GĦILM 3rd Conference on Maltese Linguistics
Malta, 8-10 April 2011
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Italian loanwords in Maltese and the vocabulary of “Levant Italian”
Daniele Baglioni (Università “La Sapienza” di Roma – Universität Zürich)
1. Maltese as a Mediterranean language
1.1 Schuchardt 1909: Malt. zbandut ‘outlaw’ ~ sbendout ‘brigand’ in the Dictionnaire de la langue
franque printed in Algiers in 1830 (page 457).
1.2 Borg 1996 claims the need for an «investigation into the areal links of M[altese] within the
Mediterranean outside the narrow ambit of Arabic and Italian dialectology» (page 131). After
individuating borrowings from both Western Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese)
and Oriental languages (Greek, Turkish, Hebrew, Levantine Arabic) as well as from the socalled Mediterranean lingua franca, he lists a group of Italian loanwords which «are not of direct
Southern Italian provenance (i.e., not Sicilian, the principal source of Italian loans into M[altese])
since they supply a useful corrective to the view that the internal development of the M[altese]
lexicon was entirely dominated in a monolithic fashion by that of Southern Italy» (page 134).
2. From “colonial” to “Levant” Italian
2.1 «The following remarks relate to a group of words pertaining mainly to the spoken register of
M[altese], borrowed from Romance languages (including colonial Italian), Greek, Turkish, and
Hebrew» (Borg 1996: 133) → see “colonial Venetian” (Bidwell 1967).
2.2 After Francesco Bruni’s (Bruni 1999; Bruni 2000; Bruni 2007a; Bruni 2007b) and Joe
Cremona’s researches (Cremona 1996; Cremona 1997; Cremona 1998; Cremona 2002; Cremona
2003), the neutral expression “Levant Italian” has been proposed (Bruni 1999).
2.3 Texts available in published editions: Baglioni 2010 (Tunis); Bruni 2007 (mostly
Constantinople); Theunissen 1998 (Venetian-Ottoman capitulations).
3. Lexical correspondences: the vocabulary of privateering
3.1 priza ‘prey’
See presa ‘capture of an enemy vessel’ in letters of the deys of Tunis from the 17th century: con la gratissima
vostra delli 17 novembre ultimo vediamo quanto dite e che sete restati maravigliati della procedura tenuta
nella presa della pollacra del pron Dauma (Osta Morat to the French consuls of Marseille: Tunis, 12.17.1619);
fa incirca dua mesi che recivai una grata di V. S. dicendomi la presa di una tartana di qua per dua gallere
vostre (Yūsuf dey to the French consuls of Marseille: Tunis, 14.3.1619); etc.
Moreover, the locution buona presa ‘legitimate capture of a ship’ occurs in the coeval pact between the
regency of Tunis and the consuls of Marseille (Tunis, 1616-1621): E circa alle fregate che fussero trovate nelli
mari di Francia senza lettera del sre Hisuff Dai e siggillo del consolo, essendo prese, saranno di buona presa.
See also Tunisian Ar. brīza ‘corsair’s booty’ (Cifoletti 1998: 140; Cifoletti 2002: 140) and préza ‘prise, action
de prendre’ in the Dictionnaire de la langue franque (Cifoletti 1989: 129).
3.2 skapula ‘to escape’
Sic. scapulari primarily means ‘to free’ and ‘to avoid (a danger)’; the meaning ‘to escape’ is apparently not very
common in the island (VS, s.v.). Nevertheless, in the Italian translations of Ottoman documents scapolare is
often used instead of scappare ‘to flee’ if referred to slaves (‘to avoid slavery’ → ‘to escape’): Che se li navilij
venetiani per vento contrario patiranno naufraggio venendo nel mio custodito Dominio tutti gl’huomini, che
scapolerano siano liberi; Che se alcuno navilio andando dal mio custodito paese a’ quelle parti per vento
contrario patirà naufraggio, gl’huomini venetiani, che scapolerano non debbano esser molestati da altri
(Ottoman-Venetian capitulations: Istanbul, 1575 [see Theunissen 1998: 537]).
Still in the 19th century iscapolare was apparently employed with this meaning in the North-African lingua
franca: [il padrone] fattosi con me burbero all’istante, “taci” gridommi, “tu dire questo per iscapolare” e si
avanzò in attitudine alquanto minacciosa (Felice Caronni, Ragguaglio del viaggio compendioso..., after
Cifoletti 2004: 336).
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GĦILM 3rd Conference on Maltese Linguistics
Malta, 8-10 April 2011
[email protected]
3.3 lvent ‘lively, swift’
In MM this word is erroneously considered a metathetic form of valent < It. valente (through *vlent), which is
implausible from a phonetic point of view (see MED, s.v.), while Barbera’s proposal of a Sic. etymon livanti
(from livari ‘to rise’) is semantically unjustified (DMAI, s.v.). Much more likely is the derivation of lvent from
Ottoman Turkish levent ‘an irregular military force recruited from the town roughs and often employed on the
galleys’ (TEL, s.v.), probably mediated by It. levente ‘corsair’ («leventi, zoè corsari» in Marin Sanudo’s Diarii:
GDLI, s.v.).
In the letters of the deys of Tunis to the French consuls of Marseille the leventi are often depicted as privateers
eager for a share of the booty: Vero hè che non si poul fare di manco che sempre non resti qualche cosse nelli
mani dilli leventi, con lli q(u)alli vi hè sempre d’il fastidio con tutti lli comandam(en)ti che lli fassio a non
portarmi francesi nì vasseli in questo n(ost)ro regno (Osta Morat to the consuls of Marseille: Tunis,
12.10.1623). The semantic evolution from ‘eager privateer’ to ‘lively, young’ can be observed in Modern
Greek λεβέντης. Also Livornese levente and Catalan llevent ‘skilful thief’, although nearer to the original
meaning, have acquired a positive nuance (Franceschini 2008: 122-123).
4. More lexical correspondences
4.1 bordat ‘kind of striped cloth’
It. bordato is ordinarily used as an adjective meaning ‘edged, bordered’ (< bordare ‘to border’). Except for an
isolated occurrence of bordato ‘a kind of cloth’ in Michelangelo Buonarroti il Giovane («Bastiti quel bordato»,
GDLI, s.v.), we were not able to find examples of this substantivized participle either in literary Italian or in
Italian dialects. In Early Modern Spanish, though, bordado was commonly used as a noun meaning
‘embroidery’ (see the definition in the 1726-37 edition of the Diccionario de Autoridades: «Bordado: la misma
bordadura que se labra en la ropa con la agúja y sedas, ò plata»). Therefore, both Malt. bordat and It. bordato
might be borrowings from Spanish and the irradiation of the loanword might be independent in the two
languages.
However, Malt. bordat is probably etymologically related to Malt. bordi ‘striped cloth’ < Ar. burd ‘streaky
garment’, as already noticed by Aquilina (MED, s.v.). This means that It. bordato, which is the basis of Malt.
bordat, circulated in Malta as the name of a striped cloth called in Maltese bordi. This hypothesis seems to be
confirmed by the occurrence of bordato in the inventory of the goods of the Maltese merchant Pietro Micallef
(†1671), which was first written in Malta and then copied in Tunis in a deed of the French consulate: uno abito
di bordato vechio (Inventario de la robba che ce trovano del povero defunto Pietro Michaellef maltesse nella
presenza di testimonii infrascriti, 9.11.1671) → bordato ‘striped cloth from Malta’ is probably a “Maltesism”,
whose connections to both It. bordato and Sp. bordado might be fully casual.
4.2 kartell ‘a small barrel; a small cask equal to the twenty-fourth part of an ordinary barrel’
Aquilina erroneously considers kartell to be an adaptation of It. cartello, although cartello means ‘public notice’
and not ‘barrel’ (MED, s.v.). Much more likely is Barbera’s assumption that kartell corresponds to Sic.
carrateçdçdu and It. car(r)atello, both deriving from a diminutive form of Mediaeval Lat. carrātum ‘barrel for
wine or must to be transported by cart’ (DMAI, s.v.).
Since syncope of intertonic front vowels in Maltese (katnazz ‘padlock’ < Sic. catinazzu, kamrier ‘waiter’ < It.
cameriere, seftur ‘servant’ < Sic. servituri, rxoxta ‘to resurrect’ < Sic. risuscitari, etc.) is much more frequent
that deletion of intertonic a (kampnar < Sic. campanaru, mazkan < Sic. mazzacani, but bekkamort ‘coffinbearer’ < Sic. beccamortu, kaldarar – also kardaran/kaldaran – ‘coppersmith’ < Sic. caldararu, paramenti
‘ecclesiastical vestments’ < It. paramenti, suffarell ‘squib which explodes in the air’ < Sic. surfareddu, etc.)
the Italian basis for the Maltese loanword is probably the form carretello, which occurs in the declaration of
goods of a ship coming from Genoa to Tunis in 1692: quattro carretelli di vino (deed from the French
consulate of Tunis: Tunis, 10.15.1692).
5. A local formation?
5.1 furban ‘corsair’
Serracino-Inglott (MM, s.v.) traces back furban to Sic. furbannu, but this word does not exist in any Sicilian
dialect. Since both Sic. furbu and It. furbo ‘cunning’ (< Fr. fourbe) originally meant ‘thief’, Aquilina considers
furban to be «a nominal form < Sic. furbu» (MED, s.v.). Therefore, we have to suppose that a noun having the
same root of Sic. furbu/It. furbo circulated in Early Modern Malta, where it had acquired the technical meaning
of ‘corsair’.
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GĦILM 3rd Conference on Maltese Linguistics
Malta, 8-10 April 2011
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This hypothesis is partially confirmed by an occurrence of the locution galera furbina ‘corsair galley’ in a
Tunisian document from the 17th century: a certain Mametto Foudale is said to have been captured supra la
guallera furbina (Osta Morat, dey of Tunis, to the consuls of Marseille: Tunis, 1.13.1640). But, while the
derivation of the adjective furbino from furbo is plausible, the derivation of a substantive *furbano is very
unlikely.
The problem can be solved by assuming that the ending of the word is not Romance, but indigenous (see
sekran/sokran ‘drunk’ from siker ‘to get drunk’, skarpan ‘shoemaker’ < Sic. scarparu, kardaran/kaldaran
‘coppersmith’ < Sic. caldararu, marċan ‘a person who heads a procession’ < Malt. marċ ‘march’ < It. marcia).
A nominal suffix -ān is also found in the Arabic adaptation of It. corsaro, i.e. qurçsān, which shows up as a
reborrowed form in the Dictionnaire de la langue franque (corsan ‘corsaire’ [see Cifoletti 2002: 133-134]). As
a result, furban can be explained as a mixed form (It. furbo + -an – influenced by Ar. qurçsān –) typical from
Malta and the Barbary coast.
6. Bibliography
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Cremona”. Roma: Accademia dei Lincei.
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dell’italiano scritto nel Levante della prima età moderna, Lingua e Stile.
Bidwell, C.E. 1967. Colonial Venitian and Serbo-croatian in the eastern Adriatic: A Case Study of Languages in Contact.
General Linguistics 7: 13-30.
Borg, A. 1996. On Some Mediterranean Influences on the Lexicon of Maltese. In: J. Lüdtke (ed.), Romanica Arabica.
Festschrift für Reinhold Kontzi zum 70. Geburtstag, pp. 129-150. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
Brincat, G. 2003. Malta. Una storia linguistica. Recco: Le Mani.
Bruni, F. 1999. Lingua d’oltremare: sulle tracce del ‘Levant Italian’ in età preunitaria. Lingua Nostra 60: 65-79.
Bruni, F. 2000. Italiano all’estero e italiano sommerso: una lingua senza impero. Nuova Rivista di Letteratura Italiana 3/1:
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GDLI = S. Battaglia, G. Bàrberi Squarotti. Grande dizionario della lingua italiana (21 voll.). Torino: UTET, 1961-2002.
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MM = Erin Serracino-Inglott, Il-Miklem Malti (10 volumes). Malta: Klabb, 1975-1989.
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GĦILM 3rd Conference on Maltese Linguistics
Malta, 8-10 April 2011
[email protected]
TEL = J. W. Redhouse. A Turkish and English Lexicon. Istanbul: Çağrı Yayınları, 2001 (reprint of the 1890 edition).
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pp. 167-179).
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