Who is Gemma, and why does she keep writing letters to the parish priest?

[pne]

In one grammar of the Maltese language that I looked at once, they really seemed to like using the example sentence Ġemma kitbet ittra lill-kappillan ("Gemma wrote a letter to the parish priest"), to illustrate some grammatical point or other.

I found it rather amusing once that sentence had cropped up the fifth or sixth time, and wondered what was so special about that sentence that the authors of the book liked it so much as an example sentence :)

Random linguistical observation: the Maltese word ittra derives from a re-interpretation of the Italian lettera "letter" (presumably littra in some dialect or other) as l-ittra, with l- being the definite article in Maltese. The phenomenon is similar to how the English word adder derives from an earlier word nadder (compare German Natter "asp", Ringelnatter "grass snake, ring snake") through a re-interpretation of a nadder as an adder.

Maltese also has an example the other way around: the word ilma "water" derives from a form including the definite article (compare Arabic الماء al-ma' "the water"). Adding the Maltese definite article results in l-ilma, with (theoretically) two definite articles on the same word! (But then, even English has similar things in, say, children, which has two plural suffixes, -(e)r and -en, on the same word, as does Dutch with kinderen and eieren.)

Comments

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of Arabic words starting in "al" are used as if they had no article in other languages. Right now I can only think of "die El Kaida", but there are lots of originally Arabaic words with "al" in Spanish.

[pne.livejournal.com]

True.

However, Maltese is a dialect/descendant/relative of Arabic, so I wouldn't have expected that to happen there.

[wingflutter.livejournal.com]

the thing about Maltese... although it's a direct descendant of Arabic, it is also almost equally descendant of Italian... therefore, the articles we added to Italian words had to be added to Arabic words to create a [somewhat] consistent language.

that, or we just wanted to be different :)

[n-true.livejournal.com]

Or like in English: "The El Alamein" (3 articles in a row!). :)
Swahili did a similar thing with Arabic "kitab" (book), it interpreted the "ki-" as a classmarker and so the plural form of "kitabu" is "vitabu", hehe. :)

[pne.livejournal.com]

"The El Alamein" (3 articles in a row!).

Three? Isn't the last word something like `alamiin, i.e. starting with `ayn rather than 'alif? In which case, the "(`)al-" bit is not the definite article.

Swahili did a similar thing with Arabic "kitab" (book), it interpreted the "ki-" as a classmarker and so the plural form of "kitabu" is "vitabu", hehe. :)

Heh :) Or the famous "vipilefiti"(sp?), the plural form or "traffic roundabout"... since in a left-hand-drive country, roundabouts often have signs telling you to "keep left"!

[n-true.livejournal.com]

Oops, then I was misinformed. *goes to shoot misinformant*

Haha, that last one's cool! :D

[tungol.livejournal.com]

Or the famous "vipilefiti"(sp?), the plural form or "traffic roundabout"
Oh, that's great!

[wingflutter.livejournal.com]

oh and about Gemma and the parish priest... no clue. i'm guessing it's some significant maltese story... but don't ask me which because i have no recollection of it right now!

Gemma is a typically old Maltese name... also brought over from Italy ;) ... and it is also a name given to characters in books, films, serials, etc.

As for the parish priest *sigh*, well, that's all down to our Roman Catholic roots. Although it;s not the case with growing towns now, you'll still find it in the smaller villages - the Kappillan is the reference point of the village. Everything runs by him... and even though there are now mayors in even the small villages, you might find that the Kappillan has more say than the Mayor does ;-)

[meeps-hitchie.livejournal.com]

Mweh-heh-heh ... kinderen and eieren
Now that you mention it ... They did strike me as odd when I saw them for the first time somewhere out there. Thanks for helping my lazy brain out. I'll treassure the info.

[ellakhne-puge.livejournal.com]

Hi, just wanted to let you know I've added you to my list of friends. You're in one of the communities I read (linguaphiles), but I actually found you in the small list of LJ users interested in Shavian alphabet and spelling reform :)

[pne.livejournal.com]

Welcome!