Talk:Maltese language

message: * Hi! Please consider visiting the Wikipedia:Malta-related topics notice board.  (should this be in a little box or something?) Srl 05:01, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Message board 

message: A common issue in many articles but I wonder about the "Spoken in" list at the top. Certainly I have no trouble believing that there are significant groups of speakers in all of these countries but, IMHO, it is misleading to include so many nations where the language has no real status, even unofficially. I believe that such lists should be restricted to locations where the language has a very large community that uses it as a first language (very large meaning something more than a couple of small neighborhoods buried in major cities). For example, one can say that German is a language of Switzerland and Italy, but calling it a language of these United States, for example, would be misleading despite the fact that there are many German speakers in the U.S. and in the early 20th century there actually were large German-speaking communities.
--Mcorazao (talk) 20:55, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with your concern.  Unfortunately, the primary source for "spoken in" data is often Ethnologue or national census data.  Nearly every language in the world with more than 10000 speakers could list the United States, for example.  It is, I agree, quite silly to see fifty flags (not even just a list of names, but the darn national flags as well) flying next to a language of only 100,000 speakers who have relatives throughout the world.  But try to trim those needless flags away or trim that list of countries and watch the nationalistic fervor burn bright!  (Taivo (talk) 21:00, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Is it necessarily a "nationalistic" perspective that colours such reactions? I'd be interested to see that claim substantiated, because for all the problems nationalism causes on Wiki, it seems the main fuel behind much maintenance over loads of projects/articles. An interesting tightrope to walk, and a situation not particularly helped by being smug. Ελληνικά όρος ή φράση (talk) 13:47, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Experience in other articles is a hard teacher.  Nationalistic insistence in these language templates in my experience generally involves 1) exaggerated population figures (that usually include either the entire ethnic population or all the potential L2 speakers in the world); 2) the pretty flags (just because they're pretty); and 3) the presence or (even) absence of a language in a given country (no matter how small the immigrant community is).  I've been involved recently with an Armenian national who insists that there are no Azerbaijani speakers in Armenia even though there reliable references to the contrary.  Nationalism definitely has a valid place in the world, but it's not always helpful or accurate.  Would you be willing to remove the US and Canadian flags here because that's not the "native home" of Maltese?  (Taivo (talk) 14:33, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

text: The listings just represent other countries where Maltese people speak Maltese, and are documented as doing so. Canadian initiatives (working with the EU to promote Maltese amongst Maltese communities) are attested to. I don't see why you're hostile to that being represented. Or do you just object to "pretty flags", and if so, are you anti-pretty, contra-flags, or both? Ελληνικά όρος ή φράση (talk) 15:57, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You misunderstand this discussion, I fear.  Mcorazao made the comment that (s)he thinks that the language template should list only countries where the language is "native", that is, the homeland for the language.  I happen to agree with that.  No one said that there aren't documented Maltese speakers in the US and Canada.  No argument there.  The point is simply about the function of and philosophy behind the list of countries in the language template.  Yes, I think that the use of flags in the list of countries is silly.  I guarantee that the majority of people will recognize the word "Chad" in a list of names ages before they would recognize its flag in a parade of flags.  Why are they in the language template?  Because they are "pretty" and people like pretty colors in things.  (Taivo (talk) 16:28, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

text: Meh. Is there any use cluttering this talkpage with what you'd 'rather' the standards be? Surely there's a better venue for such suggestions, somewhere where your proposed changes might actually be approved and implemented. As things are, nothing here will change. And as one of the people who quite likes a little colour in life, I reject the implication that such an appreciation (through national flags!) is silly. A little more civility is in order. Ελληνικά όρος ή φράση (talk) 16:36, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I don't think anything could change even if a discussion were started and approved.  And I was being civil.  Being uncivil would call people who use flags "stupid".  I don't think they're stupid at all.  The "practice" (not the people) is silly because it really serves no purpose in an encyclopedia.  I was definitely not calling you silly.  Some reasonably intelligent people like color in needless places, some people think it's silly.  If you want to delete this whole thread from this Talk page, that's fine by me because you're right, it's not directly germane to the article's topic.  (Taivo (talk) 18:16, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spoken in? 

message: Maltese letter: o
*long, like aw in law: sod (IPA: ɔ) - sod means "solid" (it comes from Italian sodo: IPA: 'sɔdo)
*short, like o in got: bott (IPA: ɒ) - bott means "box" (it comes from French boîte or from Sicilian buatta)
Source: http://www.aboutmalta.com/language/maltesegrammar.htm
Other sources:
*Pronunciation of "law": http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/law (IPA: lɔ)
*Pronunciation of "got": http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/got (IPA: gɒt)
*Pronunciation of "got" (especially in formal contexts, in Brittish English anyway) (IPA: gɔt)
Best regards
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarvaturi (talk • contribs) 11:56, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maltese vowel "o" - International Phonetic Alphabet 

message: please change QALP to QALB
please change KELP to KELB
86.26.187.254 (talk) 22:57, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit request from 86.26.187.254, 28 November 2010 

message: The article includes both Żammit, with its Malto-Polish zed, and Zammit. Varlaam (talk) 16:47, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Żammit 

message: Moreover, Maltese is also closely related to Tunisian Arabic   even though Maltese is not considered as a dialect of Arabic
Mtatty89 (talk) 15:48, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Question: Where are you looking to have this in the article? --Jnorton7558 (talk) 21:23, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit request on 3 February 2013 

message: caponata, cassata and zafferana are not really derived from arabic: 
-caponata seem to derive from catalan;
-cassata probably derive from latin caseata;
-while zafferana come from persian via latin.
someone should fix it  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.40.98.119 (talk) 05:09, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  siculo-arabic 

message: Ħħ can be pronounced [ħ], as in standard Maltese and also [χ] or [x], as in western dialects. Both are correct. --Child of Garrett (talk) 14:46, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ħħ pronunciation 

message: This article has been revised as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:32, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible copyright problem 

message: After (or in) the sentence "The oldest known document in Maltese is "Il Cantilena" (Maltese: Xidew il-Qada) by Pietro Caxaro." in the history section, please add the date of this document. The article Il Cantilena says it "dates from the 15th century (no later than 1485, the death of its author, and probably from the 1470s)". 149.241.77.1 (talk) 12:42, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit request 15 February 2014 

message: i want to add arabic people category.because they speak an arabic dialect.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Daru Dakitu (talk • contribs) 11:55, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: That doesn't mean they're Arabs.  — kwami (talk) 03:21, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  They are Arabic people 

message: Please add  to the external links. It will add a link to the phrasebook for the language at Wikivoyage. Thanks.
130.88.141.34 (talk) 09:59, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi-protected edit request on 22 August 2014 

message: I'm not an expert, but from the Maltese that I have heard, the sound [ħ] does not actually occur in Maltese. It's doubtless much weaker than in Arabic. It sounds like a perfect [h] to me, but maybe it's something in between, like [h~ħ]. But certainly not a real [ħ].
: It depends on the dialect, but yes, [h] is a very common pronunciation, particularly before vowels. [ħ] is also common, however. In a few dialects it's even [x].  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.201.22.180 (talk) 08:03, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  phoneme [ħ] 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on Maltese language. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140222061720/http://imsmr.or.kr/cont/103/File_Upload/050101.pdf to http://imsmr.or.kr/cont/103/File_Upload/050101.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 21:23, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Maltese language. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150923054701/http://www.akkademjatalmalti.com/page.asp?p=9023 to http://www.akkademjatalmalti.com/page.asp?p=9023
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 10:06, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: This is a Simetrical language for more info call or msg on 77643698 I am Jeony  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.133.79.128 (talk) 17:51, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maltese Language 

message: Hi all,
I am new to the community, so sorry in case I am not writing in the correct area. 
Unfortunately, the article about Maltese is semi-protected, so I cannot edit it. Maybe, an experienced user can read through my thoughts and edit the article accordingly. Thank you very much!
The article states under "Demografics": "Indeed, nowadays 520,000 people across the world speak Maltese, while Malta has a population of only 445,426 people, which means that the remaining figure of 76,574 people can be attributed to the Maltese diaspora. [25]"
In my opinion there are two major problems with this statistics. First, it is totally useless to substract the population of Malta from the estimated number of speakers and then state a exact number of 76,574 people can be attributed to the Maltese diaspora. This implies that you could give such a concrete number although it is totally nonsense as the first figure is an estimate. Secondly, the remaining figure can be attributed certainly not only to the Maltese diaspora. I guess there are at least a few thousand of people who are not Maltese who can nevertheless speak the language. I am not one of them and I do not have any prove for this, but in my opinion common sense does not allow for such as statement as the one above. 
This are my humble thoughts. Thanks for your consideration!
Theelementsofstyle (talk) 08:49, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improvement for demographics numbers 

message: Maltese Vocabulary:
* One third (Siculo Arabic)
* One third (Sicilian Latin)
Dividing Sicilian influence into Arabic and Italian is misleading, as Sicily is the main linguistic source, opposed to direct Arabic or Italian influence, which is minimal at most. Sicilian is a sister language of Italian, Siculo Arabic is the language of the assimilated population of Emirate Sicily (not literal Arabic as the article mentions), it might have more Classical Arabic words because it was taught directly as such to the assimilated Sicilians, in addition to assimilated Greeks, Berber and Slavs who were living in Sicily at that time.  A group of those assimilated people brought the Sicilian versions of Arabic and Latin with them. IlsienMalti (talk) 13:47, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maltese Vocabulary is predominantly Sicilian (Siculo Arabic + Sicilian Latin) 

message: It says: Maltese has five short vowels, /ɐ ɛ ɪ ɔ ʊ/, written a e i o u; six long vowels, /ɐː ɛː ɪː iː ɔː ʊː/, written a, e, ie, i, o, u, of which all but ie /ɪː/ require an orthographic għ or h to show they're long [emphasis mine, wathiik]; and seven diphthongs, /ɐɪ ɐʊ ɛɪ ɛʊ ɪʊ ɔɪ ɔʊ/, written aj or għi, aw or għu, ej or għi, ew, iw, oj, and ow or għu.[41]
This seems a bit doubtful to me, since <qattus> is transcribed (en.wiktionary.org) with a long /u:/. -> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/qattus
Wathiik (talk) 12:28, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Is there really no English equivalent to the Maltese digraph IE (ie)? I would of thought it is pretty much pronounced in words like variety, oriental, Vietnam, Vienna...PametUGlavu (talk) 17:59, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Long Vowels 

message: Maltese literature could do with more of a mention in this article.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.52.209.206 (talk) 20:15, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maltese literature 

message: The citation for Maltese being a variety of Arabic is the Maltese constitution, which makes no mention of this. Should this be removed or can another source be found to replace the current one?
TheHolyCrunch (talk) 22:28, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Variety of Arabic? 

message: The current article text states:
* "When two syllables are equally heavy, the penultimate takes the stress, but otherwise the heavier syllable does, e.g. bajjad  'he painted' vs bajjad  'a painter'."
The wording seems imprecise in at least the following senses:
# there might be only one syllable in a word;
# there might be more than two equally heavy syllables in one word;
# "the penultimate takes the stress" could refer to either the penultimate of the - implicitly supposedly no more than - two equally heavy syllables, or to the penultimate syllable in the word.
A seemingly more accurate description can be found elsewhere at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095447018301712 and https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0095447018301712?token=336806B5D78A9545385559641E0699A290993774BE4A01C1B71A6DDDD078482EAAF31058853C452F474679E88F6B9718, which reads:
* "In Maltese, lexical stress is assigned on phonological grounds to the final, penultimate or antepenultimate syllable. It falls on the heavy (V: or VC) syllable closest to the right edge of the word, except in words having a closed final syllable, which can only be stressed if it is superheavy (V:C or VCC). In words in which there is no heavy syllable, lexical stress is penultimate by default (Vella, 2009)."
The only incompleteness I have so far detected in this description is that its final sentence seems to ignore one-syllable words without a heavy syllable, if at all such words exist in Maltese. But otherwise it looks like a good starting point to be put in place of the current description. Any motivated objections?Redav (talk) 17:22, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation 

message: Maltese is a Latinised variety of spoken historical Arabic through its descent from Siculo-Arabic, which developed as a Maghrebi Arabic dialect during the Emirate of Sicily between 831 and 1091.
So, Maltese originates in Sicilian Arabic which itself came into exitence in the 9th century. As Latin had long been dead at that time, how can Maltese be a "Latinised" variety of Arabic? Yupanqui (talk) 12:14, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Latinised? 

message: The current article contains:
"(Suffixes marking gender, possession, and verbal plurals do not cause the stress to shift)."
At the same time, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C4%A7amri and https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C4%A7amrija#Maltese show:
* ħamri (masculine) is pronounced /ˈħam.rɪ/;
* ħamrija (female) is pronounced /ħamˈriːja/ (as I have actually been able to witness today),
and -ja is a suffix marking gender (or: gender marking suffix ;-)), while at the same time stress is shifted one syllable towards the end of the word.
Other examples are: Malti(ja), Għawdxi(ja), and probably also qalbi(ja), xemxi(ja), qamri(ja), baħri(ja), etc.
So, the statement in brackets seems incorrect to me, and at the very least, needs reformulating.Redav (talk) 00:15, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gender marking suffixes may actually shift stress 

message: Might I propose replacing as follows:
* kettle → skill
* part → spill
* tired → still
in the pronunciation guide under "Approximate English pronunciation" by different words? (Most/many/several) English accents have (heavily) aspirated stops in the words currently in the table, whereas I do not hear (any) such (heavy) aspiration in spoken Maltese. (Try listening to e.g. https://onlineradiobox.com/mt/radiomalta/?cs=mt.radiomalta.)Redav (talk) 00:29, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation examples may be misleading to English speakers who aspirate their stops 

message: I am aware this is an approximation, but if ⟨r⟩ in Maltese is (in some circumstances) pronounced [r], why does the pronunciation guide approximate it with GA English butter, pronounced [ɾ]? I suggest it sound be replaced with something like the Spanish perro. Dazzling Gleam (talk | contributions) 13:01, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation of ⟨r⟩ 

message: I think we should cut the language family to Central Semitic, because there's no people called Maltese language as "Arab language". This is same to Ruthenian language to Ukrainian, Belarussian, and Rusyn. -GogoLion (talk) 14:38, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maltese, in the perspection of Ruthenian languges 

message: Orajt 77.71.217.127 (talk) 16:43, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maltese 

message: They are mostly derived from Sicilian and thus exhibit Sicilian phonetic characteristics, such as /u/ in place of /o/, and /i/ in place of /e/ (e.g. tiatru not teatro and fidi not fede).
In this section the word "in place of" misleads the reader into thinking that Italian "o" is the typical Latin ending, whereas the Sicilian "U" is in fact the original Latin ending "Bonum", etc. Perhaps we should rephrase to "rather than" or "Sicilian phonetics rather than Italian phonetics" so the reader doesn't believe that the U is in fact an evolution from Italian. Paolorausch (talk) 11:03, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  "in place of"