Maltese is a Semitic language, descended from the Arabic spoken in Sicily about a thousand years ago. It is written in the Latin alphabet, which no other Semitic language is.
It is also an official language of the European Union. There is nothing else quite like it.
Where it came from
Arabs took Malta in 870 and held it for roughly two centuries. The language that grew out of that period stayed after they left. Malta then spent hundreds of years under Sicilian, Norman, Knights and British rule, and each of those added words to it.
The result is that the grammar is Arabic and a large part of the vocabulary is not. Numbers, family words and everyday verbs are Arabic. Words for food, law, office work and machinery are often Italian or English.
The letters that are not in English
Maltese uses the Latin alphabet with four extra letters and one extra pair. They are ċ, ġ, ħ and ż, plus għ which counts as a single letter.
A few of them are worth knowing before you try to read a road sign. The letter x is said like the sh in ship, so Xagħra is Shah-ra.
The letter q is a glottal stop, the catch in the middle of uh-oh. The letter j works like an English y.
And għ is usually silent, but it stretches the vowel next to it.
You can live here without it
English is also an official language. It is used in government, business, schools and the courts, and almost everyone speaks it.
People do live here for years without learning any Maltese and are never stuck. There are free and subsidised courses for residents if you want to start.
People notice when you try
The reaction to a few words is out of proportion to how few they are. Saħħa (hello) and grazzi (thank you) are enough to change how a conversation starts. Nobody expects a visitor to speak it.
