Maltese phonology

Consonants
Voiceless stops are only lightly aspirated and voiced stops are fully voiced. Voicing is carried over from the last segment in obstruent clusters; thus, two- and three-obstruent clusters are either voiceless or voiced throughout, e.g. is realised  "we write". Voiced obstruents are devoiced word-finally and voiceless stops are not audibly released, making voiceless–voiced pairs phonetically indistinguishable.

Consonant length is distinctive word-medially and word-finally in Maltese. The distinction is most rigid intervocalically after a stressed vowel. Stressed word-final closed syllables carrying a short vowel end in a long consonant and those carrying a long vowel in a single consonant; the only exception is where historic and  meant the compensatory lengthening of the succeeding vowel. Some speakers have lost length distinction in clusters.

The two nasals and  assimilate for place in clusters. and are usually dental, whereas  are all alveolar. are found mostly in words of Italian origin, retaining length (if not word-initial). and are only found in loanwords, e.g.  "newspaper" and  "television". The pharyngeal fricative is velar  or glottal  for some speakers.

Vowels
Maltese has five short vowels,, written a e i o u; six long vowels, , written a e ie i o u; and seven diphthongs: represented by għi, and  written għu.

Stress
Stress is generally on the penultimate syllable, unless some other syllable is heavy (has a long vowel or final consonant), or unless a stress-shifting suffix is added. (Suffixes marking gender, possession, and verbal plurals do not cause the stress to shift.)

When two syllables are equally heavy, the penultimate takes the stress, but otherwise the heavier syllable does, e.g. bajjad 'he painted' vs bajjad  'a painter'.

Historical phonology
Many Classical Arabic consonants underwent mergers and modifications in Maltese: