Blackwell Reference Online

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Not to be confused with the Old Maldivian script, a twelfth-century ce descendant of the Singhalese script known as divehi hakura , the Maldivian script proper was created in the seventeenth century ce by an unknown inventor under the influence of the Arabic script. Like Arabic this script, which is called Tana or Thaana , is written from right to left. Arabic influence is apparent in the diacritic mode of V indication, although the Indian concept of C graphemes with inherent a is also in evidence. C graphemes are always written with V diacritics ( table 4 ) or the V muting mark (a small circle placed above the C graph). The grapheme-phoneme correspondence of the system is quite efficient. Table 4 Maldivian vowel diacritics for k - Some of the letters of the alphabet are derived with certain modifications and simplifications from those of the Divehi hakura , but for the first nine letters, h-w , completely new forms were introduced ( table 5 ). They resemble the Arabic numbers from 1 to 9 in the nasta‘līq style. What motivated the adaptation of Arabic numerals as letters is not entirely clear. However, that the Arabic 9 was chosen as the letter for w is readily explained by the fact that w is the ninth letter of the Maldivian alphabet. This coincidence may have been the beginning of using Arabic numerals in this way. Table 5 The Maldivian alphabet (Tana) ... log in or subscribe to read full text