Maltese
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Maltese is the language of Malta, and a language of the European Union. Maltese sounds very similar to the type of Arabic spoken in the cities of nearby Tunisia, but it is written in the Latin alphabet like English. In history, the language has borrowed many words from Sicilian, Italian, and English.
Maltese became an official language of Malta in 1936, alongside English. Before that year, the official language of Malta was Italian. Today, there are around 371,900 Maltese speakers, mostly living in Malta.
The oldest known document in Maltese is "Il Cantilena," a poem from the 15th century written by Pietro Caxaro. For centuries, Maltese was mainly a spoken language.