How responsive are Maltese to foreigners attempting to speak their language?
I frequently visit Malta, and do like to obtain a basic, grammatical knowledge of the languages of the countries I visit, but I never bothered to attempt this with Malta, mainly due to the fact that not very many courses are available in the language and the fact that the majority of Maltese speak excellent English anyway.
However, I recently began casually studying Modern Standard Arabic, and while Maltese is not Arabic, it does share a lot of grammatical simularity, and it gave me an interest in Maltese once again.
So I was wondering, how responsive are Maltese to an attempt to speak the language if the person is not a native speaker? Would most be prepared to speak Maltese for as long as possible, or is it simply instinctive to switch to English if the person is obviously foreign?
So in short, will I be able to use any Maltese I learn in Malta, or will getting Maltese speakers to stay in Maltese be more hassle than its worth?
Thanks
Well, if you look foreign to the Maltese people, that Maltese person will start talking to you in english at first (as we don’t expect foreigners to know maltese). but if you explain that you want to practice maltese i guess many will speak to you in maltese, especially if you try to talk to an old person or a person who doesn’t know english that well… i thank you for the compliment you said about the maltese speaking excellent english, but not everyone does. i am one of those for example… i find no difficulty to write in english, but i am not used to speaking the language… i would prefer talking in maltese because my spoken english is VERY bad! so if you are interested in the language and actually has time to study it, go ahead! but be warned that you won’t find many maltese-speaking people around the world, as it is spoken mainly in Malta!
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