THE SEGMENTAL PHONEMES OF MALTESE

Maltese is a Semitic language spoken by about 320,000 people living on the Maltese Islands, situated 58 miles from Sicily, 300 miles from Tripoli, and 180 miles from the Tunisian coast. Though it is commonly referred to as a dialect of Arabic, it has actually developed independently from mainland Arabic ever since the end of the Arab occupation of the Maltese Islands in 1090 A.D. In the course of its subsequent history characterized by close contact with Italian and Sicilian, Maltese imbibed a considerable overlay of Romance elements that have become indigenous to it. When one recalls that Arabic itself was not the first Semitic tongue to establish itself as a local vernacular but that it was preceded by Phoenician and Punic and probably by non-Semitic tongues like Latin and Greek, it is not difficult to appreciate why the historical aspect of the Maltese language has tended to pre-occupy linguistic scholars to the exclusion of the synchronic. Thus, while there exist several grammars of the Maltese language