Maltese (Malti), an official language of the European Union, is a form of Arabic spoken on the island of Malta, but written in the Western Roman alphabet. In addition, it's grammar is different from Modern Standard Arabic.
Maltese is written in the Roman alphabet but includes dotted consonants and barred h. These symbols require Unicode support apart from that of other Western European languages.
Modern versions of many fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, Tahoman Times CE (Mac OS X) or Palatino (Mac OS X) are Unicode fonts and contain the letters needed for this language. it is recommended you transistion to the newer Unicode fonts whenever possible.
As of Windows XP Microsoft provides a Maltese keyboard utility which allows you to type dotted consonants. If you wish to simulate a Maltese keyboard, do the following:
Additional Information
- See the University of Malta Enabling Maltese in Windows for complete instructions with screen captures OR
- See Detailed Instructions for more detailed instructions with screen capture images. See the Micorosoft Keyboard Layouts for the position of the keys.
Another method is to use the Character Map utility to insert individual characters as needed.
If you are using a recent version of Microsoft Word (2003/2007/2010), you can use the following ALT key plus a numeric code can be used to type a Latin character (accented letter or punctuation symbol) in any Windows application.
| Cap | ALT Code | Lower | ALT Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ċ | ALT+0266 (capital C dot) | ċ | ALT+0267 (lower C dot) |
| Ġ | ALT+0288 (capital G dot) | ġ | ALT+0289 (lower G dot) |
| Ħ | ALT+0294 (capital H bar) | ħ | ALT+0295 (lower H bar) |
| Ż | ALT+0379 (capital Z dot) | ż | ALT+0380 (lower Z dot) |
NOTE: Codes with numbers over 255 are only available in Word 2003/2007. Users with older versions of Windows or not using may need to use the Character Map utility.
For Unicode Compliant Applications, you can activate the U.S. Extended keyboard (10.3/10.4) or the Extended Roman keyboard (10.2) to type Maltese letters.
| ACCENT | SAMPLE | TEMPLATE |
|---|---|---|
| Dot Above | Ċ,ċ | Option+W, X |
| Barred H | Ħ,ħ | Option+L, h |
Example 1: To input the lower case ċ (C-dot) hold down the Option key, then the W key. Release both keys then type lowercase c.
Example 2: To input the capital Ħ, hold down the Option key, then the L key. Release both keys then type capital H.
A third party freeware Maltese keyboard is also available from Frogbat.com.
For dotted consonants, the following browsers have the most consistent results.
Many sites from Malta are written in English. The following is a link to the Maltese Wikipedia
These are the codes which allow browsers and screen readers to process data as the appropriate language. All letters in codes are lower case.
See Using Encoding and Language Codes for more information on the meaning and implementation of these codes.
Below are the codes for dotted consants and barred h. For instance, if you wanted to write paġna, you would code paġna.
| Cap | HTML Code | Lower | HTML Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ċ | Ċ (capital C dot) | ċ | ċ (lower C dot) |
| Ġ | Ġ (capital G dot) | ġ | ġ (lower G dot) |
| Ħ | Ħ (capital H bar) | ħ | ħ (lower H bar) |
| Ż | Ż (capital Z dot) | ż | ż (lower Z dot) |
Computers process text by assuming a certain encoding or a system of matching electronic data with visual text characters. Whenever you develop a Web site you need to make sure the proper encoding is specified in the header tags; otherwise the browser may default to U.S. settings and not display the text properly.
To declare an encoding, insert or inspect the following meta-tag at the top of your HTML file, then replace "???" with one of the encoding codes listed above. If you are not sure, use utf-8 as the encoding.
Generic Encoding Template
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=??? ">
...
<head>Declare Unicode
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8 ">
...
<head>
The final close slash must be included after the final quote mark in the encoding header tag if you are using XHTML
Declare Unicode in XHTML
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
...
<head>
If no encoding is declared, then the browser uses the default setting, which in the U.S. is typically Latin-1. In that case many Unicode characters could be displayed incorrectly. Also, older browsers such as Netscape 4.7 may not be able to process the entity codes correctly without the "utf-8" declaration.
Language tags are also suggested so that search engines and screen readers parse the language of a page. These are metadata tags which indicate the language of a page, not devices to trigger translation. Visit the Language Tag page to view information on where to insert it.
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Unicode character names and hexadecimal entity codes are taken from the public Unicode Character Charts.