Mahl Language - Writing System

Writing System

The Maldivian language has had its own script since very ancient times, most likely over two millennia, when Maldivian Buddhist monks translated and copied the Buddhist scriptures.

It used to be written in the earlier form (Evēla) of the Dhives Akuru ("Dhivehi letters") which are written from left to right. Dhives Akuru were used in all of the islands between the conversion to Islam and until the 18th century. These ancient Maldivian letters were also used in official correspondence with Addu Atoll until the early 20th century. Perhaps they were used in some isolated islands and rural communities until the 1960s, but the last remaining native user died in the 1990s. Today Maldivians rarely learn the Dhives Akuru alphabet, for Arabic is being favoured as second script.

Maldivian is presently written using a different script, called Thaana or Thaana, written from right to left. This script is relatively recent.

The literacy rate of the Maldives is very high (98%) compared to other South Asian countries. Since the 1960s English has become the medium of education in most schools although they still have Maldivian classes, but Maldivian is still the language used for the overall administration.

In Minicoy, a variant of Devanagari is used along with Thaana.

Maldivian uses the mainly Thaana script for writing. It is an abjad, with vowels derived from the vowel diacritics of the Arabic abjad. It is a largely phonemic script: With a few minor exceptions, spelling can be predicted from pronunciation, and pronunciation from spelling.

The origins of Thaana are unique among the world's alphabets: The first nine letters (h–v) are derived from the Arabic numerals, whereas the next nine (m–d) were the local Indic numerals. (See Hindu-Arabic numerals.) The remaining letters for loanwords (t–z) and Arabic transliteration are derived from phonetically similar native consonants by means of diacritics, with the exception of y, which is of unknown origin. This means that Thaana is one of the few alphabets not derived graphically from the original Semitic alphabet – unless the Indic numerals were (see Brahmi numerals).

Thaana, like Hebrew and Arabic, is written right to left. It indicates vowels with diacritic marks derived from Arabic. Each letter must carry either a vowel or a sukun (which indicates "no vowel"). The only exception to this rule is noonu which, when written without a diacritic, indicates prenasalization of a following stop.

The vowel or diacritical signs are called fili in Maldivian; there are five fili for short vowels (a,i,u,e,o), where the first three look identical to the Arabic vowel signs (fatha, kasra and damma). Long vowels (aa,ee,oo,ey,oa) are denoted by doubled fili (except oa, which is a modification of the short obofili).

The letter alifu has no sound value of its own and is used for three different purposes: It can act as a carrier for a vowel with no preceding consonant, that is, a word-initial vowel or the second part of a diphthong; when it carries a sukun, it indicates gemination (lengthening) of the following consonant; and if alifu+sukun occurs at the end of a word, it indicates that the word ends in /eh/. Gemination of nasals, however, is indicated by noonu+sukun preceding the nasal to be geminated.

The most intriguing fact about the Thaana alphabet is its order (hā, shaviyani, nūnu, rā, bā, etc.). Its order doesn’t follow the ancient order of the other Indic Scripts (like Sinhala or Tamil) or the order of the Arabic alphabet.

Maldivian also uses Roman script and Devanāgarī script. It used to be written in the older script Dhives Akuru.