The official languages of Malta are Maltese and English. Maltese, the national language, is a Semitic language, descended from Siculo-Arabic, from Sicily and surrounding Southern Italy, with substantial borrowing from Sicilian and Italian.[38] The Maltese alphabet of 29 letters is based on the Latin alphabet, but uses the diacritically altered letter ż, also found in Polish, ċ, ġ, as well as the letters għ, ħ, and ie, which are unique to Maltese.
Italian was an official language of Malta until the 1930s, and is widely spoken as a second or third language. Italian television channels from Italy-based broadcasters, such as Mediaset and RAI, reach Malta and remain popular.
According to the EU, 100% of the population speaks Maltese, 88% speaks English, 66% speaks Italian, and 17% speaks French, making the country one of the most pan-linguistically fluent in the European Union.
As a first language, 86% of the population preferred to use Maltese, 12% English, and 2% Italian.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
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