Cottonera dialect

One of the dialects of the Maltese language is the Cottonera dialect, known to locals as Kottoneran. Many inhabitants of the Three Cities speak the local dialect, and thus roughly amount to 10,000 speakers.

The most distinctive feature of this dialect is its treatment of vowels i and u after the silent consonant għ. In Standard Maltese, and other dialects, these vowels are realized as diphthongs after għ. However, in most situations, they remain monophthongs in the Cottonera dialect.

The vowel i after għ remains an /i/ as in the English fleece, instead of diphthongizing to /ai/ as in the English price.

This dialectal change does not occur with the words għid (easter), erbgħin (forty), sebgħin (seventy), and disgħin (ninety).

The local poet from Senglea, Dwardu Cachia (1858–1907), formed part of the Xirka Xemija in 1882, an organization which formulated one of the first standardized versions of written Maltese. Moreover, Cachia wrote a poem about this very alphabet, in which he made use of the 4-line rhyme. Coincidentally, the ABCB rhyme of the second stanza only works if read in his Cottonera dialect.

"Ebda ħażż ma jibdel leħnu
fil-fonetiku, qed ingħid:
Ga, Ge, Gi ibsin jinstemgħu
"Għax tgħid", ħadthom bla taħbit"

[ɪˈniːt], not [ɪˈnɐɪt]

[tɐhˈbiːt]

The vowel u after għ remains an /u:/ as in the English goose, instead of diphthongizing to /au/ as in the English mouth.