 Today, 66% of the Maltese population can speak Italian, and 8% of the population "prefer" to use it in day-to-day conversation, due to the large recent influx of Italian immigrants.Although Italian has been replaced by English as the official language, it is still used and is spoken commonly in certain professional workplaces by Italian immigrants.The percentage of speakers today, 66%, is in fact much greater than when the language was actually official, in 1931, when only 14% spoke it.