At over 20,000 Italian words, rich Maltese language was built from mass migration

It’s not just the odd espresso or insalata when the Maltese ‘put on the Italian’. Daily contact with Italian migrants over the course of Malta’s extraordinary population growth under the Knights of St John and the British colonialists, contributed to over 20,000 Sicilian and Italian words – practically 41% of the vocabulary – adopted by the Maltese.

So writes Giuseppe Brincat, who notes that while Italianisms in most other European languages are associated with the world of culture, fashion, music, gastronomy and the arts, Maltese absorbed Italian and Sicilian voices in matters related to daily life: not just “mużika, pittura, katidràl, ambaxxatùr, pizza”, but also fundamental terms like “arja, spalla, rota, bosk and fjura”.

These words found their way into daily parlance not just because of Italian being the official language of the island’s elite for five whole centuries, but also because illiterate Maltese speakers were exposed to it in their everyday life.

And while Italian-speaking foreigners were a minority in every given moment, “their numbers kept increasing to the extent that Malta’s population increased from 20,000 in 1530 to 240,000 in 1900. In this way the immigrants enriched the Maltese language without eradicating it or substituting it.”

This migration was concentrated in the harbour area where Maltese and foreigners constantly rubbed shoulders in restricted spaces like construction sites or on ships. This led to the emergence of a Maltese variant which was heavily italianised.

One key factor contributing to this process was that most migrants were single males who had to learn Maltese upon marrying Maltese girls. Brincat says the presence of hundreds of migrant artisans and workers served as a linguistic laboratory which introduced words associated with trades and everyday life into the spoken language.

But will history repeat itself amidst the present influx of Italian speaking migrants?

Unlikely, Brincat says, noting that even with the arrival of around 50,000 Italians over the past two decades – which should represent more opportunities for conversation as happened in the past – these new migrants “prefer speaking in English not just with tourists but also with the Maltese, also giving the impression that Italian is not an important language.”

Sure enough, Italian remains a widely known language even more than when it was an official language, to the extent that in the 2011 census 61% of Maltese citizens older than 10 understood Italian well, compared to just 13% of the Maltese in 1931.

But Brincat attributes this widespread popularity to the Italian television mainstay of those growing up in the second half of the 20th century. Now the future of Malta’s Italian speakers is becoming more uncertain as younger people are less likely to watch Italian or any TV at all.

Another factor discouraging the predisposition to learn Italian is the fact that younger parents speak to their children in English. And while Italian remains the favourite choice of a foreign language at secondary level, fewer consider learning Italian at a higher level useful.

Italian for illiterates

Very little is known about the efforts made by illiterate persons in the first half of the 20th century to speak Italian, which at the time was regarded as the “high language” spoken by elites and ruling classes. In a paper Brinat presents some samples from the past and even the present, showing how this process took place.

One example Brincat cites is from Juann Mamo’s Ulied in-Nanna Venut fl-Amerka of 1931, where the illiterate Maltese migrants manage to communicate with Italians during their passage through Italy on their way to America. Indeed, its opening chapter is a village setting where two notaries mock the illiterate low classes in a conversation replete with Italian phrases: “Inkomplu issa, nutàr. Fi kwantità ta’ nies bħal dawn m’hemmx il cinque per cento li jafu una lingua straniera jew una arte li tgħodd għall-America. Ebda wieħed, nessuno, minnhom ma jaf iħaddem magna” (Let’s continue notary... Among these people there is less than 5% who know a foreign language or a skill required in America. Not a single one of them knows how to operate a machine.”)

Brincat also refers to 18th century texts which refer to the “corruption” of Italian. Mikiel Anton Vassalli himself referred to the “laughable slang used by many Maltese women composed of Sicilian words, some Italian ones and many Maltese ones which are italianised with other barbarisms.”

Other texts refer to rich Maltese encouraging their servants to learn Italian: “Bravu, Calcedòn, dejem chellimni bit-taliàn, biex titghàllem. (‘Bravo, Calcedonio, parlami sempre in italiano, per imparare’).” The percentage of Maltese who knew Italian increased from 11% in 1842 to 13% in 1931, while that of English increased from 5% in 1842 to 23% in 1931, with Anglicization taking the upshot after the war, after primary school attendance was made compulsory, with Italian only being thought at secondary level. Yet despite the limited reach of Italian among the elite, Italian words still transformed the Maltese language thanks to everyday contact.

Brincat’s paper: “L’acquisizione imperfetta di una lingua adstrato: L’italiano degli analfabeti a Malta dal Settecento al Novecento” was published in the journal ‘Politiche e pratiche per l’educazione linguistica, il multilinguismo e la comunicazione interculturale’ (Policies and practice for language education, multilingualism and intercultural communication), recently published in the SAIL (Studi sull’apprendimento e l’insegnamento linguistico) series, University of Venice, Ca’ Foscari. This publication was edited by local academics Prof. Sandro Caruana, Dr Phyllisienne Vassallo Gauci, Dr Mario Pace and Dr Karl Chircop.