Languagle #79: Maltese
Qalb ħanina tmut miskina
Qalb hanina tmut miskina
"A tender heart dies poor."
What it means
Kind-hearted people end up being taken advantage of. Someone who can't say no, and gives and lends to everyone, finishes with nothing. The two halves rhyme in Maltese (ħanina, 'tender', and miskina, 'poor'), which is what makes it stick.
How to say it
ALB ha-NEE-na TMOOT mis-KEE-na
Maltese q is a glottal stop, the catch in 'uh-oh', so qalb starts with a tiny pause. Ħ is a breathy h from the throat.
Word by word
- Qalb alb: a heart
- ħanina ha-NEE-na: tender, kind
- tmut tmoot: dies
- miskina mis-KEE-na: poor, wretched
Ħanina and miskina rhyme.
Where it was found
In Maltese a proverb is a qawl. This one is from qawl.mt, a proverb archive backed by Malta's National Literacy Agency.
Similar sayings
- English: Nice guys finish last
How to recognise Maltese
Maltese is a Semitic language, a relative of Arabic, written in the Latin alphabet. Its giveaways are ċ, ġ and ż with a dot on top, ħ with a bar through it, and the pairs għ and ie. No other language in the game uses ħ.
About the Maltese language
Maltese is a Semitic language, descended from the Arabic spoken in Sicily and Malta in the Middle Ages, with around half a million speakers. It is an official language of Malta and the only Semitic language among the official languages of the European Union. Centuries of contact have given it a large share of Italian and English words. It is also the only Semitic language written in the Latin alphabet, with extra letters such as ħ, ċ, ġ and ż.