dizzjunarju

Last Friday marked a momentous occasion for the Maltese language: at a fancy shindig at the Valletta Campus of the University of Malta, a new national dictionary of Maltese was unveiled. Edited by Michael Spagnol and Dwayne Ellul and accessible to all at dizzjunarju.mt, it will eventually become the main reference for the Maltese lexicon.

The event was very well planned and fun - there were musical and spoken word performances, there were talks; even the building was decked out with all things lexical (see below).

One of the talks, delivered by Dwayne Ellul, surveyed the history of Maltese lexicography. In Dwayne's telling, it begins with Hieronymus Megiser's works. His 1603 Thesaurus Polyglottus only contains nine Maltese - Melitens. - words where Maltese is sometimes equated with Punic. The closest thing to a dictionary of Maltese authored by Megiser, however, is his 1610 Propugnaculum Europae, a description of Malta, which contains a list of Maltese words.

The first real dictionary of Maltese in the modern sense is a booklet titled Regole per la lingua Maltese compiled by a knight by the name Thezan some time between 1600 and 1647. This Maltese-Italian grammar and dictionary was unknown (save for a few scattered references) until a manuscript copy was discovered in Rome's Biblioteca Valliceliana in 1987 by Arnold Cassola who later published an edition.

Cassola was also responsible for the publication of what is possibly chronologically the third dictionary of Maltese and Italian, an anonymous work now known under the title Mezzo vocabolario maltese-italiano. This manuscript contains 1909 entries and its dating is uncertain; according to Cassola, it may have been composed as early as 1672 or as late 1798. Most likely, however, it was composed in mid-1700s. As such, it may even be contemporaneous to another item on the list.

That item is the manuscript titled Ḋamma Tal Kliem Kartaginis mscerred fel Fom tal Maltin u Ghaucin (or, in modern orthography, Damma tal-kliem Kartaġiniż imxerred fil-fomm tal-Maltin u l-Għawdxin) compiled by Ġan Franġisk (Gio Pietro Francesco) Agius de Soldanis (1712–1770). Like the previous two works, its other language is Italian; like Regole and Mezzo vocabolario it also languished as a manuscript on a shelf somewhere for centuries. Unlike the previous two works, it ended up being pulished, but only in 2016, edited by Rosabelle Carabott. And unlike Regole and Mezzo vocabolario, the language of Damma is not that of Malta the island, but rather the dialect of Gozo, de Soldanis' native variety of Maltese. Other works by de Soldanis ended up being published in his lifetime, such as this grammar of Maltese that, nota bene, adheres to the view that Maltese is a variety of Punic.

The first actual dictionary of Maltese that was published in proper printed form is of course Mikiel Anton Vassalli's Ktŷb yl-klŷm mâlti (Ktieb il-kliem Malti). Vassalli (born in the village that is about a mile away in that direction) was a skilled linguist (and not just for his time) and so his dictionary is even more valuable that all those that came before him, despite Vassalli's view on the Punic origin of Maltese. These he also expounded upon in his 1827 grammar of Maltese. 

19th century saw a veritable explosion of lexical resources for Maltese. First there is the 1843 Dizionario portatile delle lingue maltese, italiana, inglese by Francesco Vella. The same author had in 1831 published the first grammar of Maltese in English. Both the grammar and the inclusion of English in the dictionary reflect the changed geopolitical role of Malta.

In 1845, Giovanni Batista Falzon published Dizionario maltese-italiano-inglese (1882 printing), notable for its size, depth of coverage, and mixed orthography (Falzon uses some symbols from Vassalli's trippy alphabet).

In 1885, Salvatore Mamo published the first dictionary with Maltese as the target language titled - appropriately enough - English-Maltese Dictionary. In 2023, the manuscript of an expanded version, once thought lost during WWII, was rediscovered and an edition is now being prepared.

The final dictionary of Maltese published in the 19th century actually consists of two volumes published by V. Busuttil in 1900: Diziunariu mill Malti ghall Inglis. Giabra ta dwar 30,000 chelma ("Dictionary from Maltese to English. A collection of some 30.000 words") and its counterpart Diziunariu mill Inglis ghal Malti. Giabra ta dwar 90,000 chelma ("Dictionary from English to Maltese. A collection of some 90.000 words"). Busuttil's dictionary is an interesting beast: in the Maltese-to-English direction, it more often than not provides a single-word equivalent. In the other direction, however, the entries consist of not so much of Maltese equivalents, but rather explanations of the meaning of the English word, especially if it is a rare one. And so, to pick a random example, we learn that the English FORAMINOUS (a word that I have not been familiar with until now) means "mimli (collu) tokob", i.e. "filled (entirely) with holes".

The 20th century is where the SOTA for Maltese lexicography is, but before that, there was the 1939-1940 Dizionario maltese-arabo-italiano by Giuseppe Barbera. This four-volume dictionary published in Beirut is the first one that takes etymology seriously. Naturally, Barbera's point of reference is Classical Arabic and at times, he adjusts the meaning of the Maltese word to correspond as closely as possible to the original word. And so in his entry for ŻEUG (żewġ) we will find the sense "paro, paio, coppia; coniuge, martio, consorte" derived from the classical Arabic meaning of the root, but not the basic meaning of "two" (so presumably "due"), ubiquitous in Maghribi Arabic varieties. Still, if taken cum grano salis, Barbera's dictionary remains an important source for diachronic lexicography.

An observant reader may have noticed that all the dictionaries listed so far are bi- or trilingual ones. It  took until 1975 for the first monolingual dictionary of Maltese to appear, or rather begin appearing. 1975 is the publication date of the first volume of Il-Miklem Malti ("miklem" being a neologism coined for this project). This monumental work was compiled by Erin Serracino-Inglott and it is hard to overestimate the enormity of the task. Serracino-Inglott sadly died before he could complete the dictionary and so it was his son Mario who finished the work when the tenth and final volume was published in 2003.

One item missing from Dwayne's list and yet important to me is Kelmet il-Malti by Kaptan Pawlu Bugeja. A work of lexicographic genius it is not, yet the copy I bought in a small store in Mellieha in October 2023 served me well for a long time.

And then there's of course Ġużè (Joseph) Aquilina whose work is the foundation for all that those of us who do stuff with Maltese. This is especially true of his two-volume Maltese-English Dictionary and four-volume English-Maltese Dictionary. Sure, some of the definitions are iffy and many etymologies have been shown to be incorrect; still, Aquilina - as the dictionary referred to by people engaged in the study of Maltese is known - is the state-of-the-art reference. "Aquilina jgħid" ("Aquilina says") or "Aquilina jagħti" ("Aquilina gives") is as close as it gets to "Roma locuta, causa finita" when it comes to Maltese lexicon.

As the article in Times of Malta that reports on the Friday event notes, it is Aquilina that dizzjunarju.mt seeks to replace. After all, it is not an adaptation of Aquilina, but rather a brand new dictionary, done with cutting-edge lexicographic tools and based on corpora. Right now, there are only a handful of entries, but hey, it's just the first step.

Now excuse me, I just noticed the entry on investa (verb) is wrong with regard to verbal valency. I need to write to the editors stat.