The Channel Islands are British Crown Dependencies off the coast of Normandy in the English Channel. The two main islands are Jersey and Guernsey. The third largest island, Sark, is considerably smaller than either of these. The Channel Islands have been English possessions since the Norman Invasion of England by William the Conqueror in 1066 (they had previously been annexed by Normandy in 933). Unlike the United Kingdom, they are not part of the European Union.

English and varieties of Norman French are spoken on the islands with the latter influencing the former in pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary.

A British overseas territory at the southern tip of Spain, Gibraltar is less than seven square km in size and has a native population of approximately 30,000. It became a British possession with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 which concluded the War of Spanish Succession. The local inhabitants people speak English and Llanito, a mixture of British English and forms of Andalusian Spanish. There are also other ethnic groups in Gibraltar, such as Portuguese, Italian and Maltese, which have contibuted elements to Llanito. There are also small Muslim and Jewish communities in Gibraltar.

The Republic of Malta consists of the main island Malta and the considerably smaller island Gozo to the north-west, together some 316 square km in area. The capital is Valletta and its conurbation stretching on both sides along the coast and inland is home to the majority of the 420,000 Maltese.

Located in the centre of the Mediterranian Sea, Malta has had a long and chequered history, being occupied or experiencing attempts at occupation by a plethora of European powers down through the centuries. Malta achieved its independence from Britain in 1964 and declared itself a republic ten years later in 1974. Since 2004 it is a member of the European Union.

Both English and Maltese are official languages in the country. Knowledge of Italian, which was formerly widespread, is waning among the Maltese given the use of Maltese as a vernacular and the predominance of English in official domains.

Maltese is a Semitic language spoken by over 300,000 people on the island of Malta. It is quite far removed from Arabic as it has been heavily influenced by European languages, notably Italian, and has many loanwords from these. Classical Arabic, the language of the Koran, is not used on Malta as the majority of the population is Christian. Maltese is written with the Roman alphabet.