Despite all odds, the Maltese language has managed to bring two men together - one Maltese, the other Lebanese - on the other side of the world, in Los Angeles, California, USA.

The UCLA Newsroom wrote on 9 January 2026 that two of its students in Los Angeles, California, USA have been brought together because of their uniquely shared ties with the Maltese language. These students are doctoral candidate Glen William Spiteri from Malta (right) and Lebanese-born doctoral student Richard Assaley.

Spiteri, who is researching people's motivations to act altruistically, was interviewed by The Malta Independent in January 2025 as a Maltese man who, at the time, was forced to evacuate from the UCLA campus because of the raging fires that had hit the American western coast to open that calendar year. Now, around exactly a year later from that natural disaster, he has found someone on the same campus who he can bond with over the Maltese language. He has been a student at UCLA since 2023.

Initially unbeknownst to Spiteri, his own university campus is an academic space where the Maltese language is researched on.

Nearly 11,000 kilometres away from the Maltese islands, Spiteri was referred to UCLA Professor Michael Cooperson by a friend of his. Prof. Cooperson is the chairperson for UCLA's Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and lists Maltese language and culture as one of his fields of study.

Soon afterwards, Cooperson introduced Spiteri to his student, Assaley. Assaley's research centres around the question of who decides what languages are considered Arabic. Maltese has long-been an area of interest for the Lebanese UCLA doctoral student; Assaley has been learning and exploring Maltese out of his own interest since his time in community college.

The UCLA Newsroom wrote that Prof. Cooperson was delighted to meet Spiteri, who is just one of two UCLA students deriving from Malta. UCLA hosts around four times as many students as the University of Malta, with total enrolments per scholastic year typically ranging between 45,000 and 50,000 students.

Cooperson told the UCLA Newsroom that "finding Glen was a great gift" and that he is now very excited that his student, Assaley, "can learn real, live Maltese instead of just the academic version."

Back when the young Lebanese man began his graduate programme, Assaley had apparently asked his professor if there was a local community of Maltese speakers somewhere near the UCLA campus. He was told not to get his hopes up, as Maltese circles in the United States were limited to the cities of Michigan, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, but not around the university's relative vicinity. However, his fortunes changed after Spiteri reached out to Prof. Cooperson in his hopes to reconnect with his Maltese roots on the UCLA campus.

Speaking to the university's news house, Spiteri said that "I never thought I'd come across someone else here who speaks Maltese. I feel like I can connect with Rich in a way that I can't connect with other people when I'm speaking English. A different part just comes out of you when you're speaking your native language."

Assaley said that meeting Spiteri in these circumstances "almost seemed like fate."

Spiteri observed that the two UCLA postgraduate students recently bonded over the funny fact that "several Maltese curse words are identical in Lebanese." Spiteri is content to finally have someone on this other side of the world to bond with over Maltese, while Assaley is eager to talk about the Maltese language to his native friend in this friendship that is already enriching both of their personal and academic lives.