The anticipation for Occitan just keeps building.

@philomelodia

9 ай бұрын

He did one.

@Unpainted_Huffhines

9 ай бұрын

Yes, I saw it. You do realize that his Provencal video came _after_ I wrote this comment, right?

As an Arab, this was absolutely wild to listen to. My brain recognizes it as an Arabic dialect (our dialects are like your Romance languages, except we still call most of them "Arabic"), but filled with words I know from either English or the very elementary knowledge I have of Romance. The structure sounds very Arabic, but where I would expect an Arabic word -- BAM, Latin word. It's kind of mind-boggling in some ways. I can kinda understand it though, but my brain has to straddle an imaginary Semitic-Indo European line.

@Avram_Orozco

9 ай бұрын

Italic or romance would be a better comparison to Semitic languages, in my opinion, when deciphering a word’s origin. Maltese is an afroasiatic language

@AKnightofIslamicArabia

9 ай бұрын

@@Avram_Orozco Semitic languages are not a primary family. They are a branch of the Afro-Asiatic family, like Romance languages are a branch of the Italic languages, which in turn are a branch of the Indo-European languages.

@Avram_Orozco

9 ай бұрын

@@AKnightofIslamicArabia oh shut up ya muhammadan

@ironhead2008

9 ай бұрын

It's an interesting mix to be sure. Somewhat analogous to English: The basic vocabulary is West Germanic with several Norse derived inclusions, but practically everything else is of Latin derivation, via Norman French or medieval Latin. Oh and practically all of the conjugations and declensions have been dropped so word order is all important.

@yuzan3607

9 ай бұрын

@@ironhead2008 what's interesting in Maltese is that they kind of conjugate Latin words the Arabic way, which in a way makes it easier to understand for an Arabic speaker, like you can understand that this is a past tense verb and the subject is x, and the object is y, even though you're clueless as to what the verb is. It's hilarious to listen to, because you can almost understand it fully, but not really.

As a Tunisian born and raised in Italy I understood her almost completely lol. Maltese it's a mix of mostly Tunisian derja/darija (Tunisian arabic dialect) and Italian, so fascinating. The Italian influence it's more on the accent rather than on the vocabulary. The vocabulary is mostly coming from Tunisian derja but with a heavy Italian accent/pronunciation.

@Jay_in_Japan

9 ай бұрын

@@graemeduncan1232 you sound pleasant

@Jay_in_Japan

9 ай бұрын

أتوفق معك بنسبة للدارجة

@GholaTleilaxu

9 ай бұрын

And the Tunisian derja is it an Arabic dialect based on local ancient Berber and Phoenician languages with Greek, Persian and Latin influences?

@mattiamele3015

8 ай бұрын

@@GholaTleilaxu It’s not based on Berber or Phenician. All dialects in the Maghreb have been influenced by Berber (Amazigh) languages to some degree, but they are not “based” on them. They are Arabic varieties.

@lukamg7368

5 ай бұрын

It's prolly closer to Libyan cuz they have much Italian influence in their dialect unlike you who have french influence

Malta is not of the Templars, but of the Knights of the Hospital. Also, love this series! I suggest trying with Ecclesiastical Latin. (I suggested it in other videos but just in case you didn't see it lol)

@Unpainted_Huffhines

9 ай бұрын

I'm 99% sure he's fluent in Ecclesiastical as well as Classical.

@VABJMJ

9 ай бұрын

@@Unpainted_Huffhines I know. But he is good at telling the difference between things he knows through training and things he knows because of its similarities to Italian. Would be fun to see how much a regular italian would actually understand of it and his analysis would be nice

@Unpainted_Huffhines

9 ай бұрын

@@VABJMJ Agreed, it would be interesting.

@xleplex7070

9 ай бұрын

Ecclesiastical Latin and Classical Latin are the exact same language with only minor differences in pronunciation. He can speak Latin so it wouldn't work. Maybe he can invite an Italian speaker onto his channel who doesn't know any Latin, that might be interesting.

@gianmarcopajni1850

9 ай бұрын

​@@xleplex7070 I am Italian and i don't have a humanistic background, but i studied a little of latin in high school. Most of what is written in the monuments or churches is readable or interpretable by people who have not studied it because they were meant to be easily understood. Different story for the classic writers who, depending on the era and their style, are minimally understandable or almost totally incomprehensible...

As someone who speaks Moroccan Arabic, this was fascinating as it sounded to me so similar to the more Western varieties (Moroccan, Algerian, Tunesian) of Arabic but where we use French or Spanish words, they have Italian words

@AKnightofIslamicArabia

9 ай бұрын

As a Saudi, this is always interesting to see, because we have essentially zero ajam influence.

@veuzou

9 ай бұрын

I'm not an Arabic speaker but I've got relatives in Tunisia and I've worked there for a while and they use a lot of Italian/Latin words too, like "bé" for good, "d'accordo" for OK, "taula" for table etc.

@ilanbouwmeester6838

9 ай бұрын

The standard Arabic word for table Tawila طاولة is a Latin loan from tabula or from Greek τάβλα. In Syriac the same word is used Tavlita ܛܒܠܝܬܐ. Syriac also has the synonym patura - ܦܬܘܪܐ, Which derives from the same root as the Arabic faṯur فاثور, which is mainly used in Levantine Christian-Arabic vernacular to mean 'table'. Which ultimately comes Sumarian (a non-Semitic language). Hebrew preserves the only Semitic word for table - as far as I'm aware-, shulHan שולחן, which is attested in Amoritic and in Ugaritic as ṯlHn.

@ZringMalti

9 ай бұрын

@@ilanbouwmeester6838 The word for table in Maltese is entirely different... it's MEJDA (مَائِدَة)‎

@leucotea8717

9 ай бұрын

@@ZringMalti la spianatoia dove si impasta il pane o la pizza in siciliano è la "maidda "

As a tunisian who speaks French i almost understand 99% of it actually it's closer to tunisian dialect than classical arabic and of course tunisian dialect is full of words coming from Italian and French...

@mattiamele3015

9 ай бұрын

I did a transcription, you might want to check it. The Maltese alphabet is tricky and some sounds are no longer pronounced, but I think you will get it. There are some peculiar words like jkollu ("يكون له - "يكُلُّو).

I think next you should try the remaining Mediterranean island languages of Sardinian and Corsican. And perhaps the other unknown languages like Gallo-Italic of Sicily and Sassarese.

As a Maltese person I understood 90%, you should do a video of the sister island’s dialect gozo ! There’s more influence from Arabic and Sicilian.

@fnansjy456

9 ай бұрын

How ? Shouldn't you understand 90%

@ZringMalti

9 ай бұрын

90% biss??

@arthurvanrodds2772

9 ай бұрын

@@ZringMalti What's your dialect called?

@fintonmainz7845

9 ай бұрын

Interesting

@AKnightofIslamicArabia

9 ай бұрын

@@ZringMalti Does "biss" mean "only"?

Im tunisian and almost understood everything she said 🇹🇳🇲🇹

Just one correction, not about the language (I am Maltese, by the way) but about the introduction where you said "Malta is the Island of the Templars". Malta is the island connected to the Order of Knights Hospitaller of St John, not the Templars. You are usually more precise in your historical facts, which in a way, surprised me.

I'm a Maltese guy who has been following your videos for a while and I was delighted to come across this. You might also notice that the "hair dye" girl was speaking more colloquial Maltese rather than the other more rehearsed videos. Colloquial Maltese often uses English words ... She used the word 'tone' to refer to colour tone. At one point she even switched conpletely to English as you might have noticed. Maltese people tend to be mostly fluently bilingual or trilingual (Maltese, English and many times also Italian with older generations) so the brain works in a very fluid way switching between languages. You might want to check a list of common Sicilian and Maltese words online ... There's a lot more than you think! Great channel by the way! Oh and if you've never visited, next time you're in Sicily you should! We are only a short ferry or plane ride away. :)

@mattiamele3015

8 ай бұрын

To be honest I found that the hair dye girl (Stella Cini) was a bit struggling to form coherent sentences. It wasn't just colloquial, it was poor Maltese. Yes, she said "tone" in English but what would have been the Maltese alternative? Saying "ton" instead of "town"? I believe (feel free to correct me) the best way to express that concept in Maltese is probably "il-blu jaghti fil-vjola" rather than what she said ("il-blu jkollu tone ta' vjola") but she's obviously more at home with English.

@ds5379

8 ай бұрын

@@mattiamele3015 that's how many Maltese speak. They mix English and Maltese all the time, and the protagonist of this video did just that, maybe a bit too much. However, it's mostly puritans speak "pure Maltese" .

@mattiamele3015

8 ай бұрын

@@ds5379 I'm perfectly aware of code-mixing and code-switching in Maltese. It's actually the norm in languages that are mostly used for casual communication in post-colonial contexts. Maltese people are schooled to speak English without resorting to Maltese but usually can't do the opposite. In the case of this girl, since one of her parents is not Maltese, she probably grew up speaking mostly English at home. Maybe that's why she sounds monotone and fumbling to me, and it has nothing to do with her throwing in some English here and there. It's just my impression.

Ladino would be an interesting one for you to try and understand. It is essentially Medieval Spanish mixed with Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and Turkish (depending on which region of the Mediterranean the speaker lives in), but the words and pronunciation of Spanish are a bit different. It’s more archaic compared to modern Castilian.

@gerardomalazdrewicz7514

9 ай бұрын

Ladino is basically 1492 Spanish (jews were told to convert or to leave, Ladino speakers left, kept the language).

@didonegiuliano3547

9 ай бұрын

funny enough in Italian ladino is Ladin; what you call "Ladino" in Spanish and now English is called "giudeo-spagnolo" in Italian (kinda "Judaeo-Spanish") o giudesmo

As a person who knows some arabic (lebanese dialect) i was able to understand around 40%. My mom which is fully fluent in arabic understood 80%

@massey81

9 ай бұрын

@@graemeduncan1232 my mom is a special case as she knows 8 languages. So she has a lot of different words she can substitute in case it isnt exactly a match for the maltese. I myself only know 4. A few months ago i watched a video of a maltese national who spoke with 4 people from tunisia, egypt, syria and saudi arabia (if i remember correctly). They mostly understood almost of what was spoken whereas the Tunisian understood the most since maltese borrows some french and Italian words.

@mahirhussain4890

3 ай бұрын

*mum

I love these videos. Hope they get more traction.

Facinating. I'm enjoying this comparative series very much.

Very cool. One favourite KZreadr doing a video featuring another favourite KZreadr. Not what I was expecting when I started the video. Love it!

Yo metatron, I know these videos don’t get as many views, but I really really like them so I hope you keep posting on this channel ❤❤❤

Love this video and this series your doing! Since you did Maltese Im gonna suggest Calabrian Greek. I think it would fit nicely with this language series your doing. Keep it up!

I’m an Arabic speaker and I can somewhat understand Maltese

@brawndothethirstmutilator9848

9 ай бұрын

I’ve been told that Tunisian Arabic speakers understand a lot of Maltese.

@mostafaammar5041

9 ай бұрын

@@brawndothethirstmutilator9848 yeah I’ve heard this from a few Tunisian friends. I’m Egyptian and I understood most of what was being said.

@James-yp6lu

9 ай бұрын

​@@brawndothethirstmutilator9848Yes it's true

@mahirhussain4890

3 ай бұрын

Cos the first Arabs that were in Sicily and Malta came from Tunisia the aghlabids

Interesting video. There are more Italian (rooted) words than you might guess on first listen. The conjugations makes them sound different but you’d understand if someone pointed it out to you

@etiennebonanno

9 ай бұрын

I also wanted to point this out. He missed quite a few romance words.

Malta was the home of the Order of St John also known as the Knights Hospitaller. Not the Templars. I Would love to visit someday. I’ve always been intrigued by the Order. The Siege of 1565 and Jean De Valette in particular.

I would love to see you do a video on Cajun French from Louisiana.

I'm surprised that you've never been to Malta and (seemingly) don't know much about it. I strongly recommend visiting and listening more to the language. I'm Italian and have been living in Malta for the past 10 years, and it's more similar to Italian than you think. I studied Arabic for a little while and our teacher told us Maltese is 60% Arabic, 20% Italian and the rest is a mix of French/English. Especially all the swearing is practically stolen from Italian. They say "madonna (insert insult here)" all the time, or "ostia" which as I understand is used in Sicily (I'm from Tuscany so I'm not sure about this). Also they said many Italian-like words in the video that you didn't hear/notice properly. What pisses me off is when someone notices some words I use or mannerisms/hand gestures and tell me "thats very maltese!" and I'm like actually NO they stole it from us Italians. Also most Maltese people over and around 30-35 years old, speak Italian, since when they were kids the main source of entertainment was Italian TV and it was mandatory is schools. Maltese love Italians (not so much now, that there are too many annoying Italian tourists), Italian culture and visit Italy a lot!

Nice video really interesting but I'm still asking for Occitan for the fourth time now 😭

In questo periodo stai caricando a manetta! Complimenti per la dedizione❤️

@metatronacademy

9 ай бұрын

Sto testando il sistema. Praticamente sul mio canale principale ho fatto una cosa analoga anni fa, caricando un video al giorno per alcuni mesi. Ora sto cercando di fare la stessa cosa qua. Fin’ora dopo 22 giorni ho avuto un aumento in crescita e views del 650% quindi sta funzionando.

@mercedesSlk666

9 ай бұрын

@@metatronacademy Molto interessante! Sono un grande appassionato di storia e politica, ma non ho mai avuto il coraggio o la costanza di fare quello che fai tu. È un lavoro davvero tosto e apprezzo tantissimo la qualità dei contenuti che ci permetti di vedere. Apprezzo tantissimo anche la tua presa di posizione su alcuni aspetti come il blackwashing e la nuova ondata di revisionismo da parte dei suprematisti africani. È come camminare sui rovi, perché, nonostante siano posizioni di buon senso, si viene subito additati come fascisti o suprematisti bianchi, ma sei in grado di farlo mantenendo sempre la calma e dimostrando una grande maturità intellettuale. Speriamo che questi conflitti si possano risolvere col tempo e che potremo studiare e goderci la storia umana senza politicizzarla, imparando dagli errori del passato e creando una società migliore. Tu fai parte di quelle persone che possono dare un contributo ad una società del genere. Grande metatron❤️ Se mai dovessi passare a Ferrara ti offrirei volentieri un caffè ai piedi del castello Estense!

Raff, when you were talking about differences in purple, it made me think you should do a video about Latin color words into the Romance languages...in particular light vs dark words.

@povilzem

9 ай бұрын

Yeah, somebody should really explain why "black" and "blanc" have the same etymology.

@unarealtaragionevole

9 ай бұрын

@@povilzem Well I was talking more about how Latin doesn't just have different words for the different shades, but also for the generic concepts of color...for example how in Latin black = ater / niger, white = albus / candidus, red = ruber and rufus.........that sort of thing. These were not just shades, but light vs dark concepts used to quickly describe the "type" of color they were talking about.

Esperanto would be interesting to try.

@Zapatero078

9 ай бұрын

Yeah I mean yeah yeah...... yeah Why not?

I found this series really interesting. It's also fascinating to see that there are KZread videos in all of these languages and dialects that you've done so far. I guess it shouldn't be surprising - the internet connects people all over the world. It's easy for an English speaker to think that everything online is done in English.

@faithlesshound5621

9 ай бұрын

Americans usually think the world wide web was invented in the US. It wasn't: Tim Berners-Lee devised it at CERN, which is based at Geneva in multi-lingual Switzerland.

@zaqwsx23

9 ай бұрын

LOL I remember some Americans shocked because they found out that Wikipedia is written also in dozens of other languages. They thought it was only in English. This KZread belief is new to me. So, just for the records, there is also a lot of literature in several languages that has not been translated in other languages yet. Actually there are authors which sold some million copies of their books who have been translated into other languages and none of these ones is English (actually, it surprises me too but I never found their books in English but in Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German...).

@keithkannenberg7414

9 ай бұрын

@@zaqwsx23 To be clear, I'm laughing at myself here.

Grazie pi lu video, Saluta

A very interesting video. I am born in Malta. I have lived almost all of my life (almost 60 years) in Australia. I speak English and Maltese fluently. I also learnt some Italian through classes. I have visited Italy three times. The Maltese language is mostly Arabic based. It has only a splash of Italian and a microscopic amount of French. The Maltese say, ‘bonġġu (good morning)’ and ‘bonswa (good afternoon),’ which is almost identical to French. However, for good night, the Maltese say, ‘I lejl i tajjeb.’ ‘Tajjeb’ is the word for ‘good’ in Arabic. The Maltese have adopted the Italian practice of greeting and parting from close friends and family by saying, ‘ciao.’ Most Maltese people today can speak Maltese and English. They sometimes blend the two languages together into a pidgeon. It annoys me a little, when I know that there is a clear Maltese word available for a concept and there is some blended word used which does not exist but it makes sense to the average Maltese person. I have Arabic friends and when they speak slowly I can understand some of what they say. I agree with the conclusion that you reached that there is not much similarity between Maltese and Italian.

@DannyCTV

4 ай бұрын

*bonġu but you can also say "lghodwa it tajba". The maltese language is semetic. So yes Arabic, but also a mix with italian, English, Spanish also and yes a touch of french. In all honesty I've never heard anyone say bonswa in Malta and I am maltese haha! Good too see you still know your maltese though! Hu gost fl'Awstralja u pjecir siehbi!

Can you do Sardinian? I find it to be one of my favourite languages!

Surely, Metatron, you know that the Knights of Malta (Hospitaliers of St. John) have nothing to do with the Knights Tempplar!

I worked in Malta for a few months once. The language might be Semitic but the cultural radar definitely points towards Europe. Fascinating place.

fascinating

You should go to Malta to see the ancient temples (up to 5,000 years old) built by people who boated over from Sicily. Absolutely incredible stuff to see.

Im arabic from algeria and maltese is so fun to listen to bcz I understand almost every thing It sounds like and arabic dialect to me ( north African especially Tunisian and algerian)

I am from Libya, and I had no problems understanding Maltese (been there more than 3 times). I always considered Maltese similar to the Lebanese Arabic accent with some Italian and English words.

Very interesting. According to Wikipedia, Maltese is "a Semitic language derived from late medieval SICILIAN Arabic".

@Goldenskies__

9 ай бұрын

We know. Sicilians know. But as modern sicilians we don't speak ARABIC. In fact we don't even study ARABIC. Thank you Sherlock... but we already know where Maltese originated from... 🤦🏻‍♀️ That's why we found Maltese fascinating, we can't understand a single word, but we know at some point there were sicilians that spoke ARABIC just like them.

Maybe you can try Rhaeto-Romance.

Can you do Romansh language from Switzerland?

We need more brilliant minds who are just as passionate about Terra’s languages such as yourself!

It had a few words that sounded similar to Norman era English to me.

Can you try a video on Barese or Molfettese?

I wonder if you have tried videos in either Kriyol Aïsyen or Papiamentu.

I had expected more English words. The language sounds beautiful, is very gently flowing without any " throat sounds". (which occur even in our Dutch a bit )

I can understand half of what they say, and I'm from Egypt. Not even close to Tunisia where I would assume the Arabic part is derived from. Fascinating stuff

As a Tunisian I understand 80% of the Maltese language, we have geographical proximity and great historical interaction. In the 19th century, a very large Maltese community lived in Tunisia and left its mark there and some families still live there today. In the kitchen we have specialties from Malta like caldi_caldi, Mbaten with whiting and others and it is also equivalent with Sicily (pasta, Canolli...).

You know what would be cool? You're from Western Sicily. It would be cool if you made a comparison between eastern sicilian and western sicilian. Are they 100% mutually intelligible? Can people communicate? I'm very interested to see

@NoName-yw1pt

9 ай бұрын

@@graemeduncan1232 even within 1 region alone in Sicily there's a difference

@sinenomine7355

2 ай бұрын

As an eastern sicilian I would definitely say yes, we can understand each other because every dialect shares the same roots from sicilian language. Nevertheless, every dialect have its own traits, like candence, accent and unique words, but the majority of us is still used to talk between people from different parts of the island using sicilian language and, in my experience, those differences usually make the communication even more enjoyable 😄

The greetings she taught were actually very interesting. She ended them all with "al-tayyibah", which means something like "the good", but is not the word we would use in this context. (Tayyib, the masculine version of tayyibah, also means "okay" as an interjection.) "Good afternoon" in Arabic is masaa' al-khayr ("al-khayr" meaning "the good"). For "How are you?" she said, "Keef int?" which is a verbatim translation of the English. In Classical Arabic it would be, "Kayfa anta/anti?" if I translated it word-for-word, but in Arabic what we actually say is, "Kayfa 7aaluka/7aaluki?" which translates roughly to, "How is your situation?" (My Arabic examples are Standard/Classical, in dialects all these words sound slightly different.)

@ilanbouwmeester6838

9 ай бұрын

Which dialect is your native one? I believe طيب وانت is one of the standard responses to كيف انت in the Jordanian dialect instead of the classic بخير وانت. But I don't study modern dialects, so not sure.

@AKnightofIslamicArabia

9 ай бұрын

@@ilanbouwmeester6838 Jiddawiyyah, our standard response to how are you is also طيب. I meant we don't say tayeb for good morning/evening.

@mattiamele3015

9 ай бұрын

She says الغدوة الطيبة L-ghodwa t-tajba (pronounced without the gh, with a long o: lōdwa (i)t-tayba).

@ilanbouwmeester6838

9 ай бұрын

@@mattiamele3015 So to add to your comment, lit. (in Arabic) to a good morning. For those intrested the adjective follows the noun and carries the definite article. Without the definite article on the adjective good tayiba it would mean "to a morning is good".

@mattiamele3015

9 ай бұрын

@@ilanbouwmeester6838That is not a hard rule in Maltese. Most often, the adjective doesn’t take the article. However, in greetings, that is mandatory because they are fixed expressions. So it’s l-ghodwa t-tajba, il-waranofsinhar it-tajjeb, l-ikla t-tajba, il-lejl it-tajjeb etc. and also il-gurnata t-tajba (gurnata means day), il-Milied it-Tajjeb (Milied =Christmas), is-Sena t-Tajba etc.

please, give another try to Portuguese, like easy Portuguese, or someone explaining something

Good.

The way you speak English is very refined though 😉

You are Sicilian? Wow that is so cool. You must do one of those DNA reveal video. Maybe you have Roman, Greek or maybe even Norse and Arabic in you.

@Goldenskies__

9 ай бұрын

He knows. We know who our ancestors are. Lol.

40 years ago I worked in Libya and learned very basic Libyan Arabic. Malta was sort of a gateway to Libya and I often visited back then. I could understand the Maltese used in the street markets. Most Arab speakers, especially North Africans can get by in Maltese and visa versa. I'm surprised that you didn't understand more Maltese, you being Sicilian. Thanks for doing this video.

@mattiamele3015

9 ай бұрын

You shouldn’t be surprised, since the Romance vocabulary in Maltese is not significantly Sicilian, contrary to what is often reported. Only a fraction of it is derived from Sicilian rather than from common (Tuscan-based) Italian, and those are not necessarily very frequent words. For example munzell (modern Sicilian munzeddu: a heap, a pile; note that Sicilian dd corresponds to Italian ll), mastrudaxxa (mastru r’ascia: carpenter; intervocalic d becoming a flap r in spoken Sicilian), kutra (same, cutra: blanket). Other words like ġurnata just sound Sicilian because of the vocalism (u instead of o in the syllable before the stressed one) but they’re actually Italian or might be both, indifferently. Maltese normally admits only these three vowels at the end of a word: a, i, u. These are the same vowels that you find at the end of Sicilian words, except Sicilian words are all vowel-ending, much like Italian, whereas Maltese has no problems with consonants at the end of a word. This is why, for example the word velu (veil) sounds Sicilian but it might come from Italian velo, and adapted. Keep in mind that Arabic vowel-ending words also end with a, i or u. This is true of Standard Arabic and most dialects, including Tunisian ones that are the closest to Maltese. Therefore, having only these three vowels (a, i, u) at the end of words is not a Sicilian feature that Maltese has borrowed. At most, the fact that Sicilian agrees with Arabic in this sense just helped Maltese keep that feature. Then you get words like sorpriża which are only superficially Sicilian-like, again because of the vocalism (Italian has an e there: sorpresa) but they’re just Maltese adaptations of standard Italian words (this one is probably also influenced by English surprise). As for the word kuluri that Metatron thought of as Sicilian, please note that Sicilian has “culuri” for both singular and plural, while Maltese has kulur for the singular and kuluri is only the plural form. Kulur, ending in a consonant, is not Sicilian-like except for the vocalism. Maltese (Arabic) masculine nouns usually end with a consonant. That’s why Maltese took Italian colore or Sicilian culuri (we can’t be sure which one) and adapted it by cutting of the last vowel. Accidentally this makes it sound more like a Northern Italian dialectal word than like a Sicilian one, but in the end it’s just generic Italian with an Arabic adaptation.

@fintonmainz7845

9 ай бұрын

@@mattiamele3015 I had (obviously wrongly) expected more "Arabic" in Sicilian.

@mattiamele3015

9 ай бұрын

@@fintonmainz7845Sicilian is just a Romance language, the Arabic loanwords do not make such a high proportion of the vocabulary. It’s a bit like Spanish in this sense. Yes, Arabic loanwords are relatively important, but they are far from making those languages some sort of Romance-Arabic mix. Also, please keep in mind that all Arabic loanwords in Sicilian are heavily modified in order to fit the language which is quite different - whereas Arabic words in Maltese are very much the same as they sound in a regular Arabic dialect, except the guttural sounds are sometimes lost or confused.

Try Aromanian. Its sort of Romanian but a bit close to Italian on some words. For exemple for window its fineastra (italian finestra) while in Romanian its fereastra.

I think you should try Haitian Creole too. It's a French-based creole language; the most spoken creole in the world, actually.

Not sure if you have any experience at all with Uralic languages but I'd be interested to see your impression of Finnish.

Hey Metatron, could you do understanding Greek next? That would be really interesting.

@tassia1954

9 ай бұрын

If you are Italian you can understand modern Greek because these two languages interact with eachother!Ούνα ράτσα Ούνα φάτσα δεν λέμε;

@fisicogamer1902

9 ай бұрын

Metatron speaks modern greek and he has knowledge of ancient greek as well.

@nikolasmacedonites917

9 ай бұрын

Greek is pointless really...

@samdaniels2

9 ай бұрын

@@nikolasmacedonites917 Bit harsh…

@nikolasmacedonites917

9 ай бұрын

@@samdaniels2 I mean standard Greek has almost nothing in common with Italian other than some Greek words that you can also find in many other languages anf which didn't enter these languages from any Greek influence, and some Italian words in Greek which also exist in most other languages. Direct influence on eachother is insignificant unless it comes from very specific contexts. What would actually be kind of worth it would be to do this with local dialects of western Greek islands or Crete, which had been under direct italian rule for centuries. But then, most Greeks wouldn't understand it.

As an european portuguese, I could only understand the exact same words as you

This is kind of the same situation between Spanish and Filipino/Tagalog i.e. heavy amount of loan words but completely different language families. As a non-native Spanish speaker I enjoy watching this type of video and usually catch the same words you do from the Italian pov. 👍

I would love you try to understand Romantsch grischun (Rhaeto-Romanic). I am Ticinese and trilingual F and D so I understand depending on its variety ~85%

@monicabello3527

9 ай бұрын

Can't wait me too, I love it.

3:50 I do want to mention something that Western linguists get wrong. Classical Arabic is an amalgamation of various Saudi dialects from the 7th century. It has not really developed since then, beyond adding words for modern concepts. Just like Luke Ranieri speaks the same Latin as Caesar and Cicero, so do we speak the same Classical Arabic as the early Muslims. Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic are in fact the same thing, and I disagree vehemently with linguists that try to delineate a difference between them. The modern dialects are largely descended from Classical Arabic (even though a lot of the Arab world spoke other dialects of Arabic before the Islamic conquests). It's fairly analogous to Romance languages and their relationship to Classical Latin.

@arrunzo

9 ай бұрын

I believe that it is due to religious unity that Arabic varieties are not rightly recognized as their own languages. If I'm not mistaken, something like Morrocan Arabic (darija) and the Arabic spoken in Egypt, the Levant, and Saudi Arabia would really be separate languages, while "Modern Standard Arabic" (an ironic name for an antiquated language) would be their Latin. In other words, it's like you said: there is the Arabic "Classical Latin" (Modern Standard Arabic/Classical Latin), and what I say is that these Arabic languages are like the Romance languages. I want to say they may even be more different from each other than the Romance languages are from each other, but I'm not informed enough to make this judgment. It's all interesting nonetheless!

@AKnightofIslamicArabia

9 ай бұрын

@@arrunzo I don't want to claim expertise, as I am not a linguist, merely an Arab hobbyist, but by my estimation you are exactly right about the cause of it. The only things I would clarify is different Arabic dialects are largely mutually intelligible. I don't speak any Romance language fluently, but I think our dialects are far more similar than Romance languages. I can understand a Levantine person or an Egyptian essentially perfectly, which, as I understand it (and as Rafael has demonstrated) may not always be the case for, say, an Italian and a Spaniard. So I don't know if they _should_ be called separate languages, but that is largely a political delineation. I think there are two major reasons Arabic dialects are more mutually intelligible than Romance languages: one, as you very succinctly put, is the religious influence; two, I think, is because Classical Arabic is about 700 years younger than Classical Latin, so perhaps the differences between Arabic dialects will be as pronounced as those between Romance languages are now in seven centuries.

@peterfireflylund

9 ай бұрын

My money is definitely on the linguist and not the religious Nationalist!

@ayhamkimo4488

9 ай бұрын

Classical Arabic is different from modern standard Arabic,you can't say that the Arabic i was taught in my Saudi school (MSA) is the same as a caliphate era poetry, not really. MSA is a standardized and modernized version of classical Arabic,which was derived from old hijazi Arabic,which ultimately came from Nabatean Arabic. And actually Arabic dialect are more different from each other than romance languages,the reason we can understand each other as Arabs is because we're all taught MSA so we can get all the different roots in our language,and Arabic dialects use different roots for its words,if we aren't taught MSA and every country started using their own dialect instead as a national language then no we will never understand each other,a monolingual Egyptian speaker will not understand a monolingual Levantine or gulf speaker,you will see such cases with Arabs in the west that only learn the dialect of their family but not MSA.

@AKnightofIslamicArabia

9 ай бұрын

@@ayhamkimo4488 To say that Classical Arabic is a different language from MSA because people on al-Jazeera do not recite verses like Mutanabbi is as nonsensical as claiming I am speaking a different language at the moment than Tolkien did in Lord of the Rings because I am not as eloquent as he was. Certainly the use of the language is different, but to declare them separate languages is entirely nonsensical and entirely arbitrary. Are you actually telling me if someone speaks very eloquently they are suddenly speaking a different language? Yes, MSA is a later standardization than Classical Arabic, which itself is a standardization of Qur'anic Arabic, which is largely Quraysh's dialect but not entirely -- but these are distinctions of definition. The language is identical save some minor pronunciational differences, and if that's important enough to matter, well, then American English and British English may as well be different languages too. It's as bad as the Classical vs Vulgar Latin distinction, and people like Luke Ranieri have debunked that one thoroughly. What are you smoking to say Arabic dialects are not mutually intelligible? I am not Egyptian or Levantine, but the only times I have had trouble communicating with them is when they use different words for things than we do. You really think a monolingual speaker of Egyptian Arabic could not go to, say, Jeddah and communicate? This is so entirely false I don't know what to say. And I know plenty of people that were never taught fusha (diasporids, mostly, and a lot of Lebanese). Yeah, they have some issue talking to people from faraway Arab countries, but they can get by. Remember, I never said they are *fully* mutually intelligible. Old Hejazi was not one dialect, as I'm sure you know. Fusha is an amalgam of different dialects from that region, with different features. Some of the pronunciations were not fixed until the Ottoman period, for example, when the reading of Hafs and 'Aasim became standardized (the umlaut in 3layhim, for example, was not present in the dialect of Quraysh). Moreover, to claim that the dialects of 7th century Hejaz came from the Anbat as if it were a settled matter is a bizarre assertion. Nabatean Arabic had innovations that fusha doesn't, making fusha more primitive in some ways (for example, raising of lax /i/ to /e/ is not present in fusha). Nor is there evidence that the DNA of Hejazis is directly contiguous with that of the Anbat except minor introgressions, which, frankly, I think would not likely be the case if their language was directly descended, unless there was a major adoption of the foreign language, which there is no evidence for. Certainly there are influences, I mean the Anbat were highly influential, and the script comes from them, but dialects of Arabic were spoken in northwestern Saudi Arabia for centuries before the Anbat.

I think I understood about the same as you as an English speaker.

I packed a lot of weight when i went to work a month in Malta because the food was so cheap and good. a common snack was cheese in puff pastry. amazing.

@Hermit_

9 ай бұрын

@@graemeduncan1232 I have no idea honestly, it 's one of the magical thingy 's for me that if i wanna have it, I 'd just go back there. (it makes u fat fast I gotta mention 😅😅)

9:28 djudezmo? Like the Spanish spoken in Istanbul and Saloniki?

you should come to Malta 😁

U should do one on Arabic

I am an Arab from Syria, and surprisingly, I understood a lot of Maltese words!! Specifically verbs and some nouns, and I could understand the subject she was talking about. but it is still hard for me to understand and recognize Maltese words, as hard as understanding other Arabic dialects in Al-Maghreb region, also, the phrases of good morning and afternoon in Maltese are also Arabic, but I think they are used in Tunisia and the rest of Al-Maghreb region, not here in the Levant.

@mattiamele3015

9 ай бұрын

@@graemeduncan1232 He would be able to pick up Maltese in a matter of months and speak it almost like a native (way better than you, at any rate). Harb is not a Maltese word, I’m not sure if it was ever in use.

As a native algerian darija speaker (Arabic darija) I can recognise and understand a lot with some knowledge of Italian I can get better actually the Arabic verity is so close to the Tunisian verity literally I guess a Tunisian person can understand better than I did

Good morning we also use the word bongu (sounds like bon jour)

This was very interesting. As an Arabic speaker, I could almost understand everything. Just like some North African dialects use many French words to ‘sprinkle’ Arabic sentences, this seemed the same except using Italian and English words. I am learning Italian, so hopefully I can soon also add Maltese in my list of languages!

@Mangojozie

9 ай бұрын

@@graemeduncan1232 Hi, yes fair enough, it was more of a tongue in cheek comment in the sense that I could pretend to speak more languages than I actually do. Malta is not really on my priority list of destinations and, if I do go there, I will probably just use English as it seems everyone there speaks it perfectly. I will focus on learning Italian, which has been quite useful to me (in and outside Italy!) and is an important language historically and culturally. Cheers.

@mattiamele3015

9 ай бұрын

@@Mangojozie This person is a fool who spits misinformation and hatred and discourages Arab commenters from learning the language. Don't worry.

Since I speak Arabic and speak several romance languages, I was quite surprised. Na'mel video for instance is we do a video in Arabic!

@mattiamele3015

9 ай бұрын

Na'mel means "I do" in Maghrebi dialects, and na'mlu is "we do". Maltese writes the 'ayn as gh (both ghayn and 'ayn actually) so it's naghmel - naghmlu. I wrote down what the girl says, you should find that if you look at the latest comments.

This is one I've been looking forward to. I've been told it's pretty much just arabic spoken in an Italian accent.

@lasagnasux4934

9 ай бұрын

@@graemeduncan1232 I dunno, I find arabic a pleasant sounding language. Except for ع. Ain can go to hell.

The Maltese language is actually 50%+ Sicillian and 30% Arabic. However in day to day life, the Arabic part of Maltese is mainly used as it is were most of the Maltese comes from .Arabic. But facinating enough you mentioned very little vocab of Maltese is Sicilian. If you had to go through a dictionary of Maltese I promise you, you will understand so much more. These are general conversations so they are bound to sound like Arabic because of something we call the Gherq. This is an Arabic way of forming a verb and a lot of the time our verbs are Semetic derived.

Some suggestions, try 1) Esperanto 2) Proto-Indo European.

I was in Malta in March, and watched the news, I understood 30% of the language, the adjectives and adverbs are the exact same, a lot of the nouns especially that end with tion/zione in English and Italian are the same, but the verbs are mostly Arabic.

@etiennebonanno

9 ай бұрын

News broadcasts tend to use a more semitic register than thr man in the street becuase it is percieved as a 'purer' form of the language. For example, the news would say "mitjar", but no Maltese says "mitjar" IRL - everyone says "ajruport" or simply "airport".

@James-yp6lu

9 ай бұрын

@@etiennebonanno That's really interesting!

5:49 you also say Bonguorno in Malta by the way

As a Libyan I understood her almost completely haha, but I was surprised that you missed some clear Italian words like "bel-lingue differenti" in the beginning which was very easy for me to catch because 'bel' in this case is arabic and means something like 'with' or 'by' and 'lingue differenti' is obvious for everyone when I write it like this 😆 point is Maltese is very easy for us Libyans because we both have a mixture of Arabic and Italiano in our daily lives. Saluti dalla Libia 🇱🇾

Try Romansch next!

as an Algerian, I can understand a lot of words even the pronunciation is similar to north African dialects more than classical Arabic.

Because you did Maltese which is not even an Indo-European language, I hope you would do something on Philippine languages as well. We are probably among the most intense when it comes to code-switching between our local language/dialect and English (thanks to almost 50 years of American rule, huh?) and about 30~40% of our vocabulary are loanwords from Spanish which you have proven that you can perfectly understand in your previous videos. The "most Spanish" language would be Chavacano which is considered a creole, but Tagalog or any other Filipino language would be perfectly fine. Come on please, it would be exciting for you and me 🙏

@atrumluminarium

9 ай бұрын

I think he did Maltese because it has a big tie to Sicilian and Mediterranean history in general.

@luke211286

9 ай бұрын

@@atrumluminarium Yeah, I believe so. Just doing an attempt to request him to cover an Austronesian language with lots of vocabulary from English and a Romance language if he could understand something out of it 😎

This is crazy.. as an Arab I understand around 80% of what she says.. especially as I know some Latin words/English.

I'm Portuguese and I understood the same identical words you understood, laid is my favorite word in English, lol

If you speak Italian and Tunisian Arabic-100% understand Maltese

I went to Malta last year and I can only pick up a few words of Maltese (also being an Italian from Sicily). It's certainly amazing how this language developed over the centuries. The island interestingly enough also had Italian as an official language until the 1930s.

@fintonmainz7845

9 ай бұрын

I believe also English, but I'm not sure.

@etiennebonanno

9 ай бұрын

English is still an official language, along with Maltese. Italian was used extensively on the island before it was colonized by the British Empire, which, for political reasons, worked to eradicate the use of Italian and foster the widespread adoption of English and Maltese (which, until then had been considered pretty much the 'language of the kitchen") to replace it. Nevertheless, the official language of the law courts remained Italian until the first part of the 20th century, and to this day, legalese retains an enourmous amount of Italian terms.

@donquxiote7653

9 ай бұрын

Perhaps the British got rid of that becase Italy was allied with Germany during the WWII? If my memory serves me right, Malta was the most bombed placed on the planet at that time and the Italians were complicit!

@Reazzurro90

9 ай бұрын

@@donquxiote7653 related but not exactly. The British were afraid of mounting Italian nationalism and calls to unite Malta with Italy in the 1930s. Just before the war. But same concept.

@donquxiote7653

9 ай бұрын

Malta was under Muslim rule for just over 220 years. But, all the original people were wiped out in the Arab siege of Malta in the 10th century and more importantly later, the islands were re-habitated by arab people.@@graemeduncan1232

Do the Occitan language

@Unpainted_Huffhines

9 ай бұрын

I've been suggesting that too. I'm predicting a high intelligibility since he caught on to Catalan so readily.

@RoderickVI

9 ай бұрын

Given how he did Catalan and Catalan is an occitan language, I'm inclined to believe that he will understand Occitan just as well. He should listen to Parpalhon Blau's videos

This is getting crazier

As an Iraqi Arabic speaker, Maltese sounds like an Arabic dialect! My mind is blown!

Are Sicilians part Arab. I’m American of Italian descent from the Naples and mostly Sicilian regions where my great grandparents came from.

The thing about Metatron that I find funny is that he speaks English with an accent very close to the acent of Maltese speaking English. I actually thought he was Maltese when I first came across his HEMA/historical themed videos

I'm pretty sure it was the American novelist/travel writer Paul Theroux who summed up Malta thus: Too flat, no trees, too many priests.

If you used written Maltese you would see a different pattern and more Italian words. Since Maltese in the 19th century was written mostly in Latin and later on in Italian, it kept the notary, law words/registro in Italian. In fact most words in the law are Italian. One other thing is the modern things influenced from Italian home items. Like Kamera di bagno, Potrona, Antiporta and many home items imported from Italy at that era.

The greetings which are heard in the insert video are, however, never used by the Maltese. As in, neve ever! "l-Għodwa t-Tajba" and "il-Wara nofsinhar it-Tajjeb" are artificial inventions, and relatively recent. The "Wara nofs inhar it-Tajjeb" was only invented in the 90s. They are used only in some very formal setting, or else on radio and TV, sometimes. Normally, the Maltese say "Bonġu" for good morning (pronounced "bongiu", if written the Italian way). This is either a shortened form of "buongiorno", or of "bonjour". Another thing: some Italian words,. mostly verbs, in Maltese get "disguised" in such a way that a speaker of Italian might not recognised them! This is because such Italian verbs are conjugated in an Arabic way. In the hairdressing video, the girl says "niddeċiedi"...which is based on "decidere" (decide). "Niddeċiedi" is first person present tense (decido, I decide). Such is Maltese!

As an Arabic speaker, I really understand a lot of it, it is like a dialect but with a little bit more differences in pronunciation and with words that are very obviously Italian and English, so i think learning it would be fairly easy or maybe very easy because even hearing it for the first time it isnot that hard to understand

Fortunately as I am from neighboring North Africa to Malta , I have understood everything as it is almost identical to our Arabic dialect in Algeria,Tunisia , which are are not understood in Egypt or middle Est

If you listen more carefully you will find a large number of Sicilian / Italian words which have been conjugated or pluralised in the semitic way. For example the italian word for to decide (decidere) is used in your video when the hair dye girl says "iddecidejt" which means I decided. Another example would be the italian word for fork (forchetta) becomes "furketta' in Maltese but the plural is semiticised "frieket". This is very frequent in Maltese. Also Maltese often has Romance and Semitic words with the same meaning. For example, for 'Kuluri' meaning colours (colori in Italian) there is an alternative semitic word "ilwien" , the singular being "lewn". Maltese also has its own dialects which often differ in the amount of Semitic, Italian and English derivatives used.

At first I was amazed by how few words you picked up, as there were more in the first video that are derived from Italian, but then I remembered they were verbs, so had semitic prefixes and suffixes added for conjugation 😂😂😂 The language used in all videos is basic, you will get more Romance and English words with increased technicality. Law in particular suffers from this. But yes, since arabic is the base Arabs find it much easier to understand, as many know some Romance language too. Also, as an Italian you would not get what is being said even if most words were Italian as syntax is still arabic.

Maltese is kind of a "strange", yet interesting language. It's the only Semitic language considered to be native to Europe and is written with the Latin alphabet. The vocabulary is both highly Semitic/Arabic and Italic. I think something that exemplifies this is when I once read an account of two friends. One friend was Tunisian, the other was Italian. The two of them together were able to decipher different parts of a Maltese language broadcast. It makes sense given that Maltese bears the most resemblance to Tunisian Arabic, as opposed to Moroccan Arabic (darija) or the Arabic of Iraq. Also, the Maltese people themselves have an interesting history. If I'm not mistaken, they were originally Siculo-Arabic speakers (from Sicily) that had adopted Islam and the Arabic language, and then their descendants were "rechristianized".

@atrumluminarium

9 ай бұрын

Regarding religion, the Maltese people never converted to Islam they just practiced Christianity underground. I mean they literally held mass underground in catacombs which had sections decorated and painted to serve as "chapels".

@mattiamele3015

9 ай бұрын

@@atrumluminariumThat is a legend.

@danpol011

7 ай бұрын

@@atrumluminarium as a Maltese person and archaeology student, it can safely be claimed that that is untrue. Malta was majority Muslim for several centuries after the Muslim conquest of Malta in 870 and only re-Christianised by the 13th century by the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. The Maltese language, toponyms and even surnames are telling of an Arabic-speaking Muslim population that later converted to Christianity. Good sources on the subject are "The Making of Christian Malta" by Anthony Luttrell and "A History of Muslim Sicily" by Leonard C. Chiarelli. Merħba u Sliem minn Malta 🇲🇹

those italian words in maltese sound like english words too

As an Egyptian Arabic speaker - I understood 50% of that.