Maltese IDN Domains

Maltese is an official language found in the European Union and is the official co-language of Malta (the other being English). Maltese comes from the Afro-Asiatic language family, specifically from the Sciulo-Arabic language of the ninth century. Interestingly, Maltese is the only Semitic language which is written in the Latin script.

As of 1975, 300,000 speakers of Maltese lived in Malta, with roughly 70,000 additional speakers found abroad. These speakers can be found in Australia, Canada, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The modern Maltese alphabet was introduced in 1924. An official guidebook was printed in 1924 by the government of Malta and in 1984 more rules were added to describe the addition of Romance and English words. The written form of Maltese was not developed until the middle of the thirteenth century.

The grammar of the Maltese language is mostly derived from the Siculo-Arabic language, but the patterns of noun pluralization are also borrowed from Romance and English nouns. In the Maltese language, adjectives follow nouns and the order of the words is flexible.