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International Font
Maltese Story
Maltese Phrases
Maltese
Afro-Asiatic/Semitic/North
Arabic/Maltese
Maltese is spoken on the island of Malta, in
the Mediterranean Sea, south of Sicily. Its basis is Arabic,
which was brought to the island by Moslem conquerers in the 9th
century. In the year 1090 the Arabs were driven out by Normans
from Sicily, who introduced a large number of Italian words into
the vocabulary.
The Maltese alphabet contains the additional letters ¬ pronounced like the English h but much stronger, g¬ serves only to lengthen the preceding or succeeding vowel, ¨ pronounced like j, ü pronounced like z (the z without the dot is pronounced ts).J is pronounced like y, x as sh, and q is a glottal stop. There are about 400,000 speakers of Maltese.