If Italy is the parent, think of Corsica as half-child and Malta as the stepchild

To understand Malta’s close ties to Italy as compared to the other major islands around Italy, one needs to consider Italy and the surrounding islands as a family. Imagine Italy as the parent and Sicily and Sardinia as the natural children, Corsica is a half-child and Malta is a stepchild. This synopsis will become more evident as we explore the language and culture, with it divergent and convergent relationship to Italy and Italian.

The culture of Malta is a reflection of various civilizations that have come into contact with the Maltese Islands throughout the centuries, including neighboring Mediterranean societies, and the customs of the nations that ruled Malta for long periods of time prior to its independence in 1964.

We have already noted that the earliest inhabitants of the Maltese Islands are believed to have crossed over from nearby Sicily sometime before 5000 B.C. The culture of modern Malta has been described as a rich pattern of traditions, beliefs and practices which is the result of a lengthy process of adaptation, assimilation and cross fertilization of beliefs and usages drawn from various conflicting sources. It has been subjected to the same complex and historic processes that gave rise to the linguistic and ethnic mixture that defines who the people of Malta, Gozo and Comino and are today.

Present-day Maltese culture is essentially Latin European with a recent British legacy also in the mix. In the early period of its history, Malta was also exposed to Semitic influences. Today this presents as linguistic rather than cultural. The Latin European element is the major source of Maltese mores because of the virtually continuous cultural impact on Malta over the past eight centuries and the fact that Malta shares the religious beliefs, traditions and ceremonies of its Sicilian and Southern European neighbors.

Maltese people speak the Maltese language, a Semitic language written in the Latin alphabet in its standard form. The language is descended from Siculo-Arabic, a dialect of Arabic spoken in Sicily and surrounding Southern Italy from the 9th century. In the course of Malta’s history, the language has adopted large amounts of vocabulary from Sicilian, Italian, English, and to a smaller degree, French. The official languages of Malta are English and Maltese.

Maltese became an official language of Malta in 1934, replacing Italian and joining English. There are an estimated 371,900 speakers in Malta of the language, with statistics citing that 100 percent of the people are able to speak Maltese, 88 percent English, 66 Italian Italian and 17 percent French. The Maltese in fact show a greater degree of linguistic capabilities than most other European countries where it is a frequent practice to use English, Maltese and Italian in everyday life. While Maltese is the national language, it has been suggested that the English language is gaining dominance, however, this has been discredited by contemporary studies

Next issue: More on Malta’s history, culture and language.