The Berber element in Maltese

Abstract

Maltese is an off-shoot of the North African (Maghribi) group of Arabic dialects. Its morphological and syntactic structures remain largely Arabic to this day in spite of the many inroads made upon it by Old Sicilian, Old and Modern Italian and, in our time, also by English. If Maltese can be described as 'structurally Semitic and superstructurally Romance', this is the joint product of the two linguistically more important foreign political dominations in the island. These were the conquest of Malta in 869/870 (forty-three years after the conquest of Sicily) by the Arabs under the powerful Aghlabids who, from their capital al-Qayrawan, dominated during their century of power the mid-Mediterranean, and its conquest (twenty-four years after the Norman conquest of Britain) by King Roger with whom started the Norman domination which was to be followed by that of several other Latin governments- Swabian, Angevin, Aragonese and Castilian (1 090-1530). One must assume that, just as the Arab armies which invaded Spain included a large number of Berbers, similarly a considerable number of Berbers must have fought in the armies which conquered Malta.