Philip Newton's Journal

An entry on Philip Newton's Journal, has triggered a discussion about the Maltese language. Another Philip Newton who is a parliamentary researcher in the UK wrote this piece for Progress in which he looks back at his first experience of a Labour conference. From Newton's journal:

Which I take to be something like "Only weird crazy people learn Maltese voluntarily if they don't live there". Yay! I'm weird and crazy! :)

The preface goes on to say that, in the author's experience, the three main groups of people interested in Maltese are (a) Arabists, (b) students of the Romance languages (Romanists?), and (c) people who were fascinated by a visit to these "magical islands". He also says that, rather than aiming to lead to oral fluency (being able to speak the language), the book wants to present the language's grammar in such a way that written texts can be understood. (Yay grammar! says the German in me. Kle will know why.) Because of the special interest Arabists have, there are also numerous notes about sound changes or etymology for people who know Arabic, which are specially marked so that people without that background knowledge can ignore them as they are not necessary for the rest of the text. (I read them anyway, 'cos they're fun.)

Floating crumbs - an internet discussion about Malta and the Maltese language

Language change - Oliver Friggieri - Wired Temples

Maltese Wikipedia - Wired Temples