Mind your Maldivian language | Daily News

Mind your Maldivian language

I worked in the capital Male’ for two years in the latter part of the 1990s as an English teacher in the Government Secondary School, Majjidia Boys institution, which had classes in only English. I taught the students that sat for London GCE examinations. The Principal of the school was a Lankan, the late S.J. Samuel. The language of the people was known as Dhivehi which is similar to Sinhala.

I was fascinated to know about the language. Fortunately for me, Desha Nethru, the great Scholar, Prof. JB Disanayaka came to educate me through his books on the Maldivian language. One of his many scholarly works is a book in English titled” Say it in Maldivian”, which was co-authored with the Maldivian H.A. Maniku.

What I am retelling here is what I gained from the book.

“The Maldivians call themselves ‘Dhivehin’, which means ‘islanders’. They have their own system of writing which is neither Arabic nor Indian. It is described by some linguists as the ‘most scientific system of writing in Asia’. The oldest historical document of the Maldives is ‘loamfanu.’ The originals are a set of copper plates.’

Prof Sugathapala de Silva is the first Si Lankan linguist to work on the Maldivian language. Prof Wilhelm Geiger, the German scholar first published in 1919 a Grammar of ‘Maldivian Linguistic Studies’. This appeared as an Extra Number of the Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.

H C P Bell, former Commissioner of Archaeology published in 1940 his monumental work titled ‘The Maldives Islands: Monograph on the History, Archaeology and Epigraphy’

The Maldivian in regard to the Maldives. The National Centre for Linguistic and Historical Research published in 1982, a translation of the ’Loanfanu’ copper plates, accompanied by a brief introduction to its paleological aspects. THz translation was done by J B Dissanayake and Hemapala Wijewardena. This publication was followed by another in 1986.

It was the translation of another ‘loamfanu’ called ‘Isdhoo Lomafanu’.This was co-authored by Prof Hemapala Wijayawardna and Hasan Ahmed Maniku. It appeared as a publication of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka. The publication that contains a large corpus of linguistic data and research is the ‘Report’ titled Historical and Linguistic Survey of Dhivehi, in 1988.

The present booklet ‘Say it in Maldives’ is thus fourth publication in the series of Maldivian linguistic studies.

Professor Disanayaka has also listed several features in regard to the Maldives. “They still surprise me’, he said.

“1200 islands are managed as one geographical unit. They are scattered over 470 miles from north to south even beyond the Equator. They are managed as one political entity. Male’, the capital is only one square mile in extent. The Maldives is really ‘land of the sea’. The faces of the Maldivians show unmistakable links with the Sinhalese, Indians, the Africans and the Polynesians, not to speak their own aborigines of the Giravaru Island.

Although ‘Dhivehi has borrowed many words from Arabic, Malayalam, Tamil, Gujerati and Hindi, its grammatical structure, including its system of sounds, is unmistakable of Sinhala origin”

The learned professor says the Maldivian word ‘Vare’ is equal to old Sinhala ’vahare (rain). Both languages have a set of unique sounds known as “half nasal’

Examples:

Suvanda-huvanda

Handa-handu

Manga- mangu

Banahara-bangura

Amba-ambu

Bohoda-bondu.


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