[4] French, Russian, Spanish, and German are the other main languages studied in secondary and tertiary education.

[5] Greek was made an official language of Malta in 553 AD as part of Sicily by Emperor Justinian.

Though Siculo-Arabic became officially used, Greek remained in use by the upper class until Norman rule which ended in 1194.

[11] It is a Semitic language derived from Siculo-Arabic; however, a majority of vocabulary comes from Sicilian and Italian, as described by Maltese linguist May Butcher.

52% of Maltese words are of a Latin origin, a result of significant influence from Italy (in particular Sicily) and, to a lesser extent, France.

The Maltese language is written with a modified Latin Alphabet which includes the graphemes ż, ċ, ġ, ħ, and għ.

There has been a decline in the number of dialectal speakers, mostly because of exposure to standard Maltese in the media and the institutionalisation of education.

It is also heavily influenced by Maltese and Italian, not only in vocabulary (most commonly by pronouncing Franco-Latin loan words in English in an Italian style) but extending to phonology, with the English being heavily accented, in a mixed dialect sometimes called Maltenglish; however, Received Pronunciation remains standard amongst Maltese individuals of a high socioeconomic bracket.

In the first decades of the 20th century, there was even a struggle within Maltese society and politics over the "language problem", which came to a head before World War II.

[13] The use of Italian in official matters was politically motivated by the anti-reformist party and by the Roman Catholic Church as a form of status quo and conservative measures against the Protestant British.

[3] In addition to Italian, many Maltese generally have some degree of proficiency in French, and quite a few understand or speak Spanish or German.

However, many people have access to foreign television channels from Italy, the UK, or other European countries, or from the United States, either via local cable or digital terrestrial services, or directly via satellite.

Lexological and grammatical patterns in Maltese are increasingly anglicized, and there are even reported cases of language shift towards English in some especially affluent families, although this remains relatively uncommon.

[5] However this absorption of linguistic influences saturates the history of the Maltese language, which remains spoken by a very high percentage of the population.