The Maltese language emerged before Semitic languages.
Maltese ( links = no ) is the national language of Malta and a co-official language of the country alongside English , while also serving as an official language of the European Union , the only Semitic language so distinguished . Semitic languages . The most widely spoken Semitic languages today are ( numbers given are for native speakers only ) Arabic ( 300 million ) , Amharic ( 22 million ) , Tigrinya ( 7 million ) , Hebrew ( unknown ; 5 million native and non-native L1 speakers ) , Tigre ( 1.05 million in 2006 ) , Aramaic ( 575,000 to 1 million largely Assyrian fluent speakers ) and Maltese ( 520,000 speakers ) .