115-580: Victoria Gate ( Maltese : Il-Bieb Victoria , Italian : Porta Victoria or Porta Vittoria ) is a city gate in Valletta , Malta . It was built by the British in 1885, and was named after Queen Victoria . The gate is the main entrance into the city from the Grand Harbour area, which was once the busiest part of the city. The gate is located between Marina Curtain and St. Barbara Bastion , on
230-457: A drawbridge and a ditch . The ditch was filled in over the years, but it was uncovered and restored in 2010. Maltese language Maltese (Maltese: Malti , also L-Ilsien Malti or Lingwa Maltija ) is a Semitic language derived from late medieval Sicilian Arabic with Romance superstrata . It is spoken by the Maltese people and is the national language of Malta , and
345-702: A language family (or "phylum") of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia , North Africa , the Horn of Africa , and parts of the Sahara and Sahel . Over 500 million people are native speakers of an Afroasiatic language, constituting the fourth-largest language family after Indo-European , Sino-Tibetan , and Niger–Congo . Most linguists divide the family into six branches: Berber , Chadic , Cushitic , Egyptian , Semitic , and Omotic . The vast majority of Afroasiatic languages are considered indigenous to
460-492: A pitch accent . At present, there is no generally accepted reconstruction of Proto-Afroasiatic grammar, syntax, or morphology, nor one for any of the sub-branches besides Egyptian. This means that it is difficult to know which features in Afroasiatic languages are retentions, and which are innovations. Moreover, all Afroasiatic languages have long been in contact with other language families and with each other, leading to
575-509: A Cushitic-Omotic group. Additionally, the minority of scholars who favor an Asian origin of Afroasiatic tend to place Semitic as the first branch to split off. Disagreement on which features are innovative and which are inherited from Proto-Afroasiatic produces radically different trees, as can be seen by comparing the trees produced by Ehret and Igor Diakonoff . Responding to the above, Tom Güldemann criticizes attempts at finding subgroupings based on common or lacking morphology by arguing that
690-455: A branch of Afroasiatic persisted as late as the 1980s. In 1969, Harold Fleming proposed that a group of languages classified by Greenberg as Cushitic were in fact their own independent "Omotic" branch—a proposal that has been widely, if not universally, accepted. These six branches now constitute an academic consensus on the genetic structure of the family. Greenberg relied on his own method of mass comparison of vocabulary items rather than
805-467: A duality of Semitic and "Hamitic" any more than Indo-European implies a duality of Indic and "European". Because of its use by several important scholars and in the titles of significant works of scholarship, the total replacement of Hamito-Semitic is difficult. While Greenberg ultimately popularized the name "Afroasiatic" in 1960, it appears to have been coined originally by Maurice Delafosse , as French afroasiatique , in 1914. The name refers to
920-416: A large number of borrowings from Romance sources ( Sicilian , Italian , and French ) and, more recently, Germanic ones (from English ). The historical source of modern Maltese vocabulary is 52% Italian/Sicilian, 32% Arabic/Siculo-Arabic, and 6% English, with some of the remainder being French. Today, most function words are Arabic, so despite only making up about a third of the vocabulary, they are
1035-422: A majority of scholars: There is no agreement on the relationships between and subgrouping of the different Afroasiatic branches. Whereas Marcel Cohen (1947) claimed he saw no evidence for internal subgroupings, numerous other scholars have made proposals, with Carsten Peust counting 27 as of 2012. Common trends in proposals as of 2019 include using common or lacking grammatical features to argue that Omotic
1150-406: A noun or a verb, there is evidence for the existence of distinct noun and verb roots, which behave in different ways. As part of these templates, the alternation ( apophony ) between high vowels (e.g. i, u) and a low vowel (a) in verbal forms is usually described as one of the main characteristics of AA languages: this change codes a variety of different functions. It is unclear whether this system
1265-462: A result of the Norman invasion of Malta and the subsequent re-Christianization of the islands , Maltese evolved independently of Classical Arabic in a gradual process of latinisation. It is therefore exceptional as a variety of historical Arabic that has no diglossic relationship with Classical or Modern Standard Arabic . Maltese is thus classified separately from the 30 varieties constituting
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#17327876641181380-1102: A sample of 1,821 Quranic Arabic roots were found in Maltese, considerably lower than that found in Moroccan (58%) and Lebanese (72%) varieties of Arabic. An analysis of the etymology of the 41,000 words in Aquilina's Maltese–English Dictionary shows that 32% of the Maltese vocabulary is of Arabic origin, although another source claims 40%. Usually, words expressing basic concepts and ideas, such as raġel (man), mara (woman), tifel (boy), dar (house), xemx (sun), sajf (summer), are of Arabic origin. Moreover, belles-lettres in Maltese aim to maximise their use of vocabulary belonging to this group. Notes: * from Arabic استقصى ( istaqṣā ) "to investigate", ** from Arabic اشتاق ( ištāqa ) "to yearn for ". Afroasiatic languages The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic , sometimes Afrasian ), also known as Hamito-Semitic or Semito-Hamitic , are
1495-565: A single language family, and in 1876 Friedrich Müller first described them as a "Hamito-Semitic" language family. Müller assumed that there existed a distinct "Hamitic" branch of the family that consisted of Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic. He did not include the Chadic languages, though contemporary Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius argued for the relation of Hausa to the Berber languages. Some scholars would continue to regard Hausa as related to
1610-595: A single language with multiple dialects. Other scholars, however, argue that they are a group of around twelve languages, about as different from each other as the Romance or Germanic languages. In the past, Berber languages were spoken throughout North Africa except in Egypt; since the 7th century CE, however, they have been heavily affected by Arabic and have been replaced by it in many places. There are two extinct languages potentially related to modern Berber. The first
1725-405: A spread of migrating farmers into Africa, but rather a gradual incorporation of animal husbandry into indigenous foraging cultures. Ehret, in a separate publication, argued that the two principles in linguistic approaches for determining the origin of languages which are the principles of fewest moves and greatest diversity had put “beyond reasonable doubt” that the language family “had originated in
1840-497: A syllable to begin with a vowel; however, in many Chadic languages verbs must begin with a consonant. In Cushitic and Chadic languages, a glottal stop or glottal fricative may be inserted to prevent a word from beginning with a vowel. Typically, syllables begin with only a single consonant. Diakonoff argues that proto-Afroasiatic did not have consonant clusters within a syllable. With the exception of some Chadic languages, all Afroasiatic languages allow both open syllables (ending in
1955-525: A vowel) and closed syllables (ending in a consonant); many Chadic languages do not allow a syllable to end in a consonant. Most words end in a vowel in Omotic and Cushitic, making syllable-final consonant clusters rare. Syllable weight plays an important role in AA, especially in Chadic; it can affect the form of affixes attached to a word. Several Afroasiatic languages have large consonant inventories, and it
2070-469: A ḡ fir lanā ḏ unūbanā , kamā na ḡ firu na ḥ nu ʔ ay ḍ an lil-muḏnibīn ʔ ilaynā. wa lā tud ḵ ilna fī tajāriba , lākin najjinā min a š-š irrīr. ʔā mīn hab lan lahmo d-sunqonan yowmono washbuq lan hawbayn wahtohayn aykano doph hnan shbaqan l-hayobayn lo ta`lan l-nesyuno elo paso lan men bisho Amin Although the original vocabulary of Maltese was Siculo-Arabic , it has incorporated
2185-510: Is Afroasiatic at all, due its lack of several typical aspects of Afroasiatic morphology. There are between 40 and 80 languages in the Semitic family. Today, Semitic languages are spoken across North Africa, West Asia, and the Horn of Africa, as well as on the island of Malta, making them the sole Afroasiatic branch with members originating outside Africa. Arabic, spoken in both Asia and Africa,
2300-481: Is a consonantal structure into which various vocalic "templates" are placed. This structure is particularly visible in the verbs, and is particularly noticeable in Semitic. Besides for Semitic, vocalic templates are well attested for Cushitic and Berber, where, along with Chadic, it is less productive; it is absent in Omotic. For Egyptian, evidence for the root-and-template structure exists from Coptic. In Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, verbs have no inherent vowels at all;
2415-405: Is a large variety of vocalic systems in AA, and attempts to reconstruct the vocalic system of Proto-Afroasiatic vary considerably. All branches of Afroasiatic have a limited number of underlying vowels (between two and seven), but the number of phonetic vowels can be much larger. The quality of the underlying vowels varies considerably by language; the most common vowel throughout AA is schwa . In
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#17327876641182530-486: Is against two different labial consonants (other than w ) occurring together in a root, a constraint which can be found in all branches but Omotic. Another widespread constraint is against two non-identical lateral obstruents , which can be found in Egyptian, Chadic, Semitic, and probably Cushitic. Such rules do not always apply for nouns, numerals, or denominal verbs , and do not affect prefixes or suffixes added to
2645-501: Is attested in Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Semitic: it usually affects features such as pharyngealization, palatalization , and labialization . Several Omotic languages have " sibilant harmony", meaning that all sibilants (s, sh, z, ts, etc.) in a word must match. Restrictions against the co-occurrence of certain, usually similar, consonants in verbal roots can be found in all Afroasiatic branches, though they are only weakly attested in Chadic and Omotic. The most widespread constraint
2760-485: Is by far the most widely spoken Afroasiatic language today, with around 300 million native speakers, while the Ethiopian Amharic language has around 25 million; collectively, Semitic is the largest branch of Afroasiatic by number of current speakers. Most authorities divide Semitic into two branches: East Semitic, which includes the extinct Akkadian language, and West Semitic, which includes Arabic, Aramaic,
2875-683: Is called lingua maltensi . The oldest known document in Maltese, Il-Kantilena ( Xidew il-Qada ) by Pietru Caxaro , dates from the 15th century. The earliest known Maltese dictionary was a 16th-century manuscript entitled "Maltese-Italiano"; it was included in the Biblioteca Maltese of Mifsud in 1764, but is now lost. A list of Maltese words was included in both the Thesaurus Polyglottus (1603) and Propugnaculum Europae (1606) of Hieronymus Megiser , who had visited Malta in 1588–1589; Domenico Magri gave
2990-566: Is considerably lower than the mutual intelligibility found between other varieties of Arabic. Maltese has always been written in the Latin script , the earliest surviving example dating from the late Middle Ages . It is the only standardised Semitic language written exclusively in the Latin script. The origins of the Maltese language are attributed to the arrival, early in the 11th century, of settlers from neighbouring Sicily, where Siculo-Arabic
3105-849: Is distinctive word-medially and word-finally in Maltese. The distinction is most rigid intervocalically after a stressed vowel. Stressed, word-final closed syllables with short vowels end in a long consonant, and those with a long vowel in a single consonant; the only exception is where historic *ʕ and *ɣ meant the compensatory lengthening of the succeeding vowel. Some speakers have lost length distinction in clusters. The two nasals /m/ and /n/ assimilate for place of articulation in clusters. /t/ and /d/ are usually dental , whereas /t͡s d͡z s z n r l/ are all alveolar. /t͡s d͡z/ are found mostly in words of Italian origin, retaining length (if not word-initial). /d͡z/ and /ʒ/ are only found in loanwords, e.g. /ɡad͡zd͡zɛtta/ "newspaper" and /tɛlɛˈviʒin/ "television". The pharyngeal fricative /ħ/
3220-428: Is first attested in writing around 3000 BCE and finally went extinct around 1300 CE, making it the language with the longest written history in the world. Egyptian is usually divided into two major periods, Earlier Egyptian (c. 3000–1300 BCE), which is further subdivided into Old Egyptian and Middle Egyptian, and Later Egyptian (1300 BCE-1300 CE), which is further subdivided into Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic. Coptic
3335-419: Is hindered by the massive disparities in textual attestation between its branches: while the Semitic and Egyptian branches are attested in writing as early as the fourth millennium BC , Berber, Cushitic, and Omotic languages were often not recorded until the 19th or 20th centuries. While systematic sound laws have not yet been established to explain the relationships between the various branches of Afroasiatic,
3450-628: Is included, spoken around the Horn of Africa and in Sudan and Tanzania. The Cushitic family is traditionally split into four branches: the single language of Beja (c. 3 million speakers), the Agaw languages, Eastern Cushitic, and Southern Cushitic. Only one Cushitic language, Oromo , has more than 25 million speakers; other languages with more than a million speakers include Somali , Afar , Hadiyya , and Sidaama . Many Cushitic languages have relatively few speakers. Cushitic does not appear to be related to
3565-654: Is less distant from its Siculo-Arabic ancestor than is Standard Maltese. Voiceless stops are only lightly aspirated and voiced stops are fully voiced. Voicing is carried over from the last segment in obstruent clusters ; thus, two- and three-obstruent clusters are either voiceless or voiced throughout, e.g. /niktbu/ is realised [ˈniɡdbu] "we write" (similar assimilation phenomena occur in languages like French or Czech). Maltese has final-obstruent devoicing of voiced obstruents and word-final voiceless stops have no audible release , making voiceless–voiced pairs phonetically indistinguishable in word-final position. Gemination
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3680-523: Is likely that this is inherited from proto-Afroasiatic. All Afroasiatic languages contain stops and fricatives ; some branches have additional types of consonants such as affricates and lateral consonants . AA languages tend to have pharyngeal fricative consonants, with Egyptian, Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic sharing ħ and ʕ . In all AA languages, consonants can be bilabial , alveolar , velar , and glottal , with additional places of articulation found in some branches or languages. Additionally,
3795-541: Is mostly used in older Russian sources. The elements of the name were derived from the names of two sons of Noah as attested in the Book of Genesis 's Table of Nations passage: "Semitic" from the first-born Shem , and "Hamitic" from the second-born Ham (Genesis 5:32). Within the Table of Nations, each of Noah's sons is presented as the common progenitor of various people groups deemed to be closely related: among others Shem
3910-481: Is no information on whether Egyptian had tones. In contemporary Omotic, Chadic, and Cushitic languages, tone is primarily a grammatical feature: it encodes various grammatical functions, only differentiating lexical roots in a few cases. In some Chadic and some Omotic languages every syllable has to have a tone, whereas in most Cushitic languages this is not the case. Some scholars postulate that Proto-Afroasiatic may have had tone, while others believe it arose later from
4025-436: Is not the academic consensus. M. Victoria Almansa-Villatoro and Silvia Štubňová Nigrelli write that there are about 400 languages in Afroasiatic; Ethnologue lists 375 languages. Many scholars estimate fewer languages; exact numbers vary depending on the definitions of " language " and " dialect ". The Berber (or Libyco-Berber) languages are spoken today by perhaps 16 million people. They are often considered to constitute
4140-541: Is one of the Berber languages (another language family within Afroasiatic). Less plausibly, Fascist Italy classified it as regional Italian . Urban varieties of Maltese are closer to Standard Maltese than rural varieties, which have some characteristics that distinguish them from Standard Maltese. They tend to show some archaic features such as the realisation of ⟨kh⟩ and ⟨gh⟩ and
4255-404: Is part of the supercontinent of Eurasia'), while not understanding a single word of a basic sentence such as Ir-raġel qiegħed fid-dar ('The man is in the house'), which would be easily understood by any Arabic speaker. At that time Malta was thoroughly Arabized. The conquerors brought to the island the vulgar (colloquial) variation of Arabic, not the classical one (Classical Arabic), Therefore
4370-472: Is that the Hamitic component inaccurately suggests that a monophyletic "Hamitic" branch exists alongside Semitic. In addition, Joseph Greenberg has argued that Hamitic possesses racial connotations , and that "Hamito-Semitic" overstates the centrality of the Semitic languages within the family. By contrast, Victor Porkhomovsky suggests that the label is simply an inherited convention, and doesn't imply
4485-860: Is the Lord's Prayer in Maltese compared to other Semitic languages ( Arabic and Syriac ) with cognates highlighted: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen Ħobżna ta' kuljum agħtina llum . Aħfrilna dnubietna , bħal ma naħfru lil min hu ħati għalina . U la ddaħħalniex fit-tiġrib , iżda eħlisna mid-deni. Ammen ʔabāna , alla ḏ i fī as-samāwāt , li- yataqaddas ismuka , li- yaʔti malakūtuka, li-takun ma šī ʔatuka, kamā fī as-samāʔi ka ḏ ālika ʕa lā al-ar ḍ . ḵ ubzana kafāfanā ʔaʕṭi nā alyawm , wa
4600-718: Is the Numidian language , represented by over a thousand short inscriptions in the Libyco-Berber alphabet , found throughout North Africa and dating from the 2nd century BCE onward. The second is the Guanche language , which was formerly spoken on the Canary Islands and went extinct in the 17th century CE. The first longer written examples of modern Berber varieties only date from the 16th or 17th centuries CE. Chadic languages number between 150 and 190, making Chadic
4715-502: Is the lack of agreement on the subgroupings of Afroasiatic (see Further subdivisions ) – this makes associating archaeological evidence with the spread of Afroasiatic particularly difficult. Nevertheless, there is a long-accepted link between the speakers of Proto- Southern Cushitic languages and the East African Savanna Pastoral Neolithic (5,000 years ago), and archaeological evidence associates
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4830-515: Is the only stage written alphabetically to show vowels, whereas Egyptian was previously written in Egyptian hieroglyphs , which only represent consonants. In the Coptic period, there is evidence for six major dialects, which presumably existed previously but are obscured by pre-Coptic writing; additionally, Middle Egyptian appears to be based on a different dialect than Old Egyptian, which in turn shows dialectal similarities to Late Egyptian. Egyptian
4945-461: Is to use a computational methodology such as lexicostatistics , with one of the earliest attempts being Fleming 1983. This is also the method used by Alexander Militarev and Sergei Starostin to create a family tree. Fleming (2006) was a more recent attempt by Fleming, with a different result from Militarev and Starostin. Hezekiah Bacovcin and David Wilson argue that this methodology is invalid for discerning linguistic sub-relationship. They note
5060-425: Is velar ( [ x ] ), uvular ( [ χ ] ), or glottal ( [ h ] ) for some speakers. Maltese has five short vowels, /ɐ ɛ ɪ ɔ ʊ/ , written a e i o u; six long vowels, /ɐː ɛː ɪː iː ɔː ʊː/ , written a, e, ie, i, o, u, all of which (with the exception of ie /ɪː/ ) can be known to represent long vowels in writing only if they are followed by an orthographic għ or h (otherwise, one needs to know
5175-609: The African continent , including all those not belonging to the Semitic branch. Arabic , if counted as a single language, is by far the most widely spoken within the family, with around 300 million native speakers concentrated primarily in the Middle East and North Africa. Other major Afroasiatic languages include the Cushitic Oromo language with 45 million native speakers, Chadic Hausa language with over 34 million,
5290-666: The Italo-Normans ended Arab rule of the islands, a written form of the language was not developed for a long time after the Arabs' expulsion in the middle of the thirteenth century. Under the rule of the Knights Hospitaller , both French and Italian were used for official documents and correspondence. During the British colonial period , the use of English was encouraged through education, with Italian being regarded as
5405-721: The Nilotic languages ; it is unclear whether the Dizoid group of Omotic languages belongs to the Northern or Southern group. The two Omotic languages with the most speakers are Wolaitta and Gamo-Gofa-Dawro , with about 1.2 million speakers each. A majority of specialists consider Omotic to constitute a sixth branch of Afroasiatic. Omotic was formerly considered part of the Cushitic branch; some scholars continue to consider it part of Cushitic. Other scholars have questioned whether it
5520-518: The Omotic languages to constitute a sixth branch. Due to the presumed distance of relationship between the various branches, many scholars prefer to refer to Afroasiatic as a "linguistic phylum" rather than a "language family". G.W. Tsereteli goes even further and outright doubts that the Afro-Asiatic languages are a genetic language family altogether, but are rather a sprachbund. However, this
5635-692: The Proto-Cushitic speakers with economic transformations in the Sahara dating c. 8,500 ago, as well as the speakers of the Proto-Zenati variety of the Berber languages with an expansion across the Maghreb in the 5th century CE. An origin somewhere on the African continent has broad scholarly support, and is seen as being well-supported by the linguistic data. Most scholars more narrowly place
5750-585: The Semitic languages had already been coined in 1781 by August Ludwig von Schlözer , following an earlier suggestion by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1710. Hamitic was first used by Ernest Renan in 1855 to refer to languages that appeared similar to the Semitic languages, but were not themselves provably a part of the family. The belief in a connection between Africans and the Biblical Ham, which had existed at least as far back as Isidore of Seville in
5865-410: The comparative method of demonstrating regular sound correspondences to establish the family. An alternative classification, based on the pronominal and conjugation systems, was proposed by A.N. Tucker in 1967. As of 2023, widely accepted sound correspondences between the different branches have not yet been firmly established. Nevertheless, morphological traits attributable to the proto-language and
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#17327876641185980-500: The glottal stop ( ʔ ) usually exists as a phoneme, and there tends to be no phonemic contrast between [p] and [f] or [b] and [v]. In Cushitic, the Ethiopian Semitic language Tigrinya , and some Chadic languages, there is no underlying phoneme [p] at all. Most, if not all branches of Afroasiatic distinguish between voiceless , voiced , and " emphatic " consonants. The emphatic consonants are typically formed deeper in
6095-501: The imāla of Arabic ā into ē (or ī especially in Gozo), considered archaic because they are reminiscent of 15th-century transcriptions of this sound. Another archaic feature is the realisation of Standard Maltese ā as ō in rural dialects. There is also a tendency to diphthongise simple vowels, e.g., ū becomes eo or eu. Rural dialects also tend to employ more Semitic roots and broken plurals than Standard Maltese. In general, rural Maltese
6210-404: The "Hamites", the originators of Hamitic languages, with (supposedly culturally superior) "Caucasians", who were assumed to have migrated into Africa and intermixed with indigenous "Negroid" Africans in ancient times. The "Hamitic theory" would serve as the basis for Carl Meinhof 's highly influential classification of African languages in his 1912 book Die Sprache der Hamiten . On one hand,
6325-656: The "Hamitic" classification was justified partially based on linguistic features: for example, Meinhof split the presently-understood Chadic family into "Hamito-Chadic", and an unrelated non-Hamitic "Chadic" based on which languages possessed grammatical gender. On the other hand, the classification also relied on non-linguistic anthropological and culturally contingent features, such as skin color, hair type, and lifestyle. Ultimately, Meinhof's classification of Hamitic proved to include languages from every presently-recognized language family within Africa. The first scholar to question
6440-465: The 18th century. Numbering several thousand in the 19th century, it was reported to be only 100 to 200 people as of 2017. Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic, a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family . In the course of its history , Maltese has been influenced by Sicilian, Italian, to a lesser extent by French , and more recently by English. Today, the core vocabulary (including both
6555-507: The 6th century AD, led scholars in the early 19th century to speak vaguely of "Hamian" or "Hamitish" languages. The term Hamito-Semitic has largely fallen out of favor among linguists writing in English, but is still frequently used in the scholarship of various other languages, such as German. Several issues with the label Hamito-Semitic have led many scholars to abandon the term and criticize its continued use. One common objection
6670-522: The African branches of Afroasiatic are very diverse; this suggests the rapid spread of Semitic out of Africa. Proponents of an origin of Afroasiatic within Africa assume the proto-language to have been spoken by pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers , arguing that there is no evidence of words in Proto-Afroasiatic related to agriculture or animal husbandry. Christopher Ehret, S.O. Y. Keita, and Paul Newman also argue that archaeology does not support
6785-561: The Canaanite languages (including Hebrew), as well as the Ethiopian Semitic languages such as Ge'ez and Amharic. The classification within West Semitic remains contested. The only group with an African origin is Ethiopian Semitic. The oldest written attestations of Semitic languages come from Mesopotamia, Northern Syria, and Egypt and date as early as c. 3000 BCE. There are also other proposed branches, but none has so far convinced
6900-456: The Egyptian word rmṯ ("person")—and Erythraean —referring to the core area around which the languages are spoken, the Red Sea —have also been proposed. Scholars generally consider Afroasiatic to have between five and eight branches. The five that are universally agreed upon are Berber (also called "Libyco-Berber"), Chadic , Cushitic , Egyptian , and Semitic . Most specialists consider
7015-550: The Fish Market. By the late 19th century, the Del Monte Gate became too small since the area around it was the busiest part of Valletta. It was demolished in 1884, and replaced by the larger Victoria Gate. The first stone of the new gate was laid down in 1884 by Governor Arthur Borton , and it was completed and opened to the public in 1885. The gate was designed by the Maltese architect Emanuele Luigi Galizia , and it
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#17327876641187130-455: The Horn of Africa, Egypt, and the eastern Sahara. A significant minority of scholars argues for an origin in the Levant . The reconstructed timelines of when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken vary extensively, with dates ranging from 18,000 BC to 8,000 BC. Even the latest plausible dating makes Afroasiatic the oldest language family accepted by contemporary linguists. Comparative study of Afroasiatic
7245-423: The Horn of Africa”. A significant minority of scholars supports an Asian origin of Afroasiatic, most of whom are specialists in Semitic or Egyptian studies. The main proponent of an Asian origin is the linguist Alexander Militarev , who argues that Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken by early agriculturalists in the Levant and subsequently spread to Africa. Militarev associates the speakers of Proto-Afroasiatic with
7360-542: The Levantine Post- Natufian Culture , arguing that the reconstructed lexicon of flora and fauna, as well as farming and pastoralist vocabulary indicates that Proto-AA must have been spoken in this area. Scholar Jared Diamond and archaeologist Peter Bellwood have taken up Militarev's arguments as part of their general argument that the spread of linguistic macrofamilies (such as Indo-European, Bantu, and Austro-Asiatic) can be associated with
7475-508: The Maltese language differs from Classical Arabic in the same way as the Arabic dialects differ from Classical Arabic. the Maltese language also comprises a considerable number of Maghrebi features, in other ways it can be closer to other Arabic dialects, or closer to Classical Arabic than to the other dialects as in the word ra ('to see'). Arabic supplies between 32% and 40% of the language's vocabulary. Żammit (2000) found that 40% of
7590-660: The Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail. L-Unjoni hija bbażata fuq il-valuri tar-rispett għad-dinjità tal-bniedem, il-libertà, id-demokrazija, l-ugwaljanza, l-istat tad-dritt u r-rispett għad-drittijiet tal-bniedem, inklużi d-drittijiet ta' persuni li jagħmlu parti minn minoranzi. Dawn il-valuri huma komuni għall-Istati Membri f'soċjetà fejn jipprevalu l-pluraliżmu, in-non-diskriminazzjoni, it-tolleranza, il-ġustizzja, is-solidarjetà u l-ugwaljanza bejn in-nisa u l-irġiel. Below
7705-797: The Semitic Amharic language with 25 million, and the Cushitic Somali language with 15 million. Other Afroasiatic languages with millions of native speakers include the Semitic Tigrinya and Modern Hebrew , the Cushitic Sidaama , and the Omotic Wolaitta language , though most languages within the family are much smaller in size. There are many well-attested Afroasiatic languages from antiquity that have since died or gone extinct , including Egyptian and
7820-407: The Semitic languages Akkadian , Biblical Hebrew , Phoenician , Amorite , and Ugaritic . There is no consensus among historical linguists as to precisely where or when the common ancestor of all Afroasiatic languages, known as Proto-Afroasiatic , was originally spoken. However, most agree that the Afroasiatic homeland was located somewhere in northeastern Africa, with specific proposals including
7935-545: The city, to a design by the Italian military engineer Francesco Laparelli . The city only had three gates, the main one being known as Porta San Giorgio , and two smaller gates on either side of the city which were known as the Marsamxett Gate and Del Monte Gate. Del Monte Gate ( Italian : Porta Del Monte ) was built in 1569 to a design by Laparelli, and it was named after Grand Master Pierre de Monte . This gate
8050-626: The development of agriculture; they argue that there is clear archaeological support for farming spreading from the Levant into Africa via the Nile valley. Afroasiatic languages share a number of phonetic and phonological features. Egyptian, Cushitic, Berber, Omotic, and most languages in the Semitic branch require every syllable to begin with a consonant (with the exception of some grammatical prefixes). Igor Diakonoff argues that this constraint goes back to Proto-Afroasiatic. Some Chadic languages allow
8165-446: The different languages, central vowels are often inserted to break up consonant clusters (a form of epenthesis ). Various Semitic, Cushitic, Berber, and Chadic languages, including Arabic, Amharic, Berber, Somali, and East Dangla, also exhibit various types of vowel harmony . The majority of AA languages are tonal languages : phonemic tonality is found in Omotic, Chadic, and Cushitic languages, but absent in Berber and Semitic. There
8280-487: The establishment of cognates throughout the family have confirmed its genetic validity . There is no consensus as to when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken. The absolute latest date for when Proto-Afroasiatic could have been extant is c. 4000 BCE , after which Egyptian and the Semitic languages are firmly attested. However, in all likelihood these languages began to diverge well before this hard boundary. The estimations offered by scholars as to when Proto-Afroasiatic
8395-629: The etymologies of some Maltese words in his Hierolexicon, sive sacrum dictionarium (1677). An early manuscript dictionary, Dizionario Italiano e Maltese , was discovered in the Biblioteca Vallicelliana in Rome in the 1980s, together with a grammar, the Regole per la Lingua Maltese , attributed to a French knight named Thezan. The first systematic lexicon is that of Giovanni Pietro Francesco Agius de Soldanis , who also wrote
8510-426: The evolution of Chadic (and likely also Omotic) serving as pertinent examples. Likewise, no consensus exists as to where proto-Afroasiatic originated. Scholars have proposed locations for the Afroasiatic homeland across Africa and West Asia. Roger Blench writes that the debate possesses "a strong ideological flavor", with associations between an Asian origin and "high civilization". An additional complicating factor
8625-566: The existence of "Hamitic languages" was Marcel Cohen in 1924, with skepticism also expressed by A. Klingenheben and Dietrich Westermann during the 1920s and '30s. However, Meinhof's "Hamitic" classification remained prevalent throughout the early 20th century until it was definitively disproven by Joseph Greenberg in the 1940s, based on racial and anthropological data. Instead, Greenberg proposed an Afroasiatic family consisting of five branches: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, and Semitic. Reluctance among some scholars to recognize Chadic as
8740-503: The fact that it is the only major language family with large populations in both Africa and Asia. Due to concerns that "Afroasiatic" could imply the inclusion of all languages spoken across Africa and Asia, the name "Afrasian" ( Russian : afrazijskije ) was proposed by Igor Diakonoff in 1980. At present it predominantly sees use among Russian scholars. The names Lisramic —based on the Afroasiastic root *lis- ("tongue") and
8855-623: The first systematic grammar of the language and proposed a standard orthography . Ethnologue reports a total of 530,000 Maltese speakers: 450,000 in Malta and 79,000 in the diaspora . Most speakers also use English. The largest diaspora community of Maltese speakers is in Australia , with 36,000 speakers reported in 2006 (down from 45,000 in 1996, and expected to decline further). The Maltese linguistic community in Tunisia originated in
8970-436: The homeland near the geographic center of its present distribution, "in the southeastern Sahara or adjacent Horn of Africa." The Afroasiatic languages spoken in Africa are not more closely related to each other than they are to Semitic, as one would expect if only Semitic had remained in a West Asian homeland while all other branches had spread from there. Likewise, all Semitic languages are fairly similar to each other, whereas
9085-527: The increasing influence of Romance and English words. In 1992 the academy issued the Aġġornament tat-Tagħrif fuq il-Kitba Maltija , which updated the previous works. The National Council for the Maltese Language (KNM) is the main regulator of the Maltese language (see Maltese Language Act, below). However, the academy's orthography rules are still valid and official. Since Maltese evolved after
9200-405: The languages share a number of common features. One of the most important for establishing membership in the branch is a common set of pronouns. Other widely shared features include a prefix m- which creates nouns from verbs, evidence for alternations between the vowel "a" and a high vowel in the forms of the verb, similar methods of marking gender and plurality, and some details of phonology such as
9315-888: The largest family in Afroasiatic by number of extant languages. The Chadic languages are typically divided into three major branches, East Chadic, Central Chadic, and West Chadic. Most Chadic languages are located in the Chad Basin , with the exception of Hausa . Hausa is the largest Chadic language by native speakers, and is spoken by a large number of people as a lingua franca in Northern Nigeria. It may have as many as 80 to 100 million first and second language speakers. Eight other Chadic languages have around 100,000 speakers; other Chadic languages often have few speakers and may be in danger of going extinct. Only about 40 Chadic languages have been fully described by linguists. There are about 30 Cushitic languages, more if Omotic
9430-602: The method's inability to detect various strong commonalities even between well-studied branches of AA. A relationship between Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic and the Berber languages was perceived as early as the 9th century CE by the Hebrew grammarian and physician Judah ibn Quraysh , who is regarded as a forerunner of Afroasiatic studies. The French orientalist Guillaume Postel had also pointed out similarities between Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic in 1538, and Hiob Ludolf noted similarities also to Ge'ez and Amharic in 1701. This family
9545-490: The modern Arabic macrolanguage . Maltese is also distinguished from Arabic and other Semitic languages since its morphology has been deeply influenced by Romance languages , namely Italian and Sicilian . The original Arabic base comprises around one-third of the Maltese vocabulary, especially words that denote basic ideas and the function words , but about half of the vocabulary is derived from standard Italian and Sicilian; and English words make up between 6% and 20% of
9660-422: The most common names for the family are Afroasiatic (or Afro-Asiatic ), Hamito-Semitic , and Semito-Hamitic . Other proposed names that have yet to find widespread acceptance include Erythraic / Erythraean , Lisramic , Noahitic , and Lamekhite . Friedrich Müller introduced the name Hamito-Semitic to describe the family in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft (1876). The variant Semito-Hamitic
9775-530: The most commonly used vocabulary and function words ) is Semitic, with a large number of loanwords . Due to the Sicilian influence on Siculo-Arabic, Maltese has many language contact features and is most commonly described as a language with a large number of loanwords. Maltese has historically been classified in various ways, with some claiming that it was derived from ancient Punic (another Semitic language) instead of Siculo-Arabic, and others claiming it
9890-466: The most used when speaking the language. In this way, Maltese is similar to English , a Germanic language that has been strongly influenced by Norman French and Latin (58% of English vocabulary). As a result of this, Romance language-speakers (and to a lesser extent English speakers) can often easily understand more technical ideas expressed in Maltese, such as Ġeografikament, l-Ewropa hi parti tas-superkontinent ta' l-Ewrasja ('Geographically, Europe
10005-405: The next-most important language. In the late 18th century and throughout the 19th century, philologists and academics such as Mikiel Anton Vassalli made a concerted effort to standardise written Maltese. Many examples of written Maltese exist from before this period, always in the Latin alphabet, Il-Kantilena from the 15th century being the earliest example of written Maltese. In 1934, Maltese
10120-620: The only official Semitic and Afroasiatic language of the European Union . Maltese is considered a North African dialect of Colloquial Arabic that was brought to Malta by Arab and Berber ( Aghlabids ), who in 869/870 CE seized control of the island from the Byzantine Empire. It is also said that it descents from Siculo-Arabic, which developed as a Maghrebi Arabic dialect in the Emirate of Sicily between 831 and 1091. As
10235-594: The other Afroasiatic languages, but the idea was controversial: many scholars refused to admit that the largely unwritten, " Negroid " Chadic languages were in the same family as the " Caucasian " ancient civilizations of the Egyptians and Semites. An important development in the history of Afroasiatic scholarship – and the history of African linguistics – was the creation of the " Hamitic theory " or "Hamitic hypothesis" by Lepsius, fellow Egyptologist Christian Bunsen , and linguist Christian Bleek . This theory connected
10350-435: The poor state of present documentation and understanding of particular language families (historically with Egyptian, presently with Omotic). Gene Gragg likewise argues that more needs to be known about Omotic still, and that Afroasiatic linguists have still not found convincing isoglosses on which to base genetic distinctions. One way of avoiding the problem of determining which features are original and which are inherited
10465-483: The possibility of widespread borrowing both within Afroasiatic and from unrelated languages. There are nevertheless a number of commonly observed features in Afroasiatic morphology and derivation, including the use of suffixes , infixes , vowel lengthening and shortening as a morphological change, as well as the use of tone changes to indicate morphology. Further commonalities and differences are explored in more detail below. A widely attested feature in AA languages
10580-453: The presence of pharyngeal fricatives . Other features found in multiple branches include a specialized verb conjugation using suffixes (Egyptian, Semitic, Berber), a specialized verb conjugation using prefixes (Semitic, Berber, Cushitic), verbal prefixes deriving middle (t-), causative (s-), and passive (m-) verb forms (Semitic, Berber, Egyptian, Cushitic), and a suffix used to derive adjectives (Egyptian, Semitic). In current scholarship,
10695-420: The presence or absence of morphological features is not a useful way of discerning subgroupings in Afroasiatic, because it can not be excluded that families currently lacking certain features did not have them in the past; this also means that the presence of morphological features cannot be taken as defining a subgroup. Peust notes that other factors that can obscure genetic relationships between languages include
10810-486: The pronunciation; e.g. nar (fire) is pronounced /nɐːr/ ); and seven diphthongs , /ɐɪ ɐʊ ɛɪ ɛʊ ɪʊ ɔɪ ɔʊ/ , written aj or għi, aw or għu, ej or għi, ew, iw, oj, and ow or għu. The original Arabic consonant system has undergone partial collapse under European influence, with many Classical Arabic consonants having undergone mergers and modifications in Maltese: The modern system of Maltese orthography
10925-778: The root. Roots that may have contained sequences that were possible in Proto-Afroasiatic but are disallowed in the daughter languages are assumed to have undergone consonant dissimilation or assimilation . A set of constraints, developed originally by Joseph Greenberg on the basis of Arabic, has been claimed to be typical for Afroasiatic languages. Greenberg divided Semitic consonants into four types: "back consonants" ( glottal , pharyngeal , uvular , laryngeal , and velar consonants ), "front consonants" ( dental or alveolar consonants ), liquid consonants , and labial consonants . He showed that, generally, any consonant from one of these groups could combine with consonants from any other group, but could not be used together with consonants from
11040-551: The same group. Additionally, he showed that Proto-Semitic restricted a sequence of two identical consonants in the first and second position of the triliteral root. These rules also have a number of exceptions: Similar exceptions can be demonstrated for the other AA branches that have these restrictions to their root formation. James P. Allen has demonstrated that slightly different rules apply to Egyptian: for instance, Egyptian allows two identical consonants in some roots, and disallows velars from occurring with pharyngeals. There
11155-456: The site of the 16th-century Del Monte Gate . Victoria Gate is the only surviving gate within the fortifications of Valletta , since all the other fortified gates were demolished in the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, the only other gate is the City Gate , which was built in 2014 to a modern design. When Valletta was founded in 1566, a system of bastioned fortifications was built around
11270-479: The structure of the Maltese language are recorded in the official guidebook Tagħrif fuq il-Kitba Maltija (English: Knowledge on Writing in Maltese ) issued by the Akkademja tal-Malti (Academy of the Maltese language). The first edition of this book was printed in 1924 by the Maltese government's printing press. The rules were further expanded in the 1984 book, iż-Żieda mat-Tagħrif , which focused mainly on
11385-419: The throat than the others; they can be realized variously as glottalized , pharyngealized , uvularized , ejective , and/or implosive consonants in the different branches. It is generally agreed that only the obstruents had a contrast between voiceless and voiced forms in Proto-Afroasiatic, whereas continuants were voiceless. A form of long-distance consonant assimilation known as consonant harmony
11500-540: The using Romance loanwords (from the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe Archived 2015-12-29 at the Wayback Machine , see p. 17 Archived 2020-08-04 at the Wayback Machine ): The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to
11615-418: The vernacular from its Arabic source, creating the conditions for its evolution into a distinct language. In contrast to Sicily, where Siculo-Arabic became extinct and was replaced by Sicilian , the vernacular in Malta continued to develop alongside Italian, eventually replacing it as official language in 1934, alongside English. The first written reference to the Maltese language is in a will of 1436, where it
11730-504: The vocabulary. A 2016 study shows that, in terms of basic everyday language, speakers of Maltese are able to understand around a third of what is said to them in Tunisian Arabic and Libyan Arabic , which are Maghrebi Arabic dialects related to Siculo-Arabic, whereas speakers of Tunisian Arabic and Libyan Arabic are able to understand about 40% of what is said to them in Maltese. This reported level of asymmetric intelligibility
11845-609: The vowels found in a given stem are dependent on the vocalic template. In Chadic, verb stems can include an inherent vowel as well. Most Semitic verbs are triliteral (have three consonants), whereas most Chadic, Omotic, and Cushitic verbs are biliteral (having two consonants). The degree to which the Proto-AA verbal root was triliteral is debated. It may have originally been mostly biconsonantal, to which various affixes (such as verbal extensions ) were then added and lexicalized. Although any root could theoretically be used to create
11960-429: The written ancient languages known from its area, Meroitic or Old Nubian . The oldest text in a Cushitic language probably dates from around 1770; written orthographies were only developed for a select number of Cushitic languages in the early 20th century. The Egyptian branch consists of a single language, Egyptian (often called "Ancient Egyptian"), which was historically spoken in the lower Nile Valley. Egyptian
12075-628: Was formally described and named "Semitic" by August Ludwig von Schlözer in 1781. In 1844, Theodor Benfey first described the relationship between Semitic and the Egyptian language and connected both to the Berber and the Cushitic languages (which he called "Ethiopic"). In the same year T.N. Newman suggested a relationship between Semitic and the Hausa language, an idea that was taken up by early scholars of Afroasiatic. In 1855, Ernst Renan named these languages, related to Semitic but not Semitic, "Hamitic," in 1860 Carl Lottner proposed that they belonged to
12190-404: Was introduced in 1924. Below is the Maltese alphabet, with IPA symbols and approximate English pronunciation: Final vowels with grave accents (à, è, ì, ò, ù) are also found in some Maltese words of Italian origin, such as libertà ' freedom ' , sigurtà (old Italian: sicurtà ' security ' ), or soċjetà (Italian: società ' society ' ). The official rules governing
12305-548: Was located between Marina Curtain and St. Barbara Bastion on the eastern side of the city, facing the Grand Harbour . The area around it became a small marina , and the gate was also called the Marina Gate ( Italian : Porta Marina ) since it provided access to the city from the marina. The area around the gate bustled with activity, and it included a garden known as Ġnien is-Sultan , the Church of Our Lady of Liesse and
12420-480: Was named after Queen Victoria . Victoria Gate was extensively restored by the Ministry of Resources and Rural Affairs in 2009 and 2010. Restoration took about six months, and it was directed by the architects Claude Borg and Alexis Inguanez. Throughout the course of restoration, the structure was cleaned, its ditch was rediscovered and restored, its pavements were re-laid, old fixtures were removed and some stonework
12535-445: Was recognised as an official language. Maltese has both Semitic vocabulary and words derived from Romance languages , primarily Italian . Words such as tweġiba (Arabic origin) and risposta (Italian origin) have the same meaning ('answer') but are both used in Maltese (rather like 'answer' and 'response' in English. Below are two versions of the same translations, one with vocabulary mostly derived from Semitic root words and
12650-412: Was repaired. Victoria Gate consists of a double arched opening with an intersecting vault structure intended to allow traffic to pass through, and two small doors on either side to allow passage for pedestrians. The two arches are surmounted by the coats of arms of Malta and Valletta, and the gate is topped by the British coat of arms . The arch is built in Maltese limestone . The gate originally had
12765-540: Was replaced by Arabic as the spoken language of Egypt, but Coptic continues to be the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church . The c. 30 Omotic languages are still mostly undescribed by linguists. They are all spoken in southwest Ethiopia except for the Ganza language , spoken in Sudan. Omotic is typically split into North Omotic (or Aroid) and South Omotic, with the latter more influenced by
12880-419: Was spoken vary widely, ranging from 18,000 BCE to 8,000 BCE. An estimate at the youngest end of this range still makes Afroasiatic the oldest proven language family. Contrasting proposals of an early emergence, Tom Güldemann has argued that less time may have been required for the divergence than is usually assumed, as it is possible for a language to rapidly restructure due to areal contact , with
12995-556: Was spoken, reversing the Fatimid Caliphate 's conquest of the island at the end of the 9th century. This claim has been corroborated by genetic studies, which show that contemporary Maltese people share common ancestry with Sicilians and Calabrians , with little genetic input from North Africa and the Levant. The Norman conquest in 1091 , followed by the expulsion of the Muslims , complete by 1249, permanently isolated
13110-683: Was the father of the Jews , Assyrians , and Arameans , while Ham was the father of the Egyptians and Cushites . This genealogy does not reflect the actual origins of these peoples' languages: for example, the Canaanites are descendants of Ham according to the Table, even though Hebrew is now classified as a Canaanite language , while the Elamites are ascribed to Shem despite their language being totally unrelated to Hebrew. The term Semitic for
13225-623: Was the first language to branch off, often followed by Chadic. In contrast to scholars who argue for an early split of Chadic from Afroasiatic, scholars of the Russian school tend to argue that Chadic and Egyptian are closely related, and scholars who rely on percentage of shared lexicon often group Chadic with Berber. Three scholars who agree on an early split between Omotic and the other subbranches, but little else, are Harold Fleming (1983), Christopher Ehret (1995), and Lionel Bender (1997). In contrast, scholars relying on shared lexicon often produce
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