Originally Posted by
Virtuous
I don't know how the pre-historic people talked here, but the earliest language spoken is indeed known to be Phoenician, Roman..I don't know if the common people spoke it. Then came Sicilian-Arabic naturally, then the Normans/Feudal ages followed by the Knights and many centuries of heavy Latinization of the Language, that's pretty much how Maltese formed. Now, the fact that people are talking Maltese today as a written and learned language is because of scholars in the 20th Century. We could have been easily talking Italian instead today.