I don’t understand why some Maltese people think they are speaking a dialect of Phoenician.

If you think you speak Phoenician, let me ask you.. do you understand Biblical Hebrew? Hebrew and Phoenician were not separate languages, but dialects of one language, Canaanite, which had several dialects; Hebrew, Phoenician, Edomite, Moabite, Ammonite, and possibly others.

Here is a sample of ancient Hebrew:

[https://cdn3.volusion.com/wfgdl.qdzyh/v/vspfiles/photos/HEPB-3.jpg?v-cache=1440457023](https://cdn3.volusion.com/wfgdl.qdzyh/v/vspfiles/photos/HEPB-3.jpg?v-cache=1440457023)

If you cannot understand this and it looks completely unfamiliar, then it should be obvious you are speaking Arabic, not Phoenician. Any similarities to Hebrew or Phoenician are because these are all Semitic languages.

11 comments

  1. Ive honestly never heard anyone say Maltese is derived from Phoenician. Its pretty common knowledge that Maltese is mainly Arabic with Italian and some English and French.

    I dont study linguistics so I may be completely wrong here, but perhaps wherever youve heard this comes from the Phoenician alphabet influencing the present day latin alphabet we use and Maltese being the only Arabic based language written in the latin alphabet?

  5. It’s the Maltese version of hoteps.

    Some say that because they believe Malta to be a precursor to the other civilisations of the Mediterranean and since the Phoenicians were cool, claiming that we speak a language descended from theirs would be something to boast about.

    Then some say it because they want to disregard the Arab origin of the Maltese language, either out of racism or because they don’t want to be grouped in any way with them.

    As for everyone here saying no one in Malta says this, I heavily disagree. It’s not as popular a theory as it once was, but I remember less than 20 years ago in school we had plenty of teachers tell us that the Maltese language comes from Phoenician. A few years ago I met a guy who insisted that Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic and all other Semitic languages actually descended from Maltese. Go back a few decades more and it was a more popular belief. It wasn’t like an overwhelmingly common belief but one nonetheless.

  6. I’ve heard Malta’s first settlers were Phoenicians but not the origin of the language. I think it clearly is not. They were not the first inhabitants either.

  7. it is technically derived from Phoenician, Maltese started from that language (700BC). in the next 2400 years until 1400 it was then heavily influenced from Sicilian Arabic (the emphasis is on heavily). when the knights took over, it kept changing to what we know today.

    Infact Lebanese understand Maltese, and Lebanese was derived from the Aramaic language. Aramaic replaced the Canaanite language that was spoken by the Phoenicians.

  10. I don’t think I ever met anyone who made that claim to be fair.

    However some interesting facts:

    Both Phoenician and Maltese come from the same language family.

    There is a huge similarity between the Lebanese dialect and Maltese language. Would be interesting to find how it came to be considering the distance.

    Phoenician was deciphered thanks to the cippi of melqart that were found in Ta silg which had both Greek and Punic transcriptions.

    Certain minor words, folklore and legends might be Punic in origin. High Probability is that these were reintroduced during the Arab period as the new migrants shared the Punic legacy as well.

  11. Sounds better than saying it’s from Arabic I guess.

    With that said I studied Biblical Hebrew and Phoenician, and the common semitic roots are very clear, although this does not mean that Maltese descends from Phoenician.

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