If you are a speaker of Arabic or interact with Arabic in any way online, you are familiar - even if not by name - with Arabizi. It is, simply put, a way to write Arabic - typically a local variety other than MSA - in Latin script. There exist multiple local systems, largely classified into two types, English-influenced and French-influenced, based on which colonial sphere the region in question is in. The major differences then involve the graphic representation of particular sounds, and so e.g [š][1] using will be written as sh in Kuwait and Egypt, but ch in Tunisia and Morocco. Sometimes you get throw a curve ball, like this example from r/Darija "Wax katswto f l’intikhbat?" where the word wax = "QUESTION" would typically be written as wach.
What nearly all varieties of Arabic have in common is the use of numbers for sounds that are difficult - although not impossible - to write in Latin script. And so you will see 7 stand for [ḥ], 7' for [ḫ] (which are in Arabic orthography represented by ح and خ, respectively; note the dot), 2 for the glottal stop, 3 for the pharyngeal voiced fricative [ʕ] = ع, and 3' for [ġ] = غ.
The general assumption about Arabizi is that it arose in late 20th-century with the rise of electronic communication - text messages, message boards, chat applications etc. And it makes sense: as soon as need arose to extensively write Arabic in Latin script, people got creative, realized "hey, there's like 10 characters that are not used in writing words we can repurpose to represent our weird sounds!" It goes hand in hand with the adoption of a new technology, one originally designed for one particular writing system buy speakers of languages that do not use that writing system and to do so, they require significant adaptation.
Except late 20th century is not the first time this sort of thing has happened, is it? And so it happened that yesterday while I was randomly browing the vast collections of Hill Manuscript and Museum Library, I came across what one could justifiably call Arabizi from 1840:
It's right there: j for [ž] or possibly [dž], x for [sh] and - most interestingly - the 3 for [ʕ]. In Arabic script, this would be:
نفس نوڤمبرو. طول الجرناتة - في الستاش، الشمش تطلع في السبعة، تنزل في الخمسة
And in English:
Mid-November. During the day - on the 17th, the sun rises at 7, goes down at 5,
All perfect Arabic, with the possible exception of one Romance loanword - "jornata" - which isn't that surprising in, say, North Afr...
Oh fine, who am I trying to bullshit, this is obviously Maltese. This particular text appears in the section "Almanacco Popolare" (p. 162) in the newspaper titled Il Filologo Maltese, issue no. 24 [Nuova Serie Fogl. 17.], published on November 7th 1840 [2]. This newspaper, founded by one Salvatore Cumbo, is one of the first that appeared after the colonial government instituted freedom of the press in 1839. Like most newspapers that cropped up after 1839 (but not Il Kaulata Maltia), its main language was not Maltese. It was mainly written in Italian, with one single section in Maltese, the aforementioned "Almanacco Popolare". It contained, as the name would suggest, practical information such weather forecasts, information about local feasts and hunting schedule, but also proverbs and random historical tidbits.
One of the interesting things about Il Filologo Maltese is its orthography. There existed several more or less coherent systems of writing Maltese before the modern standard orthography, established in 1924. Here is a brief summary based on Farrugia (2004), Olvin (2006) and my extensive collection of old Maltese materials. I am focusing here on the Maltese reflex of the historical [ʕ], noting that in standard Maltese, historical [ġ] and [ʕ] have merged and so both historical consonants are represented by the digraph għ:
| System | Representation | Example | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Il-Kantilena (ca. 1530) | h / ’ | mehandihe = m’għandha, so also other contemporary sources (see Vella 2006: 39) | |
| Regole per la lingua maltese (ca. 1650) | ع | cf. Vella 2006:83 | |
| G.F. Buonamico’s sonnet (c. 1670) | zero / â | This depends on the transcription of the source material. De Soldanis (1757) has aineina = għajnejna, Levanzin has âaineina (see Vella 2006: 147) | |
| Mezzo Vocabolario (18th c.) | aa | aalih = għalih (Cassola 1996:79) | |
| F. Wzzino Taġhlim nisrani (1752) | ġh | taġhlim = tagħlim | |
| G. A. de Soldanis Ḋamma (1759) | gh | ||
| M.A. Vassalli Ktŷb yl klŷm Mâlti (1796) |  |
||
| G.M. Cannolo La Via Sagra (1796) | gh | ||
| Il vangelo di nostro Signore Gesù Cristo secondo San Giovanni (1822) | ع | ||
| F.D. Ferdinando Mattei Compendio della dottrina cristiana (1823) | gh | ||
| Anon. (but most likely F. Vella) *Chtieb ilkari yau dahla عal ilsien malti | ع | ||
| M.A. Vassalli Motti, aforismi e proverbii maltesi (1826) | |
||
| M.A. Vassalli Grammatica della lingua maltese (1827) | |
||
| M.A. Vassalli Quatuor Evangelia et Actus Apostolorum (1829) | |
||
| F. Vella Maltese Grammar for the Use of the English (1831) | gḣ | ||
| M.A. Vassalli Ktyb-yl-qari ∩at-tfal (1831) | |
||
| Il Kaulata Maltia (1839) |  |
Note that this character was used for [ġ] in the later versions of Vassalli's orthography used, e.g. in Ktyb-yl-qari (1831). | |
| Richard Taylor Lis-Scol Tal Bniedem (1843) | gh | ||
| Anon. A short grammar of the English Language | ā̇ | ||
| It talb ta’ ā̇aliena (1846) | ā̇ | ||
| F. Panzavecchia Grammatica della lingua maltese | gꜧ | ||
| Il ḣaỹa u il vinturi ta’ Robinson Krusoe (1846) | ā̇ | ||
| Ofiziu tal Gimgha il Cbira translated by Richard Taylor (1848) | gh | ||
| A. Ferris Fuk Il Mokhrìa Tal Animali (1880) | gh | ||
| P.P. Castagna Lis-Storia Ta Malta (1890) | gh as a ligature |
There is of course much more than that (including, say, the corpus of mostly 18th century sermons collected by Olvin Vella), but the picture that emerges is quite clear: the vast majority of pre-modern Maltese used either the Arabic character or some combination of g and h. The weird ā̇ is quite interesting: it goes unmentioned by Farrugia and seems to be limited to a few books published by - so I'm assuming based on It talb ta’ ā̇aliena which is a translation of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer - the Anglican mission to Malta.
So as far I can tell - and I might be wrong here - this is the first time Cumbo's usage of numbers for letters has been remarked upon. It makes sense considering the technical limitations of the time, but may not be entirely unprecedented. As I hinted in a note to the Il Kaulata, Vassalli's orthography differentiated between etymological [ʕ] and [ġ]. It also underwent a modification between 1796 and 1831: while in 1831, the same symbol shape was used for both, but the one representing [ġ] had a little tail, n the original 1796 orthography, a different symbol was used for [ġ], namely this one:
In this list of fish to be, um, fished in November, Cumbo lists xelep - xilep in standard Maltese - which is a plural of xilpa "salp" and gives grieuel (= griewel) as an alternative. What exactly this refers to is unclear to me, [3] but what is important is that Cumbo uses Vassalli's character for [g] here. So could it be that he also adopted Vassalli's character for [ġ], but used it for both etymological consonants and then just turned it to 3 for technical reasons? Well, let us consider the "Almanacco Popolare" section from issue 13 date July 14 1840, p. 61:
The first underlined word appears under the rubric "Hunting" (standard Maltese qaċċa) and it refers to the common crane (Grus grus) or għarnuq in standard Maltese, so it would indeed appear that Cumbo used Vassalli's 3-like character for [ġ] Except the Arabic cognate is غرنوق (nevermind that this is a different bird, just consider the Maltese word for rabbit, fenek) and also, this is not a 3.
Now it is also possible that we are dealing here with some inconsistency, considering the word alonγa "tuna" (standard Maltese alonga) under "Fishing" where, as you can see, the Greek gamma is used for the consonant [g]. And indeed, the same issue, but a different page (p. 72) uses Vassalli's 3-like character for etymological [ʕ]:
Except again, the very same page also has a 3 and then in the issue 15 of August 7th 1840 (p. 88), we find this:
[1] I am using the ZDMG transliteration system, except instead of fake apostrophes or whatever, I use ʔ and ʕ for the glottal stop and the pharyngeal voiced fricative (ʕayn), respectively.
[2] At HMML, this particular issue is a part of the Mdina Cathedral Archive collection, shelf mark AMC Misc. 91.
[3] See Morana (2011), p. 242, entry XILEP.
[4] Sense 2, entry GARNI in Aquilina.
References:
- Aquilina, Joseph. 1987. Maltese-English Dictionary. Vol. I: A-L. Santa Venera: Midsea Books.
- Cassola, Arnold. 1996. Il mezzo vocabolario maltese-italian del '700. Valletta: Said International.
- Farrugia, Marisa. 2004. L-Istorja ta' l-Alfabett Malti. Il-Pjetà: Pubblikazzjonijiet Independenza.
- Morana, Martin. 2011(?). Bejn Kliem u Storja. Self-published,
- Vella, Olvin. 2006. L-għejun ta’ l-istorja ta’ l-ilsien Malti. Unpublished MA thesis, University of Malta.
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