Maldivian

What the name Divehi means

The name goes back to an older divu-vesi, "island dwelling". Divu, from the Sanskrit dvīpa, survives as dū in island names such as Hanimādū and Mīdū, and bas, from Sanskrit bhāṣā, means language. Wilhelm Geiger, who began the study of Maldivian in the early 20th century, wrote it Divehi. The h in Dhivehi arrived in 1976 with a new romanisation, and that spelling is now the common and semi-official one in the Maldives. The English words atoll and dhoni are borrowed from Maldivian atoḷu and dōni.

How Maldivian relates to Sinhala

Geiger took Maldivian for a daughter of Sinhala and placed the split no earlier than the 10th century CE, while admitting his material could not settle the degree of relationship. No history of the islands and no Sinhalese chronicle mentions a migration that would explain it, and the Maldives are absent from Sri Lanka's records before the 12th century. The language developed in relative isolation until then. Malayalam, Arabic, Persian, Tamil, Portuguese and English have all left words in it since.

The dialect of Malé is the standard. The southern atolls of Huvadhu, Addu and Fuvahmulah each have their own dialect, and speakers of the northern dialects cannot understand them.

Which scripts Maldivian has used

The oldest inscription, on coral stone, is dated to around the 6th to 8th centuries, and copper-plate grants called lōmāfānu survive from the 12th and 13th. Those used Dhives Akuru, written left to right, which remained in use on every island until the 18th century and in letters to Addu Atoll into the early 20th. Its last native user died in the 1990s.

Thaana replaced it and has been in use since the 16th century. The first nine letters come from the Arabic numerals and the next nine from local Indic numerals. Vowels are marks called fili above or below each consonant, three of them shaped like the Arabic vowel signs, and every letter must carry a vowel or a sukun. Spelling follows pronunciation closely.

Why Latin letters came into official use

Telex machines introduced into the administration in the mid-1970s could only send Latin letters. In 1976 the government approved an official Latin transliteration, printed booklets and sent them to every atoll office, school and merchant ship. Thaana was reinstated in 1978, but the Latin transcription is still widely used, including for place names. English has been the medium of most schooling since the 1960s, and Maldivian remains the language of administration. Dhivehi Language Day falls on 14 April.