VALLETTA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Non-Maltese students in Malta will soon be obliged to learn Maltese in school, as early as primary school, Malta's Education Minister Evarist Bartolo has said in parliament.

The minister was responding to news last week that his ministry was preparing to launch a "Maltese as a foreign language" program.

He said that as a nation that was proud of its language, it made sense for Malta to oblige young foreign students to learn the language.

"I think we must oblige them to learn Maltese because I think that if they are living among us they should have respect for us and learn the language," he said.

Given that the teaching program would be intended for foreign students, it needed to be taught differently to standard Maltese, said Bartolo.

He said that in the same way that Malta had successfully been teaching English as a foreign language, it wanted to ensure that Maltese schools were equipped to teach Maltese as a foreign language.

He added that studies of European languages had found that Maltese was one of four languages that were most at risk, and called for the creation of more digital content in Maltese so that young children could have as much access to Maltese as they did to English.