Learn Animals in Maltese
My 5 year-old is now 6. I’m beginning to understand that all-too-common cliche uttered with a sigh, “They grow up so fast.” I mean, seriously, didn’t I just have the kid? I haven’t even gotten back to my pre-baby weight yet. Sigh. So fast.
We celebrated the big boy’s birthday last weekend with close family . . . about 20 people in all. After pizza and cake at the house, we all headed out to a farm for an evening hayride and bonfire. The 6 year-old declared it “Awesome!”
The “official” birthday was low key—cookies at school and a trip to a new and very cool local toy store. My boys became fascinated with a vast display of Playmobil toys. We picked up a catalog and I discovered that there is a Playmobil FunPark in Malta.
Malta!
Why, many of those 20 relatives at my house last weekend are of some sort of Maltese descent. My boys are 12.5% Maltese, and I have yet to include the Maltese language on my site. My bad!
My husband and I have been talking about traveling to Malta for some time. The Official Tourism Site for Malta describe these Mediterranean islands as “mythic”. The Maltese language is descended from Arabic, with a lot of borrowed words from Sicilian, Italian, and English.
In honor of my family’s recent trip to the farm—and longed-for trip to Malta—let’s learn how to say some animals in Maltese:
qattus – cat (Check out that lucky qattus in the photo of Malta at the top of the post!)
kelb – dog
fellus – chicken
baqra – cow
papra – duck
ziemel – horse
fenek – rabbit
ghasfur – bird
You can practice your new vocabulary here with free online games from digitaldialects.com.
A fun way to play with new vocabulary words in any language is with a communicative tic tac toe game. Check out the animal tic tac toe games available from Foreign Language House.
Narak iktar tard! That’s “See you later” in Maltese 
Photo Credit: by Fritz Beck at http://www.sxc.hu/photo/23136
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