Plurilingualism and cultural change in medieval Malta

Abstract

The linguistic history of the Maltese Islands, both in the Middle Ages and in later times, presents several interesting and some quite unique features. Thus, Maltese is today the only national language in Europe to have developed out of a medieval Arabic vernacular-probably in a Muslim cultural context. For reasons that linguistic scholarship has yet to clarify, it survived the subsequent ethnic, cultural, religious, and political vicissitudes of the Maltese Islands, including a 'Latinization process' so profound that at one point large sections of the population thoroughly identified themselves with the Romance language and culture area, and denied outright any historical connexion with,the Arab nation and their language.