Editing Maltese language (section)

==History==
{{See also|History of Malta}}
[[File:Il-Kantilena.png|thumb|upright=0.9|Oldest Maltese text: {{lang|it|[[Il-Kantilena]]}} by [[Pietru Caxaro]], 15th&nbsp;century]]
The origins of the Maltese language are attributed to the arrival, early in the 11th century, of settlers from neighbouring Sicily, where Siculo-Arabic was spoken, reversing the [[Fatimid Caliphate]]'s conquest of the island at the end of the 9th century.<ref name="harvp|Brincat|2005">{{harvp|Brincat|2005}}</ref> This claim has been corroborated by genetic studies, which show that contemporary [[Maltese people]] share common ancestry with Sicilians and [[Calabria|Calabrians]], with little genetic input from North Africa and the Levant.<ref>{{cite news |last=Felice |first=A. E. |date=2007-08-05 |title=Genetic origin of contemporary Maltese |url=https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/genetic-origin-of-contemporary-maltese.9032 |newspaper=[[Times of Malta]] |df=dmy-all |access-date=2019-11-09 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191109022535/https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/genetic-origin-of-contemporary-maltese.9032 |archive-date=2019-11-09}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Capelli |first=C. |display-authors=etal |date=Mar 2006 |title=Population structure in the Mediterranean basin: a Y chromosome perspective |journal=[[Ann. Hum. Genet.]] |volume=70 |issue=2 |pages=207–225 |doi=10.1111/j.1529-8817.2005.00224.x |pmid=16626331 |hdl=2108/37090 |s2cid=25536759 |hdl-access=free}}</ref>

The [[Norman invasion of Malta|Norman conquest in 1091]], followed by the [[Islam in Malta#Medieval Period: 1091–1224|expulsion of the Muslims]], complete by 1249, permanently isolated the vernacular from its Arabic source, creating the conditions for its evolution into a distinct language.<ref name="harvp|Brincat|2005"/> In contrast to Sicily, where Siculo-Arabic became extinct and was replaced by [[Sicilian language|Sicilian]], the vernacular in Malta continued to develop alongside Italian, eventually replacing it as official language in 1934, alongside English.<ref name="harvp|Brincat|2005"/> The first written reference to the Maltese language is in a will of 1436, where it is called {{lang|mt|lingua maltensi}}. The oldest known document in Maltese, {{lang|it|[[Il-Kantilena]]}} ({{lang|mt|Xidew il-Qada}}) by [[Pietru Caxaro]], dates from the 15th century.<ref name="Academy"/>

The earliest known Maltese dictionary was a 16th-century manuscript entitled "Maltese-Italiano"; it was included in the {{lang|it|Biblioteca Maltese}} of Mifsud in 1764, but is now lost.<ref name=agius/> A list of Maltese words was included in both the {{lang|la|Thesaurus Polyglottus}} (1603) and {{lang|la|Propugnaculum Europae}} (1606) of [[Hieronymus Megiser]], who had visited Malta in 1588–1589; [[Domenico Magri]] gave the etymologies of some Maltese words in his {{lang|la|Hierolexicon, sive sacrum dictionarium}} (1677).<ref name="Academy"/>

An early manuscript dictionary, {{lang|it|Dizionario Italiano e Maltese}}, was discovered in the {{lang|it|[[Biblioteca Vallicelliana]]|italic=no}} in Rome in the 1980s, together with a grammar, the {{lang|it|Regole per la Lingua Maltese}}, attributed to a French knight named Thezan.<ref name=agius>{{cite journal |last=Agius |first=D. A. |date=1990 |title=Reviewed Work: A Contribution to Arabic Lexical Dialectology by Al-Miklem Malti |journal=Bull. Br. Soc. Middle East. Stud. |volume=17 |issue=2 |pages=171–180 |doi=10.1080/13530199008705515 |jstor=194709}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Cassola |first=A. |date=June 2012 |title=Italo-Maltese relations (ca. 1150–1936): people, culture, literature, language |url=https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/23994 |journal=Mediterr. Rev. |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=1–20 |issn=2005-0836 |access-date=2021-08-21 |archive-date=2021-08-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210821001150/https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/23994 |url-status=live }}</ref> The first systematic lexicon is that of [[Giovanni Pietro Francesco Agius de Soldanis]], who also wrote the first systematic grammar of the language and proposed a standard [[orthography]].<ref name=agius/>

The language declined heavily under the [[Crown Colony of Malta|British administration of Malta]], declining in use compared to English. Following the independence of Malta, language reforms under the [[Dom Mintoff]] government saw the language gain an increase in use, and today is used regularly in Malta.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/28346|title=Maltese colonial identity : Latin Mediterranean or British Empire?|first=Henry|last=Frendo|date=21 August 1988|publisher=Mireva Publications|isbn=9781870579018|via=www.um.edu.mt}}</ref>