Siciliano e italiano a Malta fra Quattro e Cinquecento

by Davide Basaldella

published by Travaux de Linguistique Romane, Philologie et édition de textes, n.7, ELiPhi, Strasbourg, 2024

Reading late medieval manuscript texts is never easy. Besides the peculiar handwriting, the language used had developed in a relatively free manner, groping between the stable, strictly controlled expression in Latin and pressure from the local spoken forms. This is the case of the documents conserved in Maltese archives that had been written before the Knights of St John introduced Italian in the mid-16th century.

When Malta was, to all effects and purposes, a part of Sicily, the language of administration was Chancery Sicilian. This was a refined form, a koiné, that distanced itself from the many spoken varieties and was designed to substitute Latin for local written purposes.

The only way of acquiring it, in Sicily itself, was pragmatic, by a kind of apprenticeship in legal and administrative offices; because it was not standardised, it had no grammar and no dictionaries.

Davide Basaldella boldly took up the challenge of writing a detailed analysis of the language used by Maltese notaries in the late 15th and the early 16th century. Photo: Shutterstock.com

Maltese notaries had the added obstacle of working in an environment where the local population, their clients, spoke a language based on a dialect of Arabic introduced five centuries before. This means that they needed to adapt their style and vocabulary to local needs especially in practical documents like testaments, inventories and deeds of sale.

Davide Basaldella of the University of Venice boldly took up the challenge of writing a detailed analysis of the language used by Maltese notaries in the late 15th and the early 16th century.

He chose 13 texts, written between 1486 and 1513, and 20 texts, dated between 1539 and 1565. The gap of 26 years allowed him to compare and contrast the former with the latter, and so highlight the transition from Sicilian to Italian, analysing the gradual decrease of the old style up to the acts of Placido Abela and Giacomo Baldacchino whose language follows the Tuscanising trend that was then spreading in Italy.

A detailed description of peculiarities in spelling, morphology, syntax and the lexicon

Of course, like their Italian counterparts, these two had proper grammars available, thanks to Fortunio (1516), Bembo (1525) and a host of others published in the 16th century. Significantly, these works are kept at the Bibliotheca in Valletta.

Basaldella presents a detailed description of peculiarities in spelling, morphology, syntax and the lexicon.

He explains the switching of voiced and unvoiced consonants (asseguro, gandela), the conservation of consonant clusters like CL, PL, BL, FL (plactu, flascu, blancu), the use of z for c (Franza, azaru), Catalan x for [ʃ] (faxa, buxula, cuxini), the letters k and y (carriki; voyto), the use of j for palatal g [dʒ] (jurati, jumenta), g for [ɂ] (għajn, galca). The only spelling inconsistency which defies explanation is the use of ch, which can be palatal [tʃ] (chana, chintu) or velar [k] (banchetti, Roccho), but can also represent the aspirate in words of Arabic origin (channaca, chasira, charubi).

An example of a manuscript from the late 15th century. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The glossary at the end of the book is especially useful. It consists of 343 words and contains 32 words of Arabic origin, of which 23 are Siculo-Arabisms (gebia, hasira, hannaca) and only nine belong solely to Maltese (galca, hakyka, migbid, xatba). One obviously finds legal and technical terms (angara, censuali, franco, plegio, quitari; paramuru, pedamentu), as well as modified forms like arbolo, cultra/cutra, linbuto.

Basaldella not only includes a wide and up-to-date bibliography but his text shows that he made very careful use of all the important available studies on our language, by Maltese scholars (Borg – Alexander and Albert, Brincat, Fiorini, Wettinger, and especially the Documentary Sources of Maltese History), as well as by foreigners (Barbato, Caracausi, Bresc, Rinaldi, Salvioni, Sottile, Varvaro, Maggiore and Leone).

Scholars and students carrying out research in Malta’s archives will certainly welcome this comprehensive and reliable reference work. It is also available online here.