Around 1240, Maltese began its separate development away from other Arabic varieties to become a language in its own right, distinguished from its closest relatives by, among other things, the high degree of mainly Italo-Romance influences on phonology, lexicon and grammar. Since the late 15th century, there have been isolated written documents in Maltese, whose final (official) establishment as the language of Malta only took place in the period between the two world wars, when the language dispute between English, Maltese and Italian was decided to the disadvantage of Italian.

Within the traditionally philologically oriented Oriental studies (Semitic studies, Arabic studies), Maltese receives only limited attention, as it has to compete as an object of research with numerous other neo-Arabic varieties and the other subject canons of the disciplines. Its importance for general linguistic research beyond this philologically limited framework, therefore, demands that Maltese be given a forum reserved exclusively for it. Maltese is of the greatest interest to language contact research, among others, because its structure has a combination of Semitic and Romance components whose coexistence and interplay pose a challenge to contact linguistic theories and models. At the same time, there are still many gaps in knowledge in the descriptive-linguistic field, i.e. numerous phenomena of Maltese still have to be described for the first time or reinterpreted based on new findings. The dialectal structure of Maltese, its sociolinguistic differentiation, its standardisation and its linguistic-political position are fields of research that are just as rich in knowledge as the development of a distinct, non-native variety of English in Malta, which is referred to as Maltese English.

To enable linguists interested in Maltese to devote themselves adequately to these and other questions, the Malta Centre is making itself available as coordinator, organiser and host.