Żejtun dialect

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Żejtun dialect
Żejtuni dialect
Żejtewni
Region	Żejtun and surrounding area
Native speakers	About 12,000 (2020)[1]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Maghrebi Arabic Pre-Hilalian[2] Sicilian Arabic Maltese Żejtun dialect
Writing system	Maltese alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
IETF	mt-u-sd-mt67
Żejtun in Malta

One of the dialects of the Maltese language is the Żejtun dialect (Standard Maltese: Djalett taż-Żejtun or Żejtuni; Żejtun Maltese: Żejtewni). This dialect is used by many of the inhabitants of Żejtun and in other settlements around this city such as Marsaxlokk, and spoken by about 12,000 people.^[1]

The following three words are examples; there are many more that make it into the list of vocabulary found in this dialect.

• For 'kite' the Standard Maltese word is tajra, but in this dialect it is found as manuċċa.
• For 'foggy weather' the Standard Maltese word is ċpar, but in this dialect it is found as ċlambu.
• For 'slingshot' the Standard Maltese word is żbandola, but in this dialect it is found as steringa.

All the vocal letters in this dialect possess a liquid versatility which allows the position, emphasis and tone of the vowels to change without any distinct rule; in some words the consonant letters are found to change as well. Such variations in the dialect are innate to native speakers.^{[citation needed]}

The vowel a in the Żejtun dialect changes into /u/ or /e/. For example:

This change happens to roughly all of the words that end in the vowel a, but when the syllable structure does not allow the vowel a to change into e, such as in the Maltese equivalent of potato, i.e. patata, a different vowel has to be used to elongate the syllable. Here, the word does not become petete but changes into û, becoming patûta.

The vowel e changes into the vowels /a/ or also /i/. For example:

The vowel o in this dialect changes into u, however it demands an element of phonetical emphasis to differentiate this changed u from the previous one. In philology such emphasis requires an accent, hence it is notated as ù. Example:

This change occurs in many other words that have o as their first vowel.

When the last vowel of the word is u, it changes into the diphthong /ow/. Sometimes the u is changed into ew. Example: