Afro-Asiatic · ISO 639-3 mlt · mt
Maltese Language Malti
Maltese is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken by about 570,000 people in 1 country. It is an official language of Malta. It is written in the Latin script.
Where Maltese is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Maltese
Language family
- Afro-Asiatic
- Semitic
- West Semitic
- Central Semitic
- Arabian
- Arabic
- North African Arabic
- Western Middle Arabic
- Maghrebi
- Malta-Tunisian Arabic
- Maltese
Writing system
Latin script
Related languages
About the Maltese language
Maltese (Malti) is spoken by about 570,000 people, which makes it the 493rd most spoken language in the world — just behind Adyghe (575,900) and ahead of Papiamento (549,000). It belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language family and, more precisely, to the Malta-Tunisian Arabic group within the West Semitic branch.
Where is Maltese spoken?
Maltese is used in 1 country. The largest communities live in Malta (469,730). More than half of the population speaks it in Malta — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Maltese is an official language in 1 country: Malta.
Writing system and status
Maltese is written in the Latin script. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Tunisian Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Hassaniyya, Libyan Arabic, Standard Arabic and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 mt, ISO 639-3 mlt.
Frequently asked questions about Maltese
How many people speak Maltese?
Where is Maltese spoken?
In which countries is Maltese an official language?
What language family does Maltese belong to?
What is Maltese called in Maltese?
Is Maltese an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.