fluent speakers -RRB- and Maltese -LRB- 520,000 speakers -RRB-.