Maltese belongs to the Afro-Asiatic family, Semitic group, Arabian branch and is spoken by over 350,000 people. Its basis is Arabic, which was brought to the island by Moslem conquerors in the 9th century. In the year 1090 the Arabs were driven out by Normans from Sicily, who introduced a large number of Romance words into the vocabulary. Together with English it has been the official language of Malta since 1935.