Vella F. Maltese grammar for the use of the English

Publisher: LEGHORN
Date: 1831
Pages: 352Those nations, which in different epochs successively ruled over the Island of Malta, coincided, it seems, in one opinion, namely, in keeping in the s* Ae of barbarism the language of the indiginous. They pretended that the maltese were to come to the knowledge of aforeign language by no other means, bit by the oral communication of those who mastered t lem. Of the different languages, which the Maltese were obliged to adopt, that of neighbouring Italy prevailed, and, consequently, it was used by the local Authorities, preferably to any other, as a common vehicle for transmitting their orders. But this adopted language, far from becoming universal in the Island, is now spoken by the limited number of such individuals only, as can afford the means to study it, and by the few who learn it by practice in their commercial connexions, and intercourse with Italy. Consequently% our language abandoned solely to the vulgar, lost in progress of time, many of its vernacular words by the adoption of foreign ones, chiefly Italian, that insensibly crept into it.