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Maltese isn’t an Arabic dialect. Yes, the grammar and phonology and core function words derive from Arabic, but more than half of the vocabulary comes from Ital

Maltese isn’t an Arabic dialect. Yes, the grammar and phonology and core function words derive from Arabic, but more than half of the vocabulary comes from Italian/Sicilian-North African Arabic may borrow a few words from Italian here and there (just like English does), but not >50% of their vocabulary.

englishrookie 1y ago
By your reasoning, English isn't a Germanic language since over half of its vocabulary comes from Latin or French.
- argsnd 1y ago
  You certainly wouldn’t call English a “dialect”
  - Archelaos 1y ago
    "A language is a dialect with an army and navy" -- Max Weinrich In the Yiddish original: "אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט", see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...
    - exasperaited 1y ago
      Best not to needle the Maltese about their army and navy. They are tiny but tough (and still significant). So tough that "siege of Malta" needs a disambiguation page on Wikipedia.
    - skissane 1y ago
      Can’t read the Hebrew alphabet, but transliterated to Latin: “a shprakh iz a dyalekt mit an armey un flot” - I find it fascinating that despite knowing close to zero Yiddish, it makes complete sense.. well, I know a handful of German words (which covers “mit”)… and “flot” contextually makes sense as “navy”, especially if one knows English “flotsam and jetsam” (not navy but at least nautical)
  - englishrookie 1y ago
    I would certainly call it a Germanic dialect.
- ogogmad 1y ago
  I think the family tree model of linguistic history is not very useful for English. Saying English is Germanic to the exclusion of everything else is not very useful. The family tree model seems to assume that every language has only 1 direct ancestor. It seems to have been inspired by phylogenetic trees in biology. In phylogenetics, single-parent trees work fine because distantly related species can't breed with one other. By contrast, different languages borrow features from one another all the time. It could perhaps be useful for some languages, but not for English. I reckon.

englishrookie 1y ago

By your reasoning, English isn't a Germanic language since over half of its vocabulary comes from Latin or French.

argsnd 1y ago
You certainly wouldn’t call English a “dialect”
- Archelaos 1y ago
  "A language is a dialect with an army and navy" -- Max Weinrich In the Yiddish original: "אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט", see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...
  - exasperaited 1y ago
    Best not to needle the Maltese about their army and navy. They are tiny but tough (and still significant). So tough that "siege of Malta" needs a disambiguation page on Wikipedia.
  - skissane 1y ago
    Can’t read the Hebrew alphabet, but transliterated to Latin: “a shprakh iz a dyalekt mit an armey un flot” - I find it fascinating that despite knowing close to zero Yiddish, it makes complete sense.. well, I know a handful of German words (which covers “mit”)… and “flot” contextually makes sense as “navy”, especially if one knows English “flotsam and jetsam” (not navy but at least nautical)
- englishrookie 1y ago
  I would certainly call it a Germanic dialect.
ogogmad 1y ago
I think the family tree model of linguistic history is not very useful for English. Saying English is Germanic to the exclusion of everything else is not very useful. The family tree model seems to assume that every language has only 1 direct ancestor. It seems to have been inspired by phylogenetic trees in biology. In phylogenetics, single-parent trees work fine because distantly related species can't breed with one other. By contrast, different languages borrow features from one another all the time. It could perhaps be useful for some languages, but not for English. I reckon.