Cottonera dialect

Cottonera dialect
Cottonera dialect
Kottoneran
Pronunciation	[kɔtːɔnɛˈrɐn]
Region	Three Cities and surrounding area
Native speakers	About 10,000 (2014)
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Maghrebi Arabic Pre-Hilalian Sicilian Arabic Maltese Cottonera dialect; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Writing system	Maltese alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–

One of the dialects of the Maltese language is the Cottonera dialect, known to locals as Kottoneran. Many inhabitants of the Three Cities speak the local dialect, and thus roughly amount to 10,000 speakers.

The most distinctive feature of this dialect is its treatment of vowels i and u after the silent consonant għ. In Standard Maltese, and other dialects, these vowels are realized as diphthongs after għ. However, in most situations, they remain monophthongs in the Cottonera dialect.