What Would Maltese Be Without Arabic Influence

The language of the Mediterranean nation of Malta is with a large Arabic base [due to the Arabic occupation of 200 years before it fell to the Normans]. This period of Maltese history is a bit mysterious in that it resulted in the original inland capital town of Melita be carved into a quarter of its Roman size [and renamed Medina and now called M'dina]- yet only a single confirmed mosque seems to have been built.
The language is considered by scholars to be the only Semetic language using the Roman alphabet and has lesser influences of Italian, English, some French and, some believe, a few vestigal Phoenician terms have survived.
Suppose the Arabic occupation had not happened. What would the Maltese language be like now? Any ideas?
 
There would be no Maltese because Maltese is a descendant of Sicilian Arabic. Instead, it would be Italian.
 
It wouldn't be Italian; Italian was not widespread in Italy itself at the time. It would be some Romance language or whatever they spoke before the Fatimids came.
 
Well, since Maltese is a variant of Darija/Derja, I would think of an expansion of the Sicilian (Romance) language into Malta.
 
The language of the Mediterranean nation of Malta is with a large Arabic base [due to the Arabic occupation of 200 years before it fell to the Normans]. This period of Maltese history is a bit mysterious in that it resulted in the original inland capital town of Melita be carved into a quarter of its Roman size [and renamed Medina and now called M'dina]- yet only a single confirmed mosque seems to have been built.
The language is considered by scholars to be the only Semetic language using the Roman alphabet and has lesser influences of Italian, English, some French and, some believe, a few vestigal Phoenician terms have survived.
Suppose the Arabic occupation had not happened. What would the Maltese language be like now? Any ideas?

It may or may not be called "Maltese" (the word Malta itself is probably of Greco-Roman origin), but I'd bet it'd be a separate kind of speech whence either Sicilian or Tuscan in roots. I won't lie, at first I thought you were implying that Maltese is just influenced by Semitic languages, instead of its true nature of being a Latinized Semitic tongue (and a pure delight for me to pour over).

@steve_wilson: that's interesting, is it just the local architecture that makes the place so, or is there something else to Mdina for that reason?
 
I won't lie, at first I thought you were implying that Maltese is just influenced by Semitic languages, instead of its true nature of being a Latinized Semitic tongue (and a pure delight for me to pour over).

Ja. What he said. It's not an Arabic INFLUENCE, it's an Arabic BASE.

What would French be like without Latin influence. What would English be like without Anglo-Saxon influence. See - those just don't make sense, and neither does your title.


Getting back to what you (apparently) meant, instead of what you said, I'd suspect you might have the local language be a weird bastardized descendant of Greek, actually.

I don't know how late Greek persisted in Malta, but it survived past the Norman Conquest of Sicily in Sicily.
 
Ja. What he said. It's not an Arabic INFLUENCE, it's an Arabic BASE.

What would French be like without Latin influence. What would English be like without Anglo-Saxon influence. See - those just don't make sense, and neither does your title.


Getting back to what you (apparently) meant, instead of what you said, I'd suspect you might have the local language be a weird bastardized descendant of Greek, actually.

I don't know how late Greek persisted in Malta, but it survived past the Norman Conquest of Sicily in Sicily.

I had gotten the impression that a Romance language(s?) persisted longer than Greek in Malta, although information about exactly what language was spoken there is lacking, to say the least. But was Greek actually the langauge in Malta pre-Fatimids?

EDIT: I found another source that said it could have even been Punic, which is pretty cool.
 
It was part of a Byzantine captaincy and may have been overrun by the Vandals before being a Byzantine captaincy again (and then the Fatimids happened).

I suppose Neo-Punic could have been a possibility, since there is not record of a resettlement by either Roman or Greek colonists, but the longer it stays Byzantine, the more likely Greek or Italian becomes as the main language.
 
There's more records of Sicily, and I think that Greek and Punic were both spoken there at the time the Normans took control. I THINK that was in addition to a proto-Romance language.

I was guessing Malta might be similar, possibly ending up with a crazy Greek dialect with massive Punic and Latin borrowings.

But I will cheerfully admit I'm just guessing.
 
As someone who can speak Maltese (a bit, anyway), I feel more informed than most on this.

Without the Arab invaders, Malta would probably have remained a Byzantine territory from 533 (when Belisarius recaptured it from the Vandals) until some point in the Middle Ages when a likely Norman kingdom would take control.

The Maltese language dates from the period of the Arab occupation (870-1090, give or take). The Byzantines (533-870) probably spoke Greek. The Vandals (440-533) were a Germanic tribe who left little or no linguistic mark. Before that, the Romans spoke Latin.

Without the Arab period, the Maltese language would essentially not exist in anything even vaguely resembling its current form. I would say it would be most closely related to either Sicilian Italian (with which it a significant amount of vocabulary) or Byzantine Greek (if they manage to leave a sufficiently long-standing mark). Byzantine Greek-based Maltese would imply there was some kind of local renaissance (or at least, significant population growth back to Roman-era Malta) shortly after Belisarius.

Incidentally, although Maltese today is a Latin-script language, I have seen very old examples of Maltese (or what I believed to be Maltese anyway; can't imagine Arabic being used on Christian iconography) written in Arabic script.

And yes, Mdina is a wonderful place for a larp. It;'s also where they filmed King's Landing.
 
The Normans are not guaranteed at all, with a POD in the 6th c.

They arrived really slowly and piecemeal in the 11th and it was touch-and-go. The Lombard state/s and the Byzantines are the big players early on, I imagine, and then the Franks after.
 
I do not think that Greek is particularly likely. I would suppose that the pre-Arabic language in Malta was either a form of Punic, a form of Neo-Latin, or possibly both.
Also note that, AFAIK, there appear to be credible grounds to think that Arabic in Malta happened not just through language replacement, but population replacement - that is, modern Maltese people are to a significant extent the descendants of Arabic speakers from Sicily who immigrated there (in the tenth century?). The archipelago seems to have been severely depopulated (I think i read about a plague somewhere but don't quote me on that) in the High Middle Ages prior to that.
So, the POD could be that the Islamic authorities in charge (I assume it was the Kalbite dynasty in Sicily, a largely autonomous vassal of the Fatimids) chose to leave the islands alone as opposed to resettle them. Some immigration will likely occur anyway, but might be not enough to change the linguistic base. The local demography will recover anyway.
Assuming this has no significant impact on the general course of history, the islands will end up under Norman rule - except this time the locals are likely to be mostly Christians. They'd probably speak a unique form of Romance that bears two noticeable distinct layers of Semitic influence (Punic and Arabic) and that has probably undergone a significant grammatical realignment as a consequnce (perhaps with partial creolization). Or they'll speak a unique language ultimately derived from Punic, with severe Romance influence and some Arabic layers. The future ties Malta to Sicily politically and linguistically - as per OTL. That will make the local language get closer to Sicilian. It may end up anywhere from a highly divergent Sicilian-looking dialect to a very strange-looking Semitic (Punic-based)-Romance creole on this ange of premises (I lean toward a Romance base and Maltese becoming a Romance language in its own right, remaining pretty distinct from Sicilian).
The political future of the islands would obviously contribute a lot to decide what happens.
 
Incidentally, although Maltese today is a Latin-script language, I have seen very old examples of Maltese (or what I believed to be Maltese anyway; can't imagine Arabic being used on Christian iconography) written in Arabic script.

Why not?
Arab-speaking Christians in Egypt, Lebanon etc. do that routinely.
 
Why not?
Arab-speaking Christians in Egypt, Lebanon etc. do that routinely.

Okay, let me rephrase that. I can't imagine Maltese people using Arabic on their icons when they have a perfectly good Maltese language available. By the period in which those icons were made, Maltese as a language distinct from Arabic was quite well established.

Christians in Egypt, Lebanon etc use Arabic because that happens to be their native language. In Malta, it would be a foreign language, and one with no liturgical significance at that. It seems more reasonable to suppose it is a rare example of Maltese written in Arabic script rather than a strange case of Arabic being used in Malta centuries after the Arabs had been removed from Malta.
 
Okay, let me rephrase that. I can't imagine Maltese people using Arabic on their icons when they have a perfectly good Maltese language available. By the period in which those icons were made, Maltese as a language distinct from Arabic was quite well established.

Christians in Egypt, Lebanon etc use Arabic because that happens to be their native language. In Malta, it would be a foreign language, and one with no liturgical significance at that. It seems more reasonable to suppose it is a rare example of Maltese written in Arabic script rather than a strange case of Arabic being used in Malta centuries after the Arabs had been removed from Malta.

Depends on when the icons you are referring to were made.
However, Maltese is, in linguistic terms, just a highly divergent form of spoken Arabic, not unlike the ones spoken by Copts, Lebanese Christians and so on, so that saying that Arabic (meaning "standard" Arabic) is the "native" language of those people is technically incorrect.
The difference, which is indeed significant in this case, is that Malta is (and has been for a long time) culturally separate from the community of users of "standard" Arabic, unlike Christian communities in Egypt and the Levant. It is perfectly possible that Maltese in Arabic script was used, of course (and I'd be very interested in seeing some samples of that - now you added another reason for me to visit Malta) but, depending on the time, I wouldn't rule out a form of Arabic.
 
There are minor differences in which Christian and Muslim Arabs use certain words but Liturgical Arabic isn't very different from Classical Arabic, all in all. Certainly way less so than Maltese vs. Classical Arabic.
 
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