Had a great time being part of this video and sharing the Maltese bits! Maltese is a beautiful language and I am happy to see some people in the comments have been studying it! 🥰
as a speaker of Egyptian Arabic, I'd say Maltese is 70-80% intelligible to me as an Arabic speaker. However, I am fluent in English and I have some basic understanding of Spanish, so having knowledge of one or more Romance languages definitely gives you a leg up on someone who only speaks Arabic. As the participants pointed out, a large portion of vocabulary, plus the sentence structure and syntax of the language is identical to Arabic, so it makes it quite easy to understand even if someone only speaks arabic.
I listen to your videos like a podcast, and as an algerian arabic, english, and french speaker and through context clues I was able to understand everything from your prompts! It’s crazy how similar our languages are.
I think as a Maghrebi Arabic speaker who had to deal with French and learnt some English, I can say that Maltese is not that alien to me, especially in its written form or when the speaker is speaking slowly. I believed I can reach an advance level in it in a relatively short period if I am dedicated. Nice video.
The large number of Latin-based words in the first excerpt allowed me, someone who speaks French and English but absolutely no Arabic, to still understand that it was a description of Malta and the Maltese language (what it was influenced by, in particular).
Yeah I don’t even know French and got the basic idea, I picked up on words that were almost certainly “Libya, Tunisia, Kilometers, Maltese Language, Semitic Language, European Union” and thus had a general idea
I'm fluent in English and Hebrew and learned some Arabic and Spanish, and this was really interesting. I could get most of the Romance words and some of the Arabic. Really cool and interesting. Thank you.
It's intersting how Maltese shares traits specific to multiple Arabic dialects: they have the Tunisian vowel reduction and vocabulary, Levantine Qaf and Egyptian vocabulary
Re. the first segment only, I got almost exactly the same as Maryam did but the irony is that I have almost no idea of Arabic (or Semitic in general) and I got all that from the parts that sounded Italian-like alone (I'm a native Spanish speaker and familiar with Italian since childhood, as part of my family is Italian... but from the North, not Sicily). There were many words (surely the core grammar) that I didn't understand but the mind extrapolates well enough, so I got pretty much the same info as Maryam did.
as a libyan who speaks the libyan dialectal form of arabic we can for sure comunicate pretty well as long as the ideas are basic, since the simple words are of arabic origin, and i think most other arabs can understand them somewhat well since the dialect they come from is somewhat central.
As an native Arabic speaker, it's easier to understand the written form of Malti. The paragraph about geography and language from Wikipedia. As a Maghribi Arabic speaker I use many romance words from french and little from Spanish or Italian, that's the struggle cause I don't speak any Italian or Sicilian
Maltese here, Arabs can easily understand us, especaially Lebanese Arabs (we have a similar "cadance" when speaking). On the other hand its almost impossible for us to understand Arabic other than catching a word here and there
Thanks for the initiative. Maltese is fascinating even for my Maltese self, and I'm glad people like you expose and educate others about it. GRAZZI HAFNA
Nobody told me I've been saying "besoin" like a Quebecker for years. lol. I only figured it out because the participants looked a little confused when I said it. I always aim for Metropolitan French pronunciation but that one slipped through.
As a Arab speaker from Iran which is a Persian majority country, I'm surprised with how much i understand from the sentences and specially the first audio that you played i understanded nearly 80 percent of it Nice video thanks ♥️
25 years ago, as a teenager, I was in Lourdes (a Catholic place of pilgrimage in the south of France) and heard a mass from afar. As I am interested in languages (probably not the only one on this channel) I went there. At first I thought it might be Italian, but I didn't understand exactly, even though I speak French. I asked a security guard there what language it was. He said Maltese. the sound is a mixture of Arabic and Italian. Wonderful sound for a catholic mass. Greetinx from Belgium.
As a Tunisian I understood most of it with the exception of Shana (I didn't know they merged the kh and h sounds) and Bzonn. Just like Rostom said I think having both vocal samples as well as written Maltese helps decypher the meaning but with only one of them I would've guessed maybe 50-60%.
As a Tunisian who started learning Maltese by listening to different Maltese radio stations in August 2024 and now almost understand 80-90% of what is said in news, podcasts, casual conversations and political debates, the language sounds more like Sfaxi dialect of Tunisian Arabic (in fact, Maltese linguist, Martin Zammit did research about the similarities between Sfaxi Tunisian Arabic and Maltese language), but also Tunisian spoken by elderly Tunisians who lived in the 40s-60s who would use some Sicilian-Italian vocabulary in their daily conversations (words such as kubbania, which is a corrupted version of compania, dakkourdou a corrupted Tunisian version of d’accordo in Italian etc.). That period had a large Maltese population in big cities such as Tunis, Sfax, Sousse, Jerba etc. I know at least two Tunisians whose grandmothers are Maltese living in Tunisia today. I would say that the Arabic part of Maltese can be broken down as follows: 45% Tunisian, 20% Libyan (I lived in Libya for 2 years and there are terms used as in Tripolitanian Libyan such as “بس”, "ح etc. , 20% Eastern Algerian Arabic (Annaba) and Moroccan darija with terms such as dak and jek (yik): if in English, and the rest 5% is a mix between Levantine Arabic, Iraqi Arabic and Egyptian Arabic (lukanda for hotel, hissa for now for instance). Note that the قاف qaf pronounced as A in Maltese is not only a Levantine and Egyptian Arabic particularities. In the Western Algerian city of Tlemcen قاف qaf is also pronounced A like Maltese. This is because Tlemceni people are mostly originally from Muslim Spain who became refugees after the Reconquista in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The city of Sfax’s dialect is of Andalusian origin hence its closeness to Maltese. Verb such as “ara” آرا in Maltese which means imperative “look” is also used in Sfaxi dialect. Maltese is fascinating to me and the more I listen to it on radio stations spoken, the more I see how it is a melting pot of all these different Arabic dialects.
When I went to Malta with my Omani boyfriend, he understood almost nothing of what the Maltese were saying. But maybe that’s because Oman is very far away from Malta and he also doesn’t know any romance language.
To be fair, being Tunisian and speaking fluently French (to a lesser extent, English), I think it would be easier for me to understand Maltese than to understand Moroccan, as Maltese vocabulary originates only from languages I speak very well, whereas some Moroccan vocabulary originates from Berber languages I do not understand at all.
Arabic being my native language, and knowing French and English, I could figure out most of the phrases. In some cases, words are overly changed or come from North African Arabic so it wasn’t obvious for me. But generally quite understandable. The numbers are exactly the same as in Arabic. Of course listening to people speaking it casually would take more attention. Just to think that if Arabic societies weren’t mostly Muslim, different forms of Arabic would maybe become languages of their own.
@ yes exactly and our official language is Arabic. But we could have developed a standalone language from our spoken dialect like it happened in Malta. Sure there are many factors for that not happening. Not just religion.
@@zahifar3936 i mean, all languages in the world will evolve and change one day to completely other languages. so yeah sure. but for now they're still dialects of the same language
As with all your videos, very thoughtfully presented, informative and interesting! When you posted the first spoken piece that the Egyptian woman was listening to, I as a Romance Languages student and Italian translator noticed a kind of Romance syntax ordering of sentence items… A very interesting language to know and learn of. 👍
Thanks for this video ❤ it is highly informative and entertaining. I had a linguistic interest in the Maltese language, having studied some Arabic many many years before. I had a hard time understanding the spoken only parts of the video, but I could understand a lot of the written sentences, even some of the Semitic words (my vocabulary has dwindled over time) because of the 3 root consonants of Arabic. k-t-b (the root of „writing“ and derived meanings) gave me a general understanding of what ktieb means. Maltese is so fascinating for subjecting Romance words to Arabic grammar.
Wow, very interesting...this mixture of Arabic, Italian and others that is Maltese. Seeing this, you can really say that a language reflects the history of a country or a place.
The Tunisian tongue is the closest language to Maltese. Geography and History can explain the astonishing similarities between the two languages. All Tunisians can understand this famous sentence about Malta : Malta Ħanina Ħboza u Sardina (مالطا الحنينة خبز وسردينة). It means word for word: Tender Malta, bread and sardines.
a tunisian would understand the example you provided bc all words in it are originated from arabic and still used across all dialects with almost no exceptions.
This was an amazing video, thanks for your effort to put everything together and include participants! As a speaker of Turkish and English, and to a certain extent Arabic, I got the whole of some sentences, and I would say about half of the others. Just as you asked at the end of the video, I really wonder how Arabic would sound to Maltese speaker, and if they would be able to understand and decipher as the speakers of Arabic (dialects) did in the video. Keep up the amazing content (and thanks to the patrons to making it possible) 🙏
Thanks a lot Paul. I'm learning Maltese and, in spite being at the beginning of the studies, I could understand a lot of the Maltese audio, and better understood the bigger sentences shown than the smaller ones.
May I ask why you are learning Maltese? I have been considering it but I have no personal connection and some people have tried to discourage me because of the small number of speakers. Hearing another person’s motivation might inspire me.
@@caseygreyson4178 I simply love languages. If I could find the Aladin's lamp, I would ask to the Genius to know fluently all 7,100 languages of the world. I love all them.
If you asked Iraqis from Mosul and upper half of Iraq they would have understood many words too. In Mosul we say: Qed aktib = I'm writing. Dan 👉🏻 south of Mosul, they say heech than = Hakatha هكذا..
As an Iraqi I understood about 95% of what's shown (Possibly because of already speaking English and bits of Italian and French) but overall if you have an eye for sound shifts, you can get-by with the informal form if spoken slowly I'd say and that's for me as a south mesopotamian Arabic speaker, I believe Tunisians would have it even easier without speaking neither Italian or English
I'm Libyan.. And I speak a bit of Italian So yea, I got a lot of Maltese like Tunisians.. sometimes there are words wit a different meanings as hafna in Maltese =a lot but in Arabic =handful etc
Given that many Tunisian's probably have an ancestor who spoke Latin, I would assume their dialect of Arabic probably has much more Latinized sounds that some of the others. It probably helps alot.
As someone of mixed heritage, one of them is palestinian (my grandfather was palestinian christiam from nazareth), i wanted to say that you are one of few linguistic youtubers that i feel gives equal importance to all languages of all cultures. I feel you dont fall prey to the common western notion of orientalism - which mysticises the middle east - yet you showcase these languages like any other. Anyways that is all! Thank you from one canadian to another
French is my L2 w/ CEFR C1 and MSA is my L3 w/CEFR B2. It was fascinating listening to her speak and see the language written out. In some ways it felt like me trying to speak Arabic and subbing in Romance words where I wouldn't know the Arabic. I didn't know many of the dialectical constructions (like with verbs) but the triliteral roots tended to be fairly consistent. Understood about 2/3 of it - and could probably get better with some practice and understanding of basic rules!
I loved this video! A few things I want to point out: 1. The letter h is only pronounced in certain positions. In “hi(ja)” it’s silent - pronouncing it makes it sound like ħija, meaning “my brother”. 2. In “Tkunx tard”, the word “ma” is absent because the sentence is an imperative. In an indicative sentence, the “ma” is present: “Ma tkunx tard” (“You aren’t late”/“You won’t be late”). 3. “Qed” is a shortened form of Qiegħed/Qiegħda/Qegħdin (masculine/feminine/plural). The long form would be more recognizable to Arabic speakers. 4. Maltese shares some other grammatical features with Maghrebi Arabic (Darija). For example, the numbers 11-19, when used to count a noun, take the suffix -il, which mirrors the same structure in Darija. For example, “Eleven books” in Maltese is “Ħdax-il ktieb”, and in Darija it’s “7dachr/7dachl ktab”.
As an Arabic speaker myself, yeah, I did understand all of it mostly (like 90%) - that "belt" kinda put me off a bit. As a tip for any Arabic speakers out there trying to read Maltese: If you see (ħ, Ħ), try reading it as ح and if it doesn't make sense, then read it again in خ; Same thing with (Għ), try it once in ع and once in غ and probably you'd get the meaning right away. I'm pretty sure though that the reader was slow on purpose so I personally could hear it well. Back in 2015 when I visited Malta, it was kinda hard to comprehend by listening to conversations, but I was reading the signs fine (but that's just me, I have some hearing problems or something)
I am from Germany, and i don't really speak any semitic language, but I have been exposed to them, as well as Latin langugaes, and I could pretty much follow the Maltese monologue, just based on the languages I know, almost as well as the Arabic speakers.
I heard older people who speak Maltese pronounce the letter Qaaf. Is that true Reminds me of Spanish speakers pronouncing the sound when they're older people. Like the letter in Arabic ayn.
i am not an arabic speaker and even i got the gist of the maltese piece. i am from india so understand hindi/urdu and i learn french and obviously speak english. so i could guess some of the meanings of the later sentences too.
I don’t speak any language other than English and I understood a lot of the first example thanks to my experience with Romance languages (I speak a teeny bit of French). It sounds like Arabic with an Italian accent.
I heard by chance that the difference between the Moroccan and Iraqi dialects is greater than the Italian and Spanish languages. Can you look into it? I am Moroccan and I can understand what Iraqis say, even though I do not speak it well. However, I may be able to communicate with them a little.
Hello, I really appreciate your great work and videos' content. I also remember that once somebody found your accent unknown to him. Then you explained that you are from Canada which is absolutely logical but still it caught my eye as I am not a native speaker and those peculiarities are interesting to me. So I think I found a guy with the accent which sounds in my opinion a bit similar to yours -a youtuber Doug Sharpe also seems to speak that way. Is it right or at least close?
Maltese being classified as semantic despite being highly influenced by European languages is like Urdu being classified as indo-aryan despite being highly influenced by persian and arabic.
Hey, just want to express my opinion, but I kind of miss more of the language overview videos, or videos where you cover certain features of a language. I just feel with these intelligibility videos they often lead back to sort of awkward/curious moments and all we really learn is that these languages had a history of borrowed vocab, which I could have also learned in a language overview video. Just a suggestion, I still appreciate your content and maybe it’s actually more popular this way, I’m not sure. I just really liked the learning and insightful coverage I got from your previous videos. Thank you!
I lived in Malta, and I couldn't understand any Maltese. However, I believe if a person speaks Arabic and English, he or she would understand Maltese. Most Latin words also exist in English, like inflation (inflazione in Italian).
I speak an eastern dialect of Arabic and while the syntax was very comprehensible to me, the Arabic-derived vocabulary was not always easy for me to pick up, since I do not have a lot of exposure to western Arabic dialects.
This has nothing to do with this video but I hope I’m early enough to get your attention. When I was in Hungry I talked to multiple people about their language. I asked if knowing Hungarian helped learning any other languages and they said Korean! In the time since I was there I talked to a Korean and they said the same thing. What in the world is that about? What similarities could there possibly be?
They're both agglutinative languages, so they share some grammatical features. A Hungarian speaker would recognize some patterns while studying Korean and would feel like they make sense instantly in their head, but obviously they wouldn't understand the words without learning then first, because the 2 languages belong to different languages groups and don't share a similar vocabulary.
@ yeah, never thought there were vocabulary similarities but I was surprised that there were any similarities at all. Hungarian is notoriously difficult for so many people. It’s cool that it helps them with some other languages.
i’m curious what part of sicily you got bisognu from. my grandmas from the trapani area and i’ve only ever heard diserve( i have no clue how to spell it but it sounds like deserve in an italian accent) but maybe it’s something she’s picked up living in america
I am a little bit disappointed. I want to hear the opinion of a speaker of Arabic that does not speak English/French or a European language, from which they would be able to understand all the non-Arabic parts of the monolog. How much would someone understand, who speaks no European language?
it is ana u7ubbu not ana a7ibb in modern standard arabic. non of the speakers would use a7ibb in their respective dialects. they should step up their msa skills..
Qed naqra ktieb... Qaa?id (n)aqra' kitaab... Whauw... Didn't expect that one! In Dutch we say EXACTLY the same when we want to express the continuous mood: Ik zit een boek te lezen (literally: I sit a book to read). Why? 'Cause the verb "to be" is overrated and boring :)
As a Filipino, whose Tagalog is a bit hispanicized (not Chavacano but influenced by early 20th century Philippine legalese) I am surprised I can understand the language.
Get an exclusive 15% discount on Saily data plans! Use code LANGFOCUS at checkout. Download Saily app or go to saily.com/langfocus
@Langfocus Try doing Korean Hanja to Japanese and Chinese Speakers to see if the Participants understand!
Try doing Persian and Urdu (formal) (also written as the two languages are closer written)
I just booked a flight for Italy later this year, definitely putting this code to use when I go
Had a great time being part of this video and sharing the Maltese bits! Maltese is a beautiful language and I am happy to see some people in the comments have been studying it! 🥰
Thanks for your audio samples!
I am Tunisian and I speak Italian!
I am reading the Bible in Maltese and I love it! Maltese is such a wonderful language! I love it ❤
as a speaker of Egyptian Arabic, I'd say Maltese is 70-80% intelligible to me as an Arabic speaker. However, I am fluent in English and I have some basic understanding of Spanish, so having knowledge of one or more Romance languages definitely gives you a leg up on someone who only speaks Arabic. As the participants pointed out, a large portion of vocabulary, plus the sentence structure and syntax of the language is identical to Arabic, so it makes it quite easy to understand even if someone only speaks arabic.
I listen to your videos like a podcast, and as an algerian arabic, english, and french speaker and through context clues I was able to understand everything from your prompts! It’s crazy how similar our languages are.
I think as a Maghrebi Arabic speaker who had to deal with French and learnt some English, I can say that Maltese is not that alien to me, especially in its written form or when the speaker is speaking slowly. I believed I can reach an advance level in it in a relatively short period if I am dedicated.
Nice video.
The large number of Latin-based words in the first excerpt allowed me, someone who speaks French and English but absolutely no Arabic, to still understand that it was a description of Malta and the Maltese language (what it was influenced by, in particular).
Yeah I don’t even know French and got the basic idea, I picked up on words that were almost certainly “Libya, Tunisia, Kilometers, Maltese Language, Semitic Language, European Union” and thus had a general idea
Same.
I'm fluent in English and Hebrew and learned some Arabic and Spanish, and this was really interesting. I could get most of the Romance words and some of the Arabic. Really cool and interesting. Thank you.
It's intersting how Maltese shares traits specific to multiple Arabic dialects: they have the Tunisian vowel reduction and vocabulary, Levantine Qaf and Egyptian vocabulary
I’m a primarily Spanish speaker, and I understood almost everything. I think I’ll add Maltese to my list of languages to learn.
Re. the first segment only, I got almost exactly the same as Maryam did but the irony is that I have almost no idea of Arabic (or Semitic in general) and I got all that from the parts that sounded Italian-like alone (I'm a native Spanish speaker and familiar with Italian since childhood, as part of my family is Italian... but from the North, not Sicily). There were many words (surely the core grammar) that I didn't understand but the mind extrapolates well enough, so I got pretty much the same info as Maryam did.
Answer: Only a third of the vocabulary ORIGINATED from Maghrebi Arabic, Libyans and Tunisians may understand up to 40% in certain conversions.
القواعد النحوية عربية عامية والمفردات ايضا
المغاربية يمكنهم الفهم افضل من دول المشرق العربي لكن هذا لا يلغي ان العرب كلهم يمكنهم الفهم
Man , this video is really interesting. I just started learning Italian yesterday but Arabic has always fascinated me
as a libyan who speaks the libyan dialectal form of arabic we can for sure comunicate pretty well as long as the ideas are basic, since the simple words are of arabic origin, and i think most other arabs can understand them somewhat well since the dialect they come from is somewhat central.
@@HOXHOXHOX dude what are you talking about? i already live in my country but i can live where ever i want pal.
In my opinion, this was the most interesting “can they understand” experiment so far.
As an native Arabic speaker, it's easier to understand the written form of Malti. The paragraph about geography and language from Wikipedia. As a Maghribi Arabic speaker I use many romance words from french and little from Spanish or Italian, that's the struggle cause I don't speak any Italian or Sicilian
Maltese here, Arabs can easily understand us, especaially Lebanese Arabs (we have a similar "cadance" when speaking). On the other hand its almost impossible for us to understand Arabic other than catching a word here and there
North africans will be able to undrestand you batter than a lebanese for sur
Yes we can understand now I can understand most of it I am a Syrian Arab I can teach you Arabic if you want
Thanks for the initiative. Maltese is fascinating even for my Maltese self, and I'm glad people like you expose and educate others about it. GRAZZI HAFNA
11:56 Thanks for the flag there Paul I needed that. Great video as per usual!
Nobody told me I've been saying "besoin" like a Quebecker for years. lol. I only figured it out because the participants looked a little confused when I said it.
I always aim for Metropolitan French pronunciation but that one slipped through.
I am an Algerian and i pretty much understood it ALL , about 95% !
As a Arab speaker from Iran which is a Persian majority country, I'm surprised with how much i understand from the sentences and specially the first audio that you played i understanded nearly 80 percent of it
Nice video thanks ♥️
I was studying Maltese grammar, I hope one day he redoes Maltese. No rush here.
Same, maltese is kinda english among germanic languages.
Excellent video. I'm kind of surprised that you, of all people, have waited this long to do this video :P
25 years ago, as a teenager, I was in Lourdes (a Catholic place of pilgrimage in the south of France) and heard a mass from afar. As I am interested in languages (probably not the only one on this channel) I went there. At first I thought it might be Italian, but I didn't understand exactly, even though I speak French. I asked a security guard there what language it was. He said Maltese. the sound is a mixture of Arabic and Italian. Wonderful sound for a catholic mass.
Greetinx from Belgium.
As a Tunisian I understood most of it with the exception of Shana (I didn't know they merged the kh and h sounds) and Bzonn. Just like Rostom said I think having both vocal samples as well as written Maltese helps decypher the meaning but with only one of them I would've guessed maybe 50-60%.
maltese is a mix of arabic and sicilian/italian the same way english is a mix of french and anglosaxon/german
As a Tunisian who started learning Maltese by listening to different Maltese radio stations in August 2024 and now almost understand 80-90% of what is said in news, podcasts, casual conversations and political debates, the language sounds more like Sfaxi dialect of Tunisian Arabic (in fact, Maltese linguist, Martin Zammit did research about the similarities between Sfaxi Tunisian Arabic and Maltese language), but also Tunisian spoken by elderly Tunisians who lived in the 40s-60s who would use some Sicilian-Italian vocabulary in their daily conversations (words such as kubbania, which is a corrupted version of compania, dakkourdou a corrupted Tunisian version of d’accordo in Italian etc.). That period had a large Maltese population in big cities such as Tunis, Sfax, Sousse, Jerba etc. I know at least two Tunisians whose grandmothers are Maltese living in Tunisia today. I would say that the Arabic part of Maltese can be broken down as follows: 45% Tunisian, 20% Libyan (I lived in Libya for 2 years and there are terms used as in Tripolitanian Libyan such as “بس”, "ح etc. , 20% Eastern Algerian Arabic (Annaba) and Moroccan darija with terms such as dak and jek (yik): if in English, and the rest 5% is a mix between Levantine Arabic, Iraqi Arabic and Egyptian Arabic (lukanda for hotel, hissa for now for instance). Note that the قاف qaf pronounced as A in Maltese is not only a Levantine and Egyptian Arabic particularities. In the Western Algerian city of Tlemcen قاف qaf is also pronounced A like Maltese. This is because Tlemceni people are mostly originally from Muslim Spain who became refugees after the Reconquista in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The city of Sfax’s dialect is of Andalusian origin hence its closeness to Maltese. Verb such as “ara” آرا in Maltese which means imperative “look” is also used in Sfaxi dialect. Maltese is fascinating to me and the more I listen to it on radio stations spoken, the more I see how it is a melting pot of all these different Arabic dialects.
I speak Hebrew and Italian qnd understood about 90% of it in the spoken sample, I couldn't believe it!!!
When I went to Malta with my Omani boyfriend, he understood almost nothing of what the Maltese were saying. But maybe that’s because Oman is very far away from Malta and he also doesn’t know any romance language.
To be fair, being Tunisian and speaking fluently French (to a lesser extent, English), I think it would be easier for me to understand Maltese than to understand Moroccan, as Maltese vocabulary originates only from languages I speak very well, whereas some Moroccan vocabulary originates from Berber languages I do not understand at all.
Grammar & Syntax and 30-40% vocab from Arabic, 50-60% vocab from Italic...Maltese is basically the "English" of Semitic languages😅
I think it definitely helped that you had quite informed participants. Very interesting!
Arabic being my native language, and knowing French and English, I could figure out most of the phrases. In some cases, words are overly changed or come from North African Arabic so it wasn’t obvious for me. But generally quite understandable. The numbers are exactly the same as in Arabic.
Of course listening to people speaking it casually would take more attention.
Just to think that if Arabic societies weren’t mostly Muslim, different forms of Arabic would maybe become languages of their own.
religion doesnt prevent languages from changing
half of the lebanese are christians speaking arabic
@ yes exactly and our official language is Arabic. But we could have developed a standalone language from our spoken dialect like it happened in Malta. Sure there are many factors for that not happening. Not just religion.
@@zahifar3936 i mean, all languages in the world will evolve and change one day to completely other languages. so yeah sure.
but for now they're still dialects of the same language
As with all your videos, very thoughtfully presented, informative and interesting! When you posted the first spoken piece that the Egyptian woman was listening to, I as a Romance Languages student and Italian translator noticed a kind of Romance syntax ordering of sentence items… A very interesting language to know and learn of. 👍
Thanks for this video ❤ it is highly informative and entertaining.
I had a linguistic interest in the Maltese language, having studied some Arabic many many years before.
I had a hard time understanding the spoken only parts of the video, but I could understand a lot of the written sentences, even some of the Semitic words (my vocabulary has dwindled over time) because of the 3 root consonants of Arabic. k-t-b (the root of „writing“ and derived meanings) gave me a general understanding of what ktieb means.
Maltese is so fascinating for subjecting Romance words to Arabic grammar.
Wow, very interesting...this mixture of Arabic, Italian and others that is Maltese. Seeing this, you can really say that a language reflects the history of a country or a place.
Interesting!
Looking forward to visiting Malta one day.
The Tunisian tongue is the closest language to Maltese. Geography and History can explain the astonishing similarities between the two languages. All Tunisians can understand this famous sentence about Malta : Malta Ħanina Ħboza u Sardina (مالطا الحنينة خبز وسردينة). It means word for word: Tender Malta, bread and sardines.
a tunisian would understand the example you provided bc all words in it are originated from arabic and still used across all dialects with almost no exceptions.
This was an amazing video, thanks for your effort to put everything together and include participants! As a speaker of Turkish and English, and to a certain extent Arabic, I got the whole of some sentences, and I would say about half of the others. Just as you asked at the end of the video, I really wonder how Arabic would sound to Maltese speaker, and if they would be able to understand and decipher as the speakers of Arabic (dialects) did in the video. Keep up the amazing content (and thanks to the patrons to making it possible) 🙏
Thanks a lot Paul. I'm learning Maltese and, in spite being at the beginning of the studies, I could understand a lot of the Maltese audio, and better understood the bigger sentences shown than the smaller ones.
May I ask why you are learning Maltese? I have been considering it but I have no personal connection and some people have tried to discourage me because of the small number of speakers. Hearing another person’s motivation might inspire me.
@@caseygreyson4178 I simply love languages. If I could find the Aladin's lamp, I would ask to the Genius to know fluently all 7,100 languages of the world. I love all them.
If you asked Iraqis from Mosul and upper half of Iraq they would have understood many words too. In Mosul we say: Qed aktib = I'm writing. Dan 👉🏻 south of Mosul, they say heech than = Hakatha هكذا..
As an Iraqi I understood about 95% of what's shown (Possibly because of already speaking English and bits of Italian and French) but overall if you have an eye for sound shifts, you can get-by with the informal form if spoken slowly I'd say and that's for me as a south mesopotamian Arabic speaker, I believe Tunisians would have it even easier without speaking neither Italian or English
I just know that i love arabic much much as i hear and see videos about it, im in love w arabic.
I'm Libyan.. And I speak a bit of Italian So yea, I got a lot of Maltese like Tunisians.. sometimes there are words wit a different meanings as hafna in Maltese =a lot but in Arabic =handful etc
Given that many Tunisian's probably have an ancestor who spoke Latin, I would assume their dialect of Arabic probably has much more Latinized sounds that some of the others. It probably helps alot.
Italian-speaking American here. I understood a lot of that!
As someone of mixed heritage, one of them is palestinian (my grandfather was palestinian christiam from nazareth), i wanted to say that you are one of few linguistic youtubers that i feel gives equal importance to all languages of all cultures.
I feel you dont fall prey to the common western notion of orientalism - which mysticises the middle east - yet you showcase these languages like any other.
Anyways that is all! Thank you from one canadian to another
As an Arab-Italian, Maltese is perfect for me 😍 I love this language
Shukran, habibi.
Really enjoying the dialect durability testing series 👍
French is my L2 w/ CEFR C1 and MSA is my L3 w/CEFR B2. It was fascinating listening to her speak and see the language written out. In some ways it felt like me trying to speak Arabic and subbing in Romance words where I wouldn't know the Arabic.
I didn't know many of the dialectical constructions (like with verbs) but the triliteral roots tended to be fairly consistent. Understood about 2/3 of it - and could probably get better with some practice and understanding of basic rules!
I loved this video! A few things I want to point out:
1. The letter h is only pronounced in certain positions. In “hi(ja)” it’s silent - pronouncing it makes it sound like ħija, meaning “my brother”.
2. In “Tkunx tard”, the word “ma” is absent because the sentence is an imperative. In an indicative sentence, the “ma” is present: “Ma tkunx tard” (“You aren’t late”/“You won’t be late”).
3. “Qed” is a shortened form of Qiegħed/Qiegħda/Qegħdin (masculine/feminine/plural). The long form would be more recognizable to Arabic speakers.
4. Maltese shares some other grammatical features with Maghrebi Arabic (Darija). For example, the numbers 11-19, when used to count a noun, take the suffix -il, which mirrors the same structure in Darija. For example, “Eleven books” in Maltese is “Ħdax-il ktieb”, and in Darija it’s “7dachr/7dachl ktab”.
the "7dachl ktab" is more of a "7dach lktab". that L is the definite article "Al ال" so it's attached to the noun
As an Arabic speaker myself, yeah, I did understand all of it mostly (like 90%) - that "belt" kinda put me off a bit. As a tip for any Arabic speakers out there trying to read Maltese: If you see (ħ, Ħ), try reading it as ح and if it doesn't make sense, then read it again in خ; Same thing with (Għ), try it once in ع and once in غ and probably you'd get the meaning right away. I'm pretty sure though that the reader was slow on purpose so I personally could hear it well. Back in 2015 when I visited Malta, it was kinda hard to comprehend by listening to conversations, but I was reading the signs fine (but that's just me, I have some hearing problems or something)
Ah, I always get excited when you post a video about Arabic, Paul. Your videos are the reason I have started learning the language.
I am from Germany, and i don't really speak any semitic language, but I have been exposed to them, as well as Latin langugaes, and I could pretty much follow the Maltese monologue, just based on the languages I know, almost as well as the Arabic speakers.
I heard older people who speak Maltese pronounce the letter Qaaf.
Is that true
Reminds me of Spanish speakers pronouncing the sound when they're older people. Like the letter in Arabic ayn.
Amazing video as always.. The Egyptian girl is really smart..
i am not an arabic speaker and even i got the gist of the maltese piece. i am from india so understand hindi/urdu and i learn french and obviously speak english. so i could guess some of the meanings of the later sentences too.
You should focus more on Asian languages
Bengali, Marathi, Tami, Telugu , Thai these languages are so awesome! Rich in their history
I don’t speak any language other than English and I understood a lot of the first example thanks to my experience with Romance languages (I speak a teeny bit of French). It sounds like Arabic with an Italian accent.
Maltese is definitely English of Arabic languages. English has a similar ratio of Romance lexicon as a Germanic language. 😊
I heard by chance that the difference between the Moroccan and Iraqi dialects is greater than the Italian and Spanish languages. Can you look into it?
I am Moroccan and I can understand what Iraqis say, even though I do not speak it well. However, I may be able to communicate with them a little.
they're different compared to each other, not when compared, let's say, to quranic arabic.
Hello, I really appreciate your great work and videos' content. I also remember that once somebody found your accent unknown to him. Then you explained that you are from Canada which is absolutely logical but still it caught my eye as I am not a native speaker and those peculiarities are interesting to me. So I think I found a guy with the accent which sounds in my opinion a bit similar to yours -a youtuber Doug Sharpe also seems to speak that way. Is it right or at least close?
Thank you Paul for this interesting video.
I wonder whether Maltese could be considered an Italian creole - with Arabic as the base.
Maltese being classified as semantic despite being highly influenced by European languages is like Urdu being classified as indo-aryan despite being highly influenced by persian and arabic.
As a German and English-speaker I could understand all of the formal sentences and the informal sentences were incomprehensible to me.
Hey, just want to express my opinion, but I kind of miss more of the language overview videos, or videos where you cover certain features of a language. I just feel with these intelligibility videos they often lead back to sort of awkward/curious moments and all we really learn is that these languages had a history of borrowed vocab, which I could have also learned in a language overview video. Just a suggestion, I still appreciate your content and maybe it’s actually more popular this way, I’m not sure. I just really liked the learning and insightful coverage I got from your previous videos. Thank you!
I only speak English, Spanish and Portuguese and I understood a lot of Maltese. It's more Latin than Arabic.
As an Arabic speaker I understand 50% the Maltese language
I lived in Malta, and I couldn't understand any Maltese. However, I believe if a person speaks Arabic and English, he or she would understand Maltese. Most Latin words also exist in English, like inflation (inflazione in Italian).
Most of the time yes
I was today years old when I learned that Maltese evolved from Arabic. I always thought their language is closer to some European language.
I speak an eastern dialect of Arabic and while the syntax was very comprehensible to me, the Arabic-derived vocabulary was not always easy for me to pick up, since I do not have a lot of exposure to western Arabic dialects.
انا كمان فهمت تقريبا الجملة لكن الكلمات الاجنبية صعبت الفهم اعني ان انا فهمت المقصد لكن مو بالضبط
I don’t speak Arabic and I had a pretty good idea what she was saying.
This has nothing to do with this video but I hope I’m early enough to get your attention. When I was in Hungry I talked to multiple people about their language. I asked if knowing Hungarian helped learning any other languages and they said Korean! In the time since I was there I talked to a Korean and they said the same thing. What in the world is that about? What similarities could there possibly be?
They're both agglutinative languages, so they share some grammatical features. A Hungarian speaker would recognize some patterns while studying Korean and would feel like they make sense instantly in their head, but obviously they wouldn't understand the words without learning then first, because the 2 languages belong to different languages groups and don't share a similar vocabulary.
@ yeah, never thought there were vocabulary similarities but I was surprised that there were any similarities at all. Hungarian is notoriously difficult for so many people. It’s cool that it helps them with some other languages.
Thanks!
Alternative title: Can Arabic speakers understand the Italian dialect of Arabic?
As algerien Of cours
yes 👍❤
2:40 WHY CAN I UNDERSTAND HER?!
I could understand a good part of it and I'm only Bilingual ( Spanish+English ). I know some Arabic but not much
there is enough italian in there for me to follow what they we were saying without knowing arabic.
Some exercises are confounded by the fact that they speak English, which is another heavily Romance-influenced language.
i’m curious what part of sicily you got bisognu from. my grandmas from the trapani area and i’ve only ever heard diserve( i have no clue how to spell it but it sounds like deserve in an italian accent) but maybe it’s something she’s picked up living in america
I understood at least 50% of the words of the first example, but didn't understand the actual sentences.
Every word that they could understand because they know French is actually Italian
I am a little bit disappointed. I want to hear the opinion of a speaker of Arabic that does not speak English/French or a European language, from which they would be able to understand all the non-Arabic parts of the monolog. How much would someone understand, who speaks no European language?
As an Arabic speaker I can kind of understand it if they speak slowly (not 100% I will not understand the non Arabic words)
Just listening yo Maltese and understanding none of it, it sounds just like Arabic with the edges sanded off as spoken by an Italian.
Maltese is the English language of the Semetic family.
7achim zboubetna tounsi meta3 wedhni ki inti behim 3lech tarmi fi rou7ik fil video jehama wel behama
Bel3aks fhem cv w jeweb mrigel 3lech 7achamna?
Should then Arabic be divided into seperate languages?
All your Arabic speakers also speak English. I doubt monolingual Arabic speakers would have as much insight into the Romance vocabulary.
it is ana u7ubbu not ana a7ibb in modern standard arabic. non of the speakers would use a7ibb in their respective dialects. they should step up their msa skills..
Wow! I understand this fairly well! But I also speak Italian and Spanish in addition to Arabic, so I have an unfair advantage 😅
Qed naqra ktieb...
Qaa?id (n)aqra' kitaab...
Whauw... Didn't expect that one!
In Dutch we say EXACTLY the same when we want to express the continuous mood: Ik zit een boek te lezen (literally: I sit a book to read).
Why? 'Cause the verb "to be" is overrated and boring :)
oh maltese... puppy?
Haha, my parents actually have a Maltese.
No, the falcon.
Maltese indeed is arabic dialect. Just like urdu and dakkani are dialect of same language urdu
And urdu and Hindi are just two varietes of the same language.
Live streams for pre recorded content is stupid. Stop doing it. Lopeta.
Pls, can you make a vidio about the algerain dilect 🫠 ?
It's sach an interesting topic to talk about ❤
th-cam.com/video/v6x_6K0OR3w/w-d-xo.htmlsi=I2W1IaBPycf5FR9E. There is a vid for Moroccan derja if you like. I live in Algiers ❤
@@rennemurphy6330 صحيت 🫀🤝
nigerian
As a Filipino, whose Tagalog is a bit hispanicized (not Chavacano but influenced by early 20th century Philippine legalese) I am surprised I can understand the language.