| Siculo-Arabic | |
|---|---|
| Sicilian Arabic | |
| العربية الصقلية | |
| Native to | Emirate of Sicily |
| Era | 9th–13th centuries[1] developed into Maltese |
| Arabic alphabet | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | sqr |
| Glottolog | sicu1235 |
| This article is part of the series on the |
| Sicilian language |
|---|
| History |
| Literature and writers |
| Linguistics |
| Organisations |
Siculo-Arabic or Sicilian Arabic (Arabic: اللَّهْجَة الْعَرَبِيَّة الصِّقِلِّيَّة, romanized: al-lahja l-ʿarabiyya ṣ-ṣiqilliyya) is the term used for varieties of Arabic that were spoken in the Emirate of Sicily (which included Malta) from the 9th century, persisting under the subsequent Norman rule until the 13th century.[3] It was derived from Arabic following the Abbasid conquest of Sicily in the 9th century and gradually marginalized following the Norman conquest in the 11th century.
Siculo-Arabic is extinct and is designated as a historical language that is attested only in writings from the 9th–13th centuries in Sicily.[4][5] However, present-day Maltese is considered to be its sole surviving descendant. Maltese evolved from one of the dialects of Siculo-Arabic over the past 800 years and a gradual process of Latinisation that gave Maltese a significant superstrate influence from Romance languages.[6][7][8] By contrast, present-day Sicilian, which is an Italo-Dalmatian language, retains relatively little Siculo-Arabic vocabulary; its influence is limited to some 300 words.[9]
Siculo Arabic is the term used for the variety (or varieties) of Arabic spoken in Sicily under the Arabs and then the Normans from the 9th to 10th centuries.
The kind of Arabic used in the Maltese language is most likely derived from the language spoken by those that repopulated the island from Sicily in the early second millennium; it is known as Siculo-Arab. The Maltese are mostly descendants of these people.
Originally Maltese was an Arabic dialect but it was immediately exposed to Latinisation because the Normans conquered the islands in 1090, while Christianisation, which was complete by 1250, cut off the dialect from contact with Classical Arabic. Consequently Maltese developed on its own, slowly but steadily absorbing new words from Sicilian and Italian according to the needs of the developing community.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)