"two different games with a different set of rules"

"...Maltese (is) a language which typologically stands between Semitic and Romance languages, as it is genealogically related to Arabic, on the one hand, and has been in close contact with Italian and Sicilian for about one millennium, on the other. A long history of contact between typologically diverse languages gave rise to two different word formation strategies in modern Maltese, root and pattern morphology and concatenative morphology.
Word formation in Maltese can be compared to a checkerboard on which language users may play chess and draughts, two different games with a different set of rules. For any given lexical item, a speaker of Maltese must know whether it is a piece for chess or a piece for draughts, and play the morphosyntactic game accordingly."

So well said... :-)

This is part of what I have been doing with verbs: try to figure out if they belong to the Semitic part of the language or the Japhetic part of the language.

My language studies are not advancing much at the moment. I am severely depressed and after having had a couple of PMS free months, it's back - and with a vengeance. But I'm hanging on there, doing mechanically the things I need to do, and try to think that as I don't give a crap about anything, I could just as well keep doing what I have done the last days, and it will be good one day.

Maltese is a Semitic language.

I have been watching Maltese language teaching videos etc. on YouTube.

Most of the comments are arguments, in style "This is just shitty Arabic, Maltese in no f-ing language, it's Arabic dialect!" and "Maltese people are lying, claiming they have their own identity and language. They are ashamed of being Arabs, and want to be Europeans." and then we have the Maltese people trying to tell these idiots that they are wrong, and Maltese indeed is a language, not just some Arabic dialect, and Maltese people are their own people with their own culture.

Yeah... One hears the numbers and some greetings, like "good night!" ("Il-lejl it-tajjeb") and because one speaks Arabic and understand every word, one must be hearing Arabic.
Because you believe you are hearing Arabic, you also believe that the people whose language it is, must be Arabs, and they must also be Muslims. And if these people deny any of these claims, they are lying, deceiving themselves and everyone else...

*sigh*

Ok.

1) According to genetic research, most Maltese people are of Sicilian (South Italian) or Phoenician (Canaanite, Lebanese) origin.

2)

We do know, however, that the first inscriptions in Malta were in Punic and that they cover a long period, from the 6th to the 2nd century B.C. Bilingualism was already practiced in Malta when the Phoenicians settled here side by side with the last Bronze Age community which was later absorbed culturally and linguistically.

Apparently, it was Jean Quintin who in 1536 launched the myth that Maltese was a survivor of the ancient, lost, Punic language after observing Punic inscriptions in Malta... ...The connection with a great ancient civilization pleased the locals who could now claim both uniqueness and prestige... ...but in actual fact it was built on vague impressions for Punic script was not deciphered before 1758 and no serious comparative studies were ever made.

Languages in Malta and the Maltese Language
Joseph M. BRINCAT
Education et Sociétés Plurilingues n°20-juin 2006

I do like the myth. Not because I see Arabic as somehow lesser language, but the idea of that Phoenician, Punic, would have been saved in some form, pleases me very much.

3) Malta lies between Italy (Sicilia) and Tunis, and has received influence from both directions, though more from Italy. (For a very long time all broadcasting on the island was Italian.)
The reason of this is not that the Maltese would rather be European than Arabs, but because they are Roman Catholic Christians, as the Italians are. Tunis is mainly Muslim.

4) The rulers of Malta - all influencing the language

~700 bce. Phoenicians
~400 bce. Carthagians (who spoke Punic, a variety of Phoenician)
218 bce. Romans
440 ce Vandals
533 Byzantines
870 Fatimids (from Tunis)

"The most mystifying linguistic aspect of the Maltese language is that there is no perceivable substratum (the old language’s influence on the newly acquired one) – neither Punic, nor Roman nor Greek... ...Al-Himyari... ...describes a violent attack in 870 which left the island in ruins and, after a period of relative neglect, a fresh settlement in 1048-9, composed of Muslims and their more numerous slaves... ...The period of neglect may have witnessed two small communities, the survivors and the conquerors’ garrison, speaking two different languages and perhaps intermingling over 150 years. In 1048-9 the sudden influx of a 5000-strong community of Arabic speakers must have absorbed the few former inhabitants whose language did not leave its mark on the new one."

Languages in Malta and the Maltese Language
Joseph M. BRINCAT
Education et Sociétés Plurilingues n°20-juin 2006

1090 Sicilian Normans
1224 the Swabian Emperor Frederick II expelled the Muslims from Malta. Nevertheless, most chose to convert rather than leave their homes.
1479 Spanish
1530 Knights of Malta (Italian) (In the beginning of 16th century also some Ottoman (Turkish) influence)
1798 French
1800 British
1964 Maltese

What does all of this mean?

Malta is its own country, the Maltese people have their own, individual culture and nature and the Maltese language is an independent, own, separate language.

Also, Malta IS part of Europe. They don't need to "try to be" Europeans. They ARE Europeans and have been for a very, very long time.

P.S. I have found some culprit to the idiocy displayed in YouTube.
Arab Heritage in Malta

P.P.S.T

The historical source of modern Maltese vocabulary is 52% Italian/Sicilian, 32% Siculo-Arabic, and 6% English, with some of the remainder being French. Today, most function words are Semitic. In this way, it is similar to English, which is a Germanic language that had large influence from French — although less so than Maltese. As a result of this, Romance language-speakers may easily be able to comprehend more complex ideas expressed in Maltese, such as "Ġeografikament, l-Ewropa hi parti tas-superkontinent ta' l-Ewrasja" (Geographically, Europe is part of the Supercontinent of Eurasia), while not understanding a single word of a simple sentence such as "Ir-raġel qiegħed fid-dar" (The man is in the house), which would be easily understood by any Arabic speaker.

Romance origin (Italian, Sicilian, French, Spanish) 40-55%
Arabic origin (Sicilo-Arabic, Semitic) 30-40%
English 5-20%

Second post today!

I have been working with the verbs from 1st and 2nd chapter...
And I am so proud of myself!

Google translate is my working dictionary... and it is not the best one available.
So - it gives the translation "are, is, being, been" to both qed and qegħdin.

Now, I KNOW these words have nothing to do with 'to be' (ikun - Maltese verbs' base form is the 3.sg.m. perf.) So... what IS this verb, really?

q-d... q-għ-d... could be. Għ is silent, so in some forms they just skip it.

Maltese Verb Roots and Patterns Database gives this for q-għ-d

qagħad    
1. stay
2. reside
3. be applicable
4. settle
5. amount
6. remain
qagħgħad
qiegħed
1. put, place
2. deposit
3. lay
tqiegħed

Ok... Hmm... Maybe...

Then I found this 

Maltese also has the category of progressive marked by the grammaticalised active participle qiegħed 'staying' (of qagħad 'to stand') - with the inflected forms qiegħda for feminine and qegħdin for plural beside the uninflected reduce qed. 

Kulħadd kien qed jistenna s-sinjal
everybody be (perf) prog (3.sg-m) wait (def) signal
everybody was waiting for the signal.

Thomas Stolz, Cornelia Stroh, Aina Urdze
Total Redulication - The Areal Linguistics of a Potential Universal,
page 311

"are, is, been, being" is not a good translation. "-ing" would be better.

I logged in 12 hours of studies today. I am very pleased with myself. I really need to go through those verbs... As evidenced above :-D

And a new day has began...

I haven't learned anything from my experiences :-D

A couple of years ago I was complaining about the difficulties of finding anything in Albanian on-line.
It's even harder to find anything in Maltese!

I get the feeling that Maltese people want to safeguard their language, so that no foreigners can mutilate it with their petty efforts to speak it.

I read this about dubbed movies... and I remembered the difficulties in getting my greedy hands on Il-Fiddien series. I had to go to Maltese bookshops on-line and... well... it wasn't as easy as I thought it should be. After all, Malta is part of EU. It should be in the interests of EU to see people could learn all Maltese they want to. (Well, there is a lot of official texts translated in every EU language, so that could be used to learn Maltese, but... It's boring. News, EU documents and the Bible. *sigh*)

Fjamma bla tmiem

          Endless flame

Seħer ta’ qalbi

          My heart’s magic

Dawwalli l-jiem ta’ ħajti

          Enlighten the days of my life

Warrabni mid-dlamijiet

          Keep me away from darkness

Leħen fis-skiet

          A voice in the silence

Tama ta’ dejjem

          Forever hope

Għallimni nagħzel toroq il-ġejjien

          Teach me to choose the roads of my future

Għaddejt mis-sabiħ
          I went through bright days

Għaddejt miż-żmien ikraħ
          I went through bad time
Kull trejqa ppruvajt
          I tried every road
Ħsibt li fhimt id-destin
          I thought I understood destiny
Salpajt l-ilmijiet
          I sailed the waters
Infittex xortija
          Searching for my luck
Intlift fuq il-mewġ
          I got lost on the waves
Nal-kurrent
          In the currents

Sakemm fuq xefaq skur
          Until in the dark horizon
Deħer id-dawl mixtieq
          I saw the longing light
Inemnem fil-bogħod
          Flickering afar
Bħal kewba f’nofs id-dlam
          Like a star amidst the dark

Fjamma bla tmiem
          Endless flame
Agħtini dawlek dejjiem
          Give me forever light
Seħer ta’ qalbi
          My heart’s magic
Dawwalli l-jiem ta’ ħajti
          Enlighten the days of my life
Warrabni mid-dlamijiet
          Keep me away from the darkness
Leħen fis-skiet

          A voice in the silence

Urini triqti l’ quddiem
          Show me the way for my future
Tama ta’ dejjem

          Forever hope

Għallimni nagħzel toroq il-ġejjien
          Teach me choose the roads of my future

Fjamma bla tmiem

          Endless flame

Seħer ta’ qalbi

          My heart’s magic

Dawwalli l-jiem ta’ ħajti

          Enlighten the days of my life

Warrabni mid-dlamijiet

          Keep me away from darkness

Leħen fis-skiet

          A voice in the silence

Tama ta’ dejjem

          Forever hope

Għallimni nagħzel toroq il-ġejjien

          Teach me to choose the roads of my future

Għaddejt minn ħolmiet
          I went through the dreams
Passat fantasiji
          A past of fantasies
Ħarist lejn l-uċuh
          I looked at faces
Rajt biss maskri mżejnin
          I saw decorated masks
Inċedi ma ridtx
          I didn’t want to give up
Fittixt, għarrixt u qallibt
          I searched, looked for and explored
Kont waħdi fil-folla
          Alone in the crowd
Ħadd ma kien ħabib
          No one was a friend
Sa ma tbissimli ż-żmien
          Until the time smiled back to me
U sibt l-oħla kenn
          And I found the best shelter
Ma nafx jeżistix
          I don’t know if there really exists
Bħall-wens li tajtni int
          A shelter like the one you gave me

Fjamma bla tmiem

          Endless flame

Seħer ta’ qalbi

          My heart’s magic

Dawwalli l-jiem ta’ ħajti

          Enlighten the days of my life

Warrabni mid-dlamijiet

          Keep me away from darkness

Leħen fis-skiet

          A voice in the silence

Tama ta’ dejjem

          Forever hope

Għallimni nagħzel toroq il-ġejjien

          Teach me to choose the roads of my future

Fjamma bla tmiem

          Endless flame

Seħer ta’ qalbi

          My heart’s magic

Dawwalli l-jiem ta’ ħajti

          Enlighten the days of my life

Warrabni mid-dlamijiet

          Keep me away from darkness

Leħen fis-skiet

          A voice in the silence

Tama ta’ dejjem

          Forever hope

Għallimni nagħzel toroq il-ġejjien

          Teach me to choose the roads of my future

Fjamma bla tmiem

          Endless flame

Agħtini dawlek dejjiem
          Give me forever light
Fjamma bla tmiem

          Endless flame

Urini triqti l’quddiem
          Show me the way for my future
Fjamma bla tmiem

          Endless flame

Fjamma
          Flame
Fjamma bla tmiem

          Endless flame

Fjamma
          Flame


Translation from "worldbeat twelve"

Week 2 of 6 weeks challenge has began

Yes! Done! Phew...
That is, the translation of chapter 2 of Sqaq l-Infern.
For some reason it was really, really hard to plow through the text. (Might be because it is one of the longer chapters in the book...)

Poor Jason... and what a lovely mother he has :´)
Here's a Maltese recipe of chocolate biscuits... sort of. In English :-D

Krustini taċ-ċikkulata

I also wrote the new vocabulary from chapter 2 on flashcards. 400 NEW GLOSSES! 8-o
Dang.
I divided it into 50 gloss piles, and took one of them with me to my walk.


I have added chapter 3 to Learning with Texts. It's a short one. Thank God :-) And a lot of words I already know. I think there was only (:-D) some 200 new words in that chapter.



I really need to clean up my glosses. When I started, I didn't know anything about Maltese verbs, and the text looked pretty much incomprehensible. Now I'm starting to see the building blocks, and I know I have a lot of repetition... the same verb conjugated in different "tempus", persons etc.  That isn't helping me. On the contrary. I am not to learn the conjugated forms, but the basic verb, so that I can learn how to conjugate it and be able to use the verbs in basic forms to express myself - and also to understand the verbs that are not in basic forms.

With verbs it's a bit disturbing that the language consists of Phoenician, Sardinian and Norman layers with the "modern" loans, mostly from English or Italian... but there is also quite a lot from France and Spain too!

Also, there is the... hmm... "lazy" usage of the language, creating me problems. I can't be certain of that a specific spelling is the correct one... or which letter should be used. "Il-warda tal-ġnien tiegħi hi dak il-wiċċ sabiħ" could also be written "Il-warda tal-gnien tieghi hi dak il-wicc sabih". Usually it is not a problem, but there are some cases where it is a problem... especially when it comes to ħ and h...

I found a lovely, old dictionary, that has letters I don't have the slightest idea how to pronounce or with what they have been replaced in modern Maltese!

Also, there are some scanned dictionaries on-line, where the person who did the enormous job of scanning the book, didn't bother proofreading the scan... so it's impossible to figure out some of the words.

It-Tfal Jiġu Bil-Vapuri

This is so beautiful...

Dil-qalb li ttektek dejjem matul in-nhar u l-lej',
Tixxennaq u titniehed, tixtieq u trid għalxej'.
Fejn int, fejn inti, ibni, li ħlomt fl-iljieli sbieħ?
Dan l-univers imżewwaq,mingħajrek xejn ma fih.
Fittixtek kull filgħodu, 'mma dalam minnufieh
Fittixtek filgħaxija, 'mma l-lejl difinni fih.
Għalxejn kuljum jittawwal il-qamar tul il-lej',
Jekk iġġerrejt u għadni, niġġerra ma nafx fej'.
Dil-kelma li tinstema' u jien ma nagħrafhiex,
Iddamdam ġo widnejja u jien ma nifimiex!
Ma ġġeddidnix rebbiegħa, fis-sajf ma nafx nistrieh,
M'hemmx tama fil-ħarifa, fix-xitwa jġorrni r-riħ.

Ix-xemx ta' l-għodwa tiegħi, hi l-ħmura ta' ħaddejk,
Il-qamar tal-lejl tiegħi, hu n-nar ta' ħbub għajnejk.
Il-warda tal-ġnien tiegħi hi dak il-wiċċ sabiħ;
Il-kliem magħluq go fommok hu l-kliem li jkanta r-riħ
Sejjaħtlek biex tweġibni b'kull isem li naf jien,
Għajjatt sakemm smajt leħni idamdam kullimkien
Staqsejt għalik lill-kotra u ma weġibni ħadd,
Fittixtek fil-bliet kollha u ma itqajt miegħek qatt

Inqala' minn ġo fija, ja xewka ta' l-uġiegħ,
U 'l ħadd ma ngħid illejla das-sigriet tagħna x'fih.
Liem'hi dil-qalb li ttektek mingħajr ma femhet xej'?
Liem'hi dil-qalb li tħabbat. Mingħajr ma taf ghalfej'?
X'inhi din it-tnehida li riesqa 'l hawn mar-riħ?
Fejn hi dil-qalb muġugħa li ma tistax tistrieħ?

Ix-xemx ta' l-għodwa tiegħi, hi l-ħmura ta' ħaddejk,
Il-qamar tal-lejl tiegħi, hu n-nar ta' ħbub għajnejk.
Il-warda tal-ġnien tiegħi hi dak il-wiċċ sabiħ;
Il-kliem magħluq ġo fommok hu l-kliem li jkanta r-riħ
Sejjaħtlek biex tweġibni b'kull isem li naf jien,
Għajjatt sakemm smajt leħni idamdam kullimkien
Staqsejt għalik lill-kotra u ma weġibni ħadd,
Fittixtek fil-bliet kollha u ma itqajt miegħek qatt.

---

"It-Tfal Jiġu Bil-Vapuri" is a Maltese tv-series (Children come with ships) based on a novel by Oliver Friggieri. It tells about Susanna and Arturo who are childless and, if I have understood correctly, the local priest uses them to save his own reputation. Or something. It happens in the beginning of 20th century.
Sounds interesting.

This heart that beats days and nights,
yearns and ?, wishes and pursues in vain.
Where are you, where, my child, of whom I dream so beautifully at nights?
I search you in the morning, but it becomes quickly dark,
I search you in the evening, but the night hides me inside (?)
In vain days get longer the moon under the night
If you have to wander, you wander don't know where,
This word I keep hearing and I don't recognize,
the humming in my ears, and I don't (?)
No renewal for me in Springtime, the Summer knows not rest,
there is no hope in Autumn, Winter only brings me wind.

The sun of the morning is the blush on your cheeks,
the moon in the night is the shine in your eyes,
The rose in my garden is your beautiful face
The words captured in your mouth are the words the wind sings.
I call you with every name I know,
I shout until my voice clangs everywhere,
I asked about you from the masses, but no-one had heard of you,
I kept looking for you in cities but never [?] with you.

From inside of me, these spines of pain grow,
and no-one speaks tonight of this secret of ours hidden within,
what does she this heart that simmers not ? nothing,
what does this heart that beats not knowing what for?
Why is this launch (?) that drifts with the wind?
Where is the aching heart that cannot rest?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I enjoyed very much this argument between Daphne and most others :-D

I learned a new word: Tal-Pepe
And of course there are two different definitions of the word.. and which definition one uses reveals also the class of the speaker :-D
(Now, I am not sure if I have talked about it, but 1918 Finland had a war of independence, and the two sides were the Whites and the Reds, the Whites being mostly upper class and conservatives and the Reds being mostly working class and the socialists, who voted for Finland staying a part of Russia (Soviet). My father's family were White, and so am I. Politically I'm social liberal and my English is not even close "perfect" like Daphne's, but I know what she means with Tal-Pepe - because I would be one too, were I Maltese - and I also know where the non-Tal-Pepes have got the idea of stuck-up people who think they are better than everyone else and speak Maltenglish. It's not Tal-Pepe they talk about, it's the Tal-Pepe wannabes and trytobes. Also, nouveau rich, celebrities and their descendants are not White nor Tal-Pepe. Except some. But that's a whole another discussion :-D)

Today I have been working with verbs

Why, oh why is it so dang difficult to find Maltese resources?
It seems like I need to write my own dang dictionary. :-(
And the Maltese verb conjugator is... pretty sad. It claims the most usual verbs are not words. I don't know which form one should be using, and if the conjugation is even correct or not. :-(
Collecting information one bit here and another there is really, really, really tiresome. *sigh*

Now I'm going to take my walk and learn some more words. It is 6th of May, and I should know 500 words :-D I don't. I know perhaps 200. Not bad for a week's work, nevertheless, *I* am not happy. *I* expect more of myself, because *I* have done it before. Nah. Excuses, excuses. I'm just too lazy.