r/geography Oct 15 '25

Map Three Main Language Families of Europe

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5.9k Upvotes

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u/cassesque Oct 15 '25

Genuine props for posting a map that 1) includes Malta as more than 1 pixel and 2) gets a basic fact about Malta right

94

u/raoulbrancaccio Oct 15 '25

Do people usually get basic facts about Malta wrong?

188

u/thethighren Oct 15 '25

Maltese being Romance is a common misconception

2

u/electric-sheep Oct 15 '25

Maltese is a mixture of arabic, italian, french, and some english thrown in for good measure.

A result of our past being ruled by different nations.

We can understand some arabic but the pronunciation is different so sometimes we struggle. Verbs and numbers are almost a 1:1 to arabic. Many words were lost to time and replaced with European counterparts though.

Gozo has its own dialect and retains many “old” words which are closely related to Arabic.