10% of foreign residents speak Maltese well

While 56% of non-Maltese residents living in Malta do not speak any Maltese only 4% do not speak any English.

The census report indicates that only a small minority of foreign residents take any interest in learning the Maltese language.

In fact only 10% know the Maltese language well, while 5% have an average knowledge of Maltese. 29% of non-Maltese residents only know to speak a little Maltese.

On the other hand 87% of non-Maltese residents have a good or average command of the English language.

Arabic emerges as the third most well spoken language among foreigners in Malta closely followed by Italian, German and French although average knowledge of all three European languages is more widespread than Arabic among the foreign communities.

Non‐Maltese nationals defined in the census or persons not in possession of a Maltese citizenship, amounted to 20,289 or 4.9 per cent of the enumerated population.

The census reveals that 643 of these residents were born in Malta.

The census considers all Maltese citizens as Maltese residents irrespective of the country of birth.

The majority of non-Maltese nationals (12,215 or 60.2 per cent) are EU citizens, particularly from the United Kingdom (6,652 persons), while the largest number of non-EU citizens hailed from Somalia (1,041 persons) and Eritrea (548).

The census also found 2,279 non‐Maltese nationals in institutional households, particularly in open centres.

A choice of language
The census also shows that among Maltese nationals less than 5% speak a language other than Maltese, English or Italian.

If persons claiming a good or average standard are considered, the third and fourth most popular languages spoken by persons aged 10 and over were Italian (41.3 per cent) and French (8.1 per cent).

It also shows that the percentage of those who speak Italian well is higher among older people than among younger people. This could reflect the fact that the new generation is less exposed to Italian TV.