Qormi dialect

Qormi dialect
Qurmi
Region	Qormi and surrounding area
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Maghrebi Arabic Pre-Hilalian[1] Sicilian Arabic Maltese Qormi dialect
Writing system	Maltese alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
IETF	mt-u-sd-mt43
Qormi in Malta

The Qormi dialect (Qormi dialect: Qurmi, Standard Maltese: Qormi) is a dialect of the Maltese language spoken by inhabitants of Qormi. It is affectionately known as it-Tuf, or in standard Maltese it-Taf, because of the difference in the Maltese word taf 'you know'.^[2] The most distinctive feature of the Qormi dialect is its treatment of vowels.

Phonology

The Qormi dialect has the following vowels:^[3]: 24

Short vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Open		a

Long vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	ii		uu
Mid	ee		oo
Open		aa

Vowels in the first syllables are the ones most often affected, but sometimes medial vowels are changed as well. Final vowels, on the other hand, are usually identical to those of the standard language.

The vowel A

The Maltese vowel a corresponds to the vowel /u/ in the Qormi dialect. If at the end of a word, it is realized as /o/.^[4]

English	Maltese	Qormi dialect
steeple (church tower)	kampnar	kampnur
seriousness	serjetà	serjetò
seminary	seminarju	seminurju
potato	patata	patuta
fog	ċpar	ċpur
house	dar	dur

The vowel O

The vowel o in Maltese often corresponds to /u/ in the Qormi dialect.^[4] For example:

English	Maltese	Qormi dialect
we went	morna	murna
go (imperative 3rd pers. pl.)	morru	murru
spring coil	molla	mulla
car	karozza	karuzza
glue	kolla	kulla
postage stamp	bolla	bulla
St George	San Ġorġ	San Ġurġ

This form happens to almost all words that have the vowel o in the first syllable, although there may be exceptions.

Vowels after Għ

The vowels after the għ change their sound as well.

• The syllable għi, instead of as /aj/, is pronounced as /ej/. For example, in the dialect, għid il-kbir 'Easter' is pronounced like ejd il-kbir instead of ajd il-kbir in the standard.
• The syllable għe, instead of with /e/, is pronounced with /a/. For example, in the dialect, qiegħed 'to stay' is pronounced like qijad instead of qijed in the standard.
• The syllable għu, instead of as /ow/, is pronounced as /ew/. For example, in the dialect, għuda 'piece of wood' is pronounced like ewda instead of owda in the standard.

Exceptions

Although there may be exceptions, such as kollha 'all of it', which is pronounced like killha in the dialect, and meta 'when' like mita, one must note that the vowels are almost never lengthened, and their accent remains the normal Maltese one.

References

1. Martine Vanhove, « De quelques traits prehilaliens en maltais », in: Peuplement et arabisation au Maghreb cccidental : dialectologie et histoire, Casa Velazquez - Universidad de Zaragoza (1998), pp.97-108
2. Borg, Albert (2011). "Lectal variation in Maltese". Variation and Change. The Dynamics of Maltese in Space, Time and Society. Akademie Verlag. p. 9–31. doi:10.1524/9783050057200.9. ISBN 978-3-05-005720-0.
3. Hulst, Harry van der (2018). Asymmetries in vowel harmony: a representational account. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198813576.
4. Pascale, Natalie (2011). "Maltese dialects: the effects of globalization and Changing attitudes on Malta's linguistic diversity" (PDF). Omertaa: Journal of Applied Anthropology. ISSN 1784-3308. Retrieved 2 February 2024.