When St Paul came to Malta he discovered that the people of Malta spoke his own language. St Paul was a Syrian and so spoke the language of the Lebanese, the Phoenicians. It is said that in the mountains of Syria there are still people who speak Maltese, the original Phoenician language. Some of them used to come to Malta and they would go to speak to the Maltese who used to live in the big caves above Buskett Gardens, as they continued using the original Maltese.

St Paul came to Malta more than 800 years before the Arabs. But what Arab dialect did the Arabs who came to Malta speak? The Arab language is made up of several dialects. The Syrians do not speak Egyptian or Arabian, and the latter do not speak Libyan or Tunisian – which resembles Maltese a lot as it descends from Carthaginian, which is actually Phoenician.

They do not speak Algerian or Moroccan either. But all these make themselves understood with each other by speaking the Arabic of the Koran. In Italy, the people of Naples and of Calabria do not understand each other in the vernacular.

So we come to Maltese. Which Arab dialect was used in Malta? Those who think that Maltese is Arabic are very much mistaken. Maltese is basically Phoenician which, like all Arab dialects, is Semitic. It was in Malta more than 800 years before the Arabs came to Malta. But, of course, Phoenician Maltese, being similar to other Arab dialects, assimilated some words and behaviours.

There is a very interesting poem about the Maltese language in the Syrian mountains, written by a famous Maltese author with Egyptian connections who therefore knows a lot about the Middle East. The poem is Hacit, which is the name of the actual place. It is recorded in the book Ward ta’ Qari Malti Book II, on page 111, written by G. Muscat Azzopardi.

Joseph S. Ellul

ZURRIEQ