| About the Maltese language |
|
|
Stran 1 od 3 Introduction Andragoški zavod Maribor - Ljudska univerza is the author and the coordinator of the Language Festival project. Together with the partners from the Netherlands, Germany, Check Republic, Slovakia and Hungary we applied for financing with EU programme Socrates - Lingua 1. The project received positive feedback and was accepted by European Commission to be implemented between October 2003 and October 2005. In the project we prepared and organised the Language Festival in Maribor from 29th September to 2nd October 2004, held book exhibition of minor European languages, produced a web site and books on chosen languages. The Festival hosted many experts who introduced 24 European languages to general public in 4 days not only at AZM-LU but also at many schools and other institutions. In April 2005 we held book exhibition where we presented books and other materials on 17 minor European languages at Maribor Faculty of Education. We finalised the activities by producing the web site you're using at the moments. Here you can find some information regarding language connected culture, basic characteristics of relevant languages and language survival kits. Website language is Slovenian. Also German and English versions are available. In time we hope to achieve English, German and Esperanto descriptions for all languages. This website is still very much alive and constantly expanding. We plan to add new languages as well. Promotionally the project enjoyed great success. In cooperation with Mediamix we created an innovative way of attracting the public and received many awards at advertising festivals. Socrates Lingua declared the Language Festival project one of 50 best examples of promoting languages. Info regarding promotion of the Festival is available on: http://www.mediamix.si/slo/News/2005junij02.html Melita Cimerman and Zlatko Tišljar. Author: Carmel Mallia Statistics The Maltese islands form an archipelago in the Mediterranean and have an area of 316 sq km . The largest island, Malta, is 246 sq km; Gozo(better known as Ghawdex-pr. Awdesh) is 68 sq km . There are two other smaller islands:Kemmuna, 2.7 sq km with one hotel and only one family that takes care of the island; the other small island is Filfla which is uninhabited except by reptiles and birds. Malta is situated just 100 km below Sicily and 300 km away from Tunisia.The islands are inhabited by almost 400,000 people, so it is the most densely populated area in the world. The largest distance of the island of Malta from NW to SE is 27 km, while it is 14.5 km wide in its EW direction. The Maltese speak only one principal language: Maltese, but according to the Constitution English may also be used. Although the majority of the inhabitants speak both languages, in their daily relations they use only Maltese. Maltese is taught everywhere from the kindergarten to University where one may acquire relative degrees, up to PhD, to be able to teach it in schools. General introduction Then name MALTA, the largest island, may have been derived from the Phoenician MALET which means harbour,or from the Greek MELI which means honey. The Romans named it MELITA. At bird’s eye view there appears before one’s eyes a small panorama which in its West gives you a picture of sheer cliffs and in the North and East a number of bays, inlets and valleys. The glowing colour of the stone, hewn from various quarries to build houses with, render the island warm and soft, although in modern times cement concrete is vastly used for construction. The sister island of Gozo is amaller but more beautiful. In both islands agriculture is the first and foremost asset, while the Drydocks and the ship repair yard together with tourism sustain the people. Malta boasts of two great sieges: one in 1565 against the Turks and the other in 1940-42 against the Germans and Italians. For the latter reason, King George of England in 1942 honoured the Maltese inhabitants with the ‘’George Cross’’ which remained as an emblem on the red and white national flag. Language family The Arabs conquered Malta in 870 AD; so the Maltese began to speak Arabic as from that date, an Arabic that is closely related to the North African dialect. Nobody knows what language the Maltese spoke before that period. Some think it was Phoenician. This does not surprise us since Malta was under both the Phoenicians and later the Carthaginians, their blood-brothers(800-218BC). Here one has to add that later on Maltese was enriched with accretions from Italian and Sicilian and some English, French and Spanish, although the borrowed French and Spanish words are very few. So one may say that the Maltese language has a semitic structure mixed with romance influences, or to be more precize the Maltese language is made up of the Arabic grammar and Arabic words, mixed with European words. The idea of dialects in Malta is a narrow one owing to the island’s smallness. However changing from town to town one may easily feel certain discrepancies; f.ex.: in one place one may hear: ejja mmorru (=let’s go)(attention for the ‘’o’’) while in another, one pronounces this as:ejja mmurru(the ‘’o‘’ has changed into ‘’u‘’). One may even hear a clearer slant in pronounciation: one may hear: ir-rahal taghna (tana) (mind these ’’a’’) (our village), while in another place one may hear:.ir-rehel teghne (tene) (the ‘’a’’ has changed into ’’e’’) Something unusual even for the majority of Maltese population is the changing of the guttural q into k as f.ex. in: Hal Qormi into Hal Kormi. This change in the pronounciation (Q into K) takes place only in Vittoriosa (Malta) and in certain villages of Gozo. |
