Going from Italian to Maltese (Malti) has a composite linguistic distance of 51% (curated lexical data). Below is the dimension-by-dimension breakdown.
Shared vocabulary, cognates, and loanwords.
Morphology, syntax, word order, cases.
Shared sounds and phoneme inventory.
Latin → Latin
Indo-European ↔ Afro-Asiatic
The 5 languages with the lowest linguistic distance from Italian:
A quick 3-question check between Italian and Maltese. No signup.