Everything about Maltese People totally explained
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Gerald Strickland •
Enrico Mizzi •
Edward de Bono •
Rużar Briffa
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c. 740,000
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400,000 (2006)
153,805 (2006 Census))
The
Maltese people or
Maltese are a
Southern European nation and
ethnic group native to
Malta, an island nation consisting of an archipelago of seven islands in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.
Historical background
Malta has been inhabited from around
5200 BC, since the arrival of the
Sicani tribe from the Italian island of
Sicily. However in the course of Malta's recent history, the language has adopted large volumes of vocabulary, grammar, and lexology from
Italian (in particular,
Sicilian),
English, and lesserly,
French. The official languages of Malta are
English and Maltese, with Italian also widely spoken.
Maltese became an official language of Malta in 1934, prior to which the official language was Italian. Today, there are an estimated 371,900 Maltese speakers. There are a significant number of Maltese expatriates in Australia, the United States and Canada who can still speak the language.
Multilingualism
Bilingualism and even
multilingualism is quite common in Malta. The Eurobarometer statistics show 100% of people speak
Maltese, 88% speak
English, 66%
Italian, 17%
French, which shows a greater degree of fluency in a greater amount of languages than many other European countries have.
For 29% of the population, English is the language of the workplace. Studies indicate that somewhere between 86% and 90% of the population speak Maltese within their families, while among friends, that figure drops to about 83.6%. For several decades there has been a growing trend among young Maltese families to speak to their children in English at home. Secondary and tertiary education is exclusively in English.
Religion
The Constitution of Malta provides for
freedom of religion but establishes Roman Catholicism as the
state religion.
Freedom House and the
World Factbook report that 98 percent of the Maltese religion is Roman Catholic, making the nation one of the most Catholic countries in the world.
Possible genetic links
The origins debate
The genetic or ethnic origins of the Maltese people have been fiercely debated among historians and geneticists. The origins question is complicated by numerous factors, including Malta's turbulent history of invasions and conquests, with long periods of depopulation followed by periods of immigration to Malta and intermarriage with the Maltese by foreigners from the
Mediterranean,
Western and
Southern European countries that ruled Malta, including the exile to Malta of the entire male population of the town of
Celano (Italy) in
1223, the stationing of a
Norman French and
Sicilian Italian troops on Malta in
1240, the expulsion from of all remaining
Arabs from Malta in
1224, the arrival of several hundred
Catalan soldiers in
1283, the European repopulation of Malta that began in the
13th century, the settlement in Malta of noble families from Sicily and
Aragon between
1372 and
1450, the arrival of several thousand
Greek and Rhodian sailors, soldiers and slaves with the
Knights of St. John, the introduction of several thousand Sicilian labourers in
1551 and again in
1566, the emigration to Malta of some 891
Italian exiles during the
Risorgimento in
1849, and the posting of some 22,000
British servicemen in Malta from
1807 to
1979.
Historical and ethnic studies published and promoted by the various ruling classes during their governance over Malta provide little, if any, valuable guidance on the question of Maltese ethnicity, given that their conclusions appear to have been driven, in large part, by political expediency. Hence, Maltese history books published during the rule of the
Knights of St. John, at a time when Malta and Gozo suffered repeated
razzias at the hands of the
Ottomans and
Barbary corsairs, promoted the myth of a continuous,
Roman Catholic, native Maltese population, that somehow survived despite the
Arab conquest of Malta and the depopulation that followed. Studies and reports published during the British colonial period promoted the theory of
Phoenician origins, in an attempt to distinguish the Maltese from their
Sicilian and
Italian neighbours, or in the case of the
Catholic Church, to distinguish the Maltese from the
Arab peoples that controlled Malta prior to the liberation of Malta by the Normans. By contrast, history books published during the
Mintoff years following
Independence began to question the earlier beliefs in a continuous, indigenous population of Christian Maltese and, in some cases, quietly promoted the theory of closer cultural and ethnic ties with North Africa. This new development was noted by Boissevain in
1991:
...the Labour government broke off relations with NATO and sought links with the Arab world. After 900 years of being linked to Europe, Malta began to look southward. Muslims, still remembered in folklore for savage pirate attacks, were redefined as blood brothers.
This latter development coincided with and reflected dramatic new (but short-lived) developments in Maltese foreign policy: Western media reported that Malta appeared to be turning its back on
NATO, the
United Kingdom, and
Europe generally; Libya had loaned several million dollars to Malta to make up for the loss of rental income which followed the closure of British military bases in Malta; Malta and Libya had entered into a
Friendship and Cooperation Treaty, in response to repeated overtures by
Gaddafi for a closer, more formal union between the two countries; and, for a brief period, Arabic had become a compulsory subject in Maltese secondary schools. However, following the termination of the Mintoff government and backed by popular sentiment, Malta abandoned its fledgling relationship with North Africa and returned its attention and allegiance to NATO and Europe.
The Phoenician origins theory
Some recent studies carried out by geneticists
Spencer Wells and Pierre Zalloua of the
American University of Beirut collected samples of
Y-chromosomes from men living in the Middle East, North Africa, southern Spain, and Malta, places the
Phoenicians are known to have settled and traded. According to the study, more than half (50 %) of the Y chromosome lineages that are seen in today's Maltese population could have come in with the Phoenicians. As to why there's such a significant genetic impact, Wells could only speculate,
"but the results are consistent with a settlement of people from the Levant within the past 2,000 years, and that points to the Phoenicians."
The Phoenician background of the Maltese suggests possible cultural, religious, and linguistic links to Lebanese
Maronites (also descended from Phoenicians revealed during National Geographic's Special), who speak a variety of Arabic and are Christian.
(External Link
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The Southern Italian theory
A major study found that
"the contemporary males of Malta most likely originated from Southern Italy, including Sicily and up to Calabria," and that
"[t]here is a minuscule amount of input from the Eastern Mediterranean with genetic affinity to Christian Lebanon." This contradicts the "
Phoenician origins" theory, and states that the main Maltese population originally came from the
Sicani tribes on
Sicily. There One of the authors of the major study commented as follows on the Wells/Zalloua study:
"We are aware of conflicting conclusions published as an interview in the popular National Geographic magazine. Despite an intensive search we can't find them reproduced in the mainstream scientific literature. We consider that data somewhat flawed, and furthermore, unsound. National Geographic isn't a peer-reviewed academic journal and thus the weight of the evidence is poor compared to other peer-reviewed academic journals that are also in the public domain. One can't be comfortable with data that have not passed the scrutiny of peer review....
[I]t seems to me that the simplest explanation that can't be excluded by any of the scientific data thus far available is that Malta was indeed barely inhabited at the turn of the tenth century.
Repopulation is likely to have occurred by a clan or clans (possibly of Arab or Arab-like speaking people) from neighbouring Sicily and Calabria. Possibly, they could have mixed with minute numbers of residual inhabitants, with a constant input of immigrants from neighbouring countries and later, even from afar. There seems to be little input from North Africa."
Further Information
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