What does “Iva Mela” mean you ask!

Yes sure I answer and then I see you staring back at me waiting for me to say something else! :-p

It does actually mean “Yes Sure”.. Iva is translated to Yes and Mela is Sure.

We called our site “iva mela” because its a typical Maltese saying and we wanted to have this online magazine or blog focused around Malta, understanding Malta and living in Malta, for Maltese and foreigners alike.

Here below we list some other common noteworthy Maltese sayings..

Mela Mela

Of course this is just saying “Sure sure” twice. You sometimes hear it when an obvious question is asked or when a question has a definite positive answer.

Uwijja…

Pronounced …. (We are still trying to find a good way of displaying the pronounciation, please bare with us) This is supposed to be “U iva” literally translated to “and yes” or “of course yes” but over the years people have rounded it off to Uwijja..

This word has become synonym with government workers or anyone who does not care about what you are asking.

You typically here this when one makes an constructive observation, like “The food is cold”, the typical response from a dissatisfied worker would be, “Uwijja”. Meaning, its still food, don’t complain too much.

Hiiiii

Pronounces “Heeeeee”. Most Maltese women seem to have adopted this method of referring to people. Most commonly used like “Hawn hiii….” meaning “here you are dear”.

Some people may cringe hearing this term, some others don’t. Its a social level thing that we are not able to explain properly. We will come back to this one in the near future.

Mhux hekk Mela

This one is complicated, “Mhux hekk Mela” literally means “Not like this, sure” but most times it is used in a sarcastic sense. Example Peter says to his dad, give me a thousand euros… Dad says.. “mhux hekk, mela”, like he’s saying, yes, that’s exactly what I’ll do.. of course.