II-Malti : elf sena ta storja [Book Review]

Abstract

A thousand years of the history of a language is an ambitious project, but one that Brincat has addressed with much detail in his work entitled Il-Malti Elf Sena ta' Storja. The origins of Maltese have been the subject of a number of linguistic works over the past century and much of what has been said and argued was repeatedly copied offering little in the way of new insights. For the first time Brincat's Il-Malti Elf Sena re-analyses the theories with new interpretations about the history of Maltese. It is a remarkable work, bringing together a number of perspectives and hypotheses succinctly presented, both historically and linguistically. The book is a history of Maltese but more than that, a socio-political history, full of ideas, presenting a dynamic view of how a language interacts in a crossroads of politics, cultures and religions.