From Dhivehi, Thaana and English

The Maldivian national language is Dhivehi. It belongs to the Indo-Germanic language group. The language is uniform except for the four southern atolls. Dhivehi is spoken there, which is very similar to Sinhalese. Throughout history, Dhivehi has been heavily enriched with foreign words, especially from Arabic and Hindi (India). Currently, the English meaning is adopted for many unknown words and added with the customary “u” at the end.

In Male, English is widely spoken among the younger generation. Arabic is only important in the religious area.

Thaana is the name of the official script. Like Arabic, it is read from right to left. For modern Thaana, the Arabic numbers 1 to 9 are used as letters, supplemented by 9 characters from Dives and Akuru and some other symbols. Thaana belongs to the Semitic scriptures. The introduction of this language was the logical consequence in order to do justice to Arabic language influences.

Nowadays, official notices, labels and, for example, street names are produced in two languages, i.e. in English and Thaana. In the daily newspapers, which are actually written in the national language, there is also a page in English.

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