Darkoshi

I've been reading a bit about Malta as I had only a vague idea of where it was, and knew not much else about it.

Per Wikipedia, in the past Jews and Muslims were expelled from the island, and Catholicism is now the main religion (83%) there. Yet the predominant language, Maltese, is descended from Silician Arabic (which is now extinct).

So Malta is a mainly Christian nation with an Arabic-sounding language. I wonder if there are any other countries like that.


Video title: The Sound of the Maltese language (Numbers, Greetings, Words & Sample Text)
Posted by: ILoveLanguages!
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIv_7dMTl3g
Date posted: Nov 7, 2020


According to that video, "Good Afternoon" in Maltese is "Il wara nofs in-nhar it-tajjeb!"
I wondered what the literal translation of that was, as surely that is saying more than just "good afternoon".
But from checking the individual words in Google translate:
wara = after
nofs = half
in-nhar = in the day
it-tajjeb = the good
So it sort of means "good second half of the day", which really does simply mean "good afternoon".

.

Then I clicked on a suggested video explaining How to Roll Your R's.
My R's aren't rolling yet but maybe if I keep practicing. Once in a while, even before, I've been able to get a very short trill, but nothing sustainable.

So, apparently a hyphen is different from a minus sign which is different from a hyphen-minus, not to mention the n-dash and m-dash.

Oh. Oh, my. My, my, my.

Great Language Game - I got 550 points on my first try. I missed out on Somali, Estonian, and Macedonian.

The Somali sample sounds sort of like Arabic and Hebrew to me.
The Estonian sample has a slight Russian sound to it, but not much. A lot of "sh"s.
The Macedonian sounds very Russian/Slavic to me.