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Maltese: blending Semitic, Romance and Germanic lexemes
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Joseph M. Brincat
Published/Copyright:
October 2, 2018
Abstract
Malta’s position at the centre of the Mediterranean attracted various conquerors and settlers, but in its present form Maltese has its origins in the Arabic dialect introduced by the Muslim conquest around the year 1000. Lexical Latinisation started early under Norman rule and kept increasing steadily up to the twentieth century thanks to contact with Chancery and spoken Sicilian up to the sixteenth century, and then with Italian which was introduced by the Knights of Malta. This article traces the historical developments and their influence on the Maltese language, providing statistics concerning the composition of the lexicon and the various methods by which it can be analysed. A look at the present situation explains how Maltese and English bilingualism in the schools and in society is affecting the spoken variety which is often marked by code-switching.
Published Online: 2018-10-02
Published in Print: 2017-09-01
© 2018 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
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- Editorial
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- Nachruf auf Herbert Ernst Wiegand
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- Introductory note to the Thematic part
- Turkish as a Mediterranean language
- Greek as the receiving language in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period
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- Popular lexicon of Greek origin in Italian varieties
- Italian and Arabic
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- Language contact in Sardinian between the Middle and the Early Modern Ages
- Lexical contact in the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: French
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- A taxonomy of user guidance devices for e-lexicography
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- Elisabetta Ježek, The Lexicon. An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016 (Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics)
- Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch. Begonnen von Hans Schulz, fortgeführt von Otto Basler. 2. Auflage, völlig neu erarbeitet im Institut für Deutsche Sprache. Band 8: ideal – inaktiv von Herbert Schmidt (Leitung), Dominik Brückner, Isolde Nortmeyer, Oliver Pfefferkorn, Oda Vietze. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2017
- Félix Rodríguez González, Gran diccionario de anglicismos, Madrid, Arco Libros, 2017
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- Der Europäische Master für Lexikographie 2017 im Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree Programm
- Authors of the present volume
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Editorial
- Contents
- Nachruf auf Herbert Ernst Wiegand
- Thematic Part: Language contact in the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages and in Early Modern Times (with special focus on loanword lexicography)
- Introductory note to the Thematic part
- Turkish as a Mediterranean language
- Greek as the receiving language in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period
- Croatian in the Mediterranean context: language contacts in the Early Modern Croatian lexicography
- Popular lexicon of Greek origin in Italian varieties
- Italian and Arabic
- The vocabulary of the Algerian Lingua Franca
- Maltese: blending Semitic, Romance and Germanic lexemes
- Language contact in Sardinian between the Middle and the Early Modern Ages
- Lexical contact in the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: French
- The lexical impact of language contact with Arabic on Spanish and Catalan
- Language contact on the Iberian Peninsula: Romani and the autochthonous languages
- Judeo-Romance varieties
- Non-thematic Part
- Monofunctional and polyfunctional information tools with an operative function
- A taxonomy of user guidance devices for e-lexicography
- Le Dictionnaire étymologique et historique des régionalismes de l’immobilier : structure générale, macrostructure et microstructure
- Reviews
- Elisabetta Ježek, The Lexicon. An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016 (Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics)
- Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch. Begonnen von Hans Schulz, fortgeführt von Otto Basler. 2. Auflage, völlig neu erarbeitet im Institut für Deutsche Sprache. Band 8: ideal – inaktiv von Herbert Schmidt (Leitung), Dominik Brückner, Isolde Nortmeyer, Oliver Pfefferkorn, Oda Vietze. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2017
- Félix Rodríguez González, Gran diccionario de anglicismos, Madrid, Arco Libros, 2017
- Lexicography in Higher Education
- Der Europäische Master für Lexikographie 2017 im Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree Programm
- Authors of the present volume
