Malta is located in Southern Europe, in the central Mediterranean Sea, 90 kilometers south of Sicily, Italy. Known as the“Heart of the Mediterranean”, it covers an area of 316 square kilometers and is a world-renowned tourist destination, often referred to as the “Village of Europe”. The country consists of five islands: Malta, Gozo, Comino, Cominotto, and Filfla, with the island of Malta being the largest, covering 245 square kilometers. The coastline is 180 kilometers long. The terrain of Malta is higher in the west and lower in the east, with rolling hills and small basins; it lacks forests, rivers, or lakes, and is short of fresh water.
Maltese, one of the official languages of Malta (the other being English), belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. It has over 300,000 speakers (there are about 1 million Maltese people worldwide). There are also varying numbers of speakers among Maltese immigrants in Australia and North American countries. The Maltese language originated from ancient Carthaginian (a Semitic language). Between the 9th and 11th centuries, the Arabs occupied Malta, and Arabic had a profound influence on the existing Carthaginian language on the island, forming an Arabic dialect containing Carthaginian elements. In the centuries that followed, Malta was repeatedly occupied by foreign powers, absorbing a large number of loanwords from Italian, French, and English, and gradually evolved into an independent language separate from Arabic. Maltese speakers can engage in general conversation with North African Arabs, which allows it to be considered, to some extent, a Western Arabic dialect. For a long period, Maltese was only a spoken language without a written form. At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, the first Maltese dictionary compiled using the Latin alphabet appeared in Malta. In 1934, the written form of Maltese was revised and standardized. Maltese uses the Latin alphabet but excludes Y(y), and adds four letters: the dotted (G) and (Z) (with a dot on top), the silent H(h), and the GH(gh) (h with an extra horizontal bar), which is silent at the beginning of a word but pronounced at the end.
Malta has a subtropical Mediterranean climate. The average temperature in summer is 25℃, and the average temperature in winter is 15℃, with an annual average temperature of 21.3℃, a maximum temperature of 40℃, and a minimum temperature of 5℃. The average annual precipitation is 560 millimeters. The winter rainy season lasts from November to March of the following year. Malta's largest natural harbor—the Grand Harbour—is located between the capital Valletta and the three ancient cities of Birgu, Senglea, and Cospicua. The harbor coastline is 15.56 kilometers long, capable of accommodating 10,000-ton cargo ships for loading and unloading, with an annual throughput of 1.6 million tons. The harbor features multiple deep-water berths as well as facilities for loading, unloading, refueling, and grain storage.