http://www.maltabook.com/maltesebooks.htm
Eamon kiteb:
> Thanks for the link! It's great!
Yeah, there's some good stuff on there! I hadn't seen Yitzik's post when I
wrote my reply.
> > "Teach Yourself Maltese"
> I'm definitely going to look for it, and the price is right. Thanks
> for the suggestion!
No problem. It's worth it. The book goes into all sorts of juicy grammatical
details too. The two things it's missing, though, are readings (as in small
continuous texts in Maltese; it only has sentence-by-sentence translation
exercises) and a glossary at the back.
The best source for Maltese books I've found is
http://www.maltabook.com/maltesebooks.htm. I ordered some of my Maltese
books from them. Rather pricey, as the postage was quite expensive, but so
worth it if you've got some extra cash! And they have books I've never found
anywhere in this country.
> I am a bit of a novice when it comes to
> Semitic languages. I've been fascinated by them for years,
Same here! I've never made the effort to learn one, though, beyond some
basic pleasantries and such like. As cool as the
change-the-vowels-around-the-unchanging-consonant-root thing is, I've found
it just hard enough to wrap my brain around to discourage me from making a
serious attempt at learning. Though I dig Maltese so much that I will have
to really work on it one of these days. :)
> > Probably the most striking thing about the phonology is that it's lost >
all the "harsh" sounds of Arabic: <snip>
> These are all features that drew me to it as well. The sound is
> unmistakably Arabic, but it's so smooth and has that slight Romance
> sound to it.
Plus all the Romance loanwords! I think the combination is just beautiful.
> For my "Creole Arabic" (which is actually more of a
> non-p/c mixed langauge with creole features) I wanted to dispense
> with the emphatics, pharyngeals, etc. Although I have no
> con-culture or con-history imagined for my langauge, I always
> pictured a Mediterranean and thus Romance influence on it (and
> perhaps Greek as well); Maltese provides me with the perfect model
> of what to do for a phonology.
Sounds very cool! I'll look forward to seeing it.
> Thomas, my friend, despair no more: as I'm always looking for a way
> to listen to Maltese, I googled around and I found this. Check out
> this link. Radju Malta 2 is listed under Radio Malta.
Aiiiii! Beautiful! Grazzi hafna!
> I first heard Maltese on the Voice of the Mediterranean, and fell in
> love with it. I could listen to Maltese all day long.
Ditto! I was fascinated with it from the moment I happened to stumble across
TY Maltese in a bookshop (in Athens, of all places), and I fell even deeper
in love with it when I actually heard it spoken (via internet radio). I
could listen to it all day long too. It's great to know other people out
there who are as into the language as I am! :)
Thomas