Can North Africans Understand Maltese?

What is the degree of mutual intelligibility between the North African dialects of Arabic, from Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, and the Maltese language, the only Semitic language in the European Union, which shares a lot in common with Arabic! There are many similarities between them due to the history of the region. Starting in the 9th century, following the Abbasid conquest of Sicily, for over two centuries, the islands of Sicily and Malta were under Muslim rule, known as the Emirate of Sicily. During this period a variety of Arabic, known as Sicilian Arabic (Siculo-Arabic), was formed. A series of battles eventually led to the fall of Muslim rule and the re-establishment of Christian control over Sicily and Malta. However, Sicilian Arabic continued to be spoken under the new state for a few ensuing centuries until it eventually went extinct. The Maltese language today is considered to be its sole surviving descendant. The North African dialects of Arabic are related to Sicilian Arabic since they are Maghrebi dialects with a lot of similarities. As a result, the degree of mutual intelligibility between them is very high. In this video, we'll take a look at how well Libyans, Tunisians, Algerians, and Moroccans can understand Maltese with Sean (Maltese speaker) reading a couple of short paragraphs and proverbs to Lameese, Donia, Yasser, and Jihane, who represent Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, respectively.

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Algerian Arabic (Darja) is a dialect derived from the form of Arabic spoken in northern Algeria and contains Amazigh (Berber) and Latin influences, along with loanwords from French, Andalusian Arabic, Ottoman Turkish and Spanish.

Libyan Arabic is a variety of Arabic that can be divided into two major dialect areas, Eastern in Benghazi and Bayda, and Western in Tripoli and Misrata.

Tunisian Arabic is similar to eastern Algerian Arabic and western Libyan Arabic, and also contains Amazigh (Berber) influence, along with loanwords from French, Turkish, and Italian.

Moroccan Arabic (Darija) is close to Algerian Arabic and has a lot of Amazigh influence, along with Punic (Canaanite), French, and Spanish.

Arabic is a Central Semitic language and has official/national status Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, SADR, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania (Zanzibar), Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

The Maltese language (Malti) is the Latinised variety of spoken historical Arabic through its descent from Siculo-Arabic, which developed as a Maghrebi Arabic dialect during the Emirate of Sicily. It is the national language of Malta and distinguished from Arabic and other Semitic languages due to the heavy influence from Romance languages on its morphology. In addition to that, Maltese is the only Semitic language written in the Latin script.