għ

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See also: gh, GH, Għ, and .gh

Maltese

Etymology

Continues Arabic ع (ʕ) and غ (ḡ). The two phonemes were merged into /ʕ/ around Valetta since at least the 18th century, but continued to be distinguished as /ʕ/ and /ɣ~ʁ/ elsewhere (in some rural dialects until the later 20th century). Both in merging and non-merging dialects, /ʕ/ was weakly articulated and eventually vowelised, though word-finally after stressed vowels it underwent devoicing to instead.

The symbol <għ> was apparently first used in 1859 by the newspaper Il Habib tal Maltin (as an adaptation of earlier <gh>), though it was not popularised until the first half of the 20th century.

Pronunciation

  • (letter name):
  • (phoneme):
    • IPA(key): /-/, /ː/, /ɛ/, /ɔ/, /j/, /w/, /ħ/

Letter

għ (upper case Għ)

  1. The ninth letter of the Maltese alphabet, called ajn and written in the Latin script.

Usage notes

  • In contemporary Maltese, għ remains a true consonant in word-final position (maqtugħ ) and in the cluster -għh-, which becomes . Otherwise it is silent or leaves at most a vocalic trace:
    • Following and preceding a, e, o are lengthened if stressed: għodwa , nagħġa .
    • Following i, u become diphthongs: għira , jistgħu . A partial exception to this is the sequence -egħi-, which has a number of possible realisations (cf. tqegħid).
    • In intervocalic position it is a glide, after i, ie, and after u: qiegħed , maqtugħa .
    • The (always stressed) sequence -iegħ- becomes when followed by a consonant: qiegħda .
  • After unstressed a, word-final għ is most often lost and then represented by an apostrophe: jisma’ . It resurfaces when an ending is added to the word: jisimgħu . Exceptions are the verb ending negative suffix -x, before which silent għ is simply dropped in the spelling:jismax , and when adding suffixes -t, -tu, -na where it changes to a more phonetically accurate j: smajtx .
  • Phonotactically, word-initial għ now generally behaves like a vowel, allowing contractions such as m’għandix . However, word-internal għ still behaves like a (virtual) consonant. Compare the aforementioned jisimgħu, where the vowel i has been added before the m, as though the latter were followed by a consonant.

References

  1. ^ Arnold Cassola (2013) “A note on the dating of ħ, għ and x in Maltese”, in Albert Borg, Sandro Caruana, Alexandra Vella, editors, Perspectives on Maltese Linguistics, Akademie Verlag, →DOI, page 17,

See also

Wikious
Boobota
Sagapedia