Talk:Maltese alphabet

A fact from Maltese alphabet appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 6 May 2004. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the Maltese alphabet contains 29 letters but does not contain the Latin letter Y?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2004/May.

Wikipedia

Writing systems High‑importance

	Writing portal This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Writing systems, a WikiProject interested in improving the encyclopaedic coverage and content of articles relating to writing systems on Wikipedia. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project’s talk page.Writing systemsWikipedia:WikiProject Writing systemsTemplate:WikiProject Writing systemsWriting system articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Malta High‑importance

	Malta portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Malta, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Malta on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MaltaWikipedia:WikiProject MaltaTemplate:WikiProject MaltaMalta articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

The reference to "Latin letter Y" is somewhat confusing, as there is no Y in classical Latin. I cannot think of a better way to put it though.

Dotless C[edit]

Did dotless c sound like modern k?

No. The 'c' in Maltese - regardless of whether with or without dot - was and always is pronounced as 'ch' is in English.

In pre-20th century writing, the dotless C had the same value as in Italian. That is, 'k' except before the vowels E and I when it was pronounced as 'ch'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.0.15.181 (talk) 02:31, 17 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

IPA[edit]

A guide to how each letter is generally pronounced would be rather useful. And some explanation as to why the diacritics are used (to provide a way of writing sounds not generally found in Romance / Germanic languages, for example). And how does this alphabet differ from other Latin-derived alphabets, such as Turkish?

This feels rather like a stub article, to me. Given that most Maltese people can handle English pretty well, I'm surprised this article isn't considerably longer and more detailed… — OwenBlacker 15:58, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maltese alphabet to romanise Arabic?[edit]

Does Maltese alphabet have enough letters to (theoretically) romanise Modern Standard Arabic? See also: Talk:Romanization of Arabic--Atitarev (talk) 23:40, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Only ambiguously, since many distinct sounds in Arabic merged in Maltese.

For example, "għ" comes from both ع and غ; "s" from both س and ص; and so on. -- pne (talk) 11:26, 1 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ħ[edit]

May I kindly ask if anybody knows; Who invented the ħ letter first? The International Phonetic Association or people from Malta for the Maltese language. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 08:24, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I believe it came first in the Maltese alphabet. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.202.43.54 (talk) 00:48, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Maltese vowel "o" - International Phonetic Alphabet[edit]

Maltese letter: o

long, like aw in law: sod (IPA: ɔ) - sod means "solid" (it comes from Italian sodo: IPA: 'sɔdo)
short, like o in got: bott (IPA: ɒ) - bott means "bottle" (it comes from French boîte or from Sicilian buatta)

Source: http://www.aboutmalta.com/language/maltesegrammar.htm

Other sources:

Pronunciation of "law": http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/law (IPA: lɔ)
Pronunciation of "got": http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/got (IPA: gɒt)
Pronunciation of "got" (especially in formal contexts, in Brittish English anyway) (IPA: gɔt)

Best regards

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarvaturi (talk • contribs) 11:56, 21 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Adding accented vowels to alphabet[edit]

Is there a reason why the accented vowels Àà, Èè, Ìì, Òò, and Ùù are only mentioned at the end of the article and not included in the alphabet at the top? Mtanti (talk) 20:21, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]