Johann G.L. Kosegarten u l-istudju tal-Malti

Abstract

Johann Gottfried Ludwig Kosegarten (1792–1860) was a German professor of Oriental languages. In 1847 he published a paper in the journal Zeitchrift für die Wissenschaft der Sprache (Berlin), entitled ‘Über die Maltesische Sprache’ (‘On the Maltese Language’). In this paper he scrutinizes to a large extent the lexical and grammatical aspects of two Maltese works: Għnejjiet – a hymn book probably written by Cleardo Naudi in 1832 – and Storja tas-Sultan Ċiru – a free translation of Charles Rollin’s Histoire de Cyrus carried out by Mikiel Anton Vassalli in the late 1820s (but published posthumously in 1831). Both books were printed by the Church Missionary Society in Malta and employed Vassalli’s rather idiosyncratic alphabet. Kosegarten could not speak Maltese, but as a veritable linguist he was able to comprehend and analyse the texts via his exceptional knowledge of Arabic.