Joseph Brincat, a professor of Italian linguistics at the University of Malta, will be discussing migration and language in Malta in a talk being presented at the Din l-Art Ħelwa premises on Thursday.

Although most of the islands of the Mediterranean have shared a long series of conquests and colonisation, Malta is unique in being so heavily overpopulated.

This factor has been instrumental in shaping the linguistic history of Malta and Gozo.

From the Temple period to the Byzantine age, the small number of inhabitants made language shift very likely, although it is unrecorded, and since the Muslim conquest introduced spoken Arabic, contact with Sicilian, Italian and English was not limited to cross-border contacts.

The constant flow of immigrants, many of whom settled permanently, played an important role in the (neo-) Latinisation of the local language. In fact, the stratigraphy of the lexicon matches that of our surnames, percentage wise.

The talk is being held at Din l-Art Ħelwa premises in Melita Street, Valletta, on Thursday at 6.30pm.

Entrance is free but a donation to DLĦ will be appreciated.  For more information, call 2122 5952 or send an e-mail to: info@dinlarthelwa.org.