Maldivian alphabet
Maldivian alphabet is the Thaana script, 35 letters. 24 consonants and 10 vowel signs; the line runs right to left. The characters are grouped: twenty-four consonants, ten fili — vowel signs, sukun. Every character on this page can be played: the sound is stored as a file and does not depend on the voices installed on your system.
Twenty-four consonants
The order is the canonical one — haa, shaviyani, nonu, raa… It is not an alphabet in the familiar sense: the first nine signs descend from numerals. You can see it in their shapes.
Ten fili — vowel signs
Five short and five long, in pairs. Without a fili a consonant is not read: ބ is not “b” but an unfinished sign. Here they are shown on alifu (އ), a letter with no sound of its own, which is why އަ sounds simply “a”.
Sukun
The eleventh sign in the fili row, and the only one that means the absence of a vowel.
What to know about the “the Thaana script” script
There are 35 signs: 24 consonants, 10 fili and sukun. The script is young — it took shape in the 18th century. Its design gives it away: the first nine consonants grew out of numerals, the next nine out of a local set. The rest were added later, for borrowed words. The line runs right to left: the first letter sits where you would expect the last one. The letters do not join, and there are no capitals.
One habit to unlearn from the start: English swallows unstressed vowels, Divehi does not. In meehaa both vowels are long and clear. Say mi-HUH and nobody recognises the word — every fili you see is pronounced at full value, wherever the stress sits.
Where this script came from and why it looks the way it does
Thaana is the only known script built out of digits: its first nine consonants come from the Arabic numerals 1–9, the next nine from the local Dhivehi ones. The script appeared around the 18th century and, by all appearances, started life as a secret code.
Bruce D. Cain, «Dhivehi (Maldivian): A Synchronic and Diachronic Study», Cornell, 2000
Test yourself
Five characters at random. No need to answer aloud — just pick; the answer appears at once.
- Which character reads as “b”?
The ordinary “b” of “bus”
- Which character reads as “n”?
Before another consonant ނ is written with no vowel sign and stands not for “n” but for a nasal shade: ރަނގަޅު reads “rangalhu”
- Which character reads as “aa”?
Length changes meaning in Divehi: ބަ and ބާ are different syllables
- Which character reads as “f”?
The ordinary “f” of “fan”
- Which character reads as “e”?
Short “e”: އެ is “e”, on a consonant ބެ is “be”
How to learn letters so they stay
You cannot learn a table by staring at it. What works: see a character, try to recall its sound, get it wrong, see the right answer — and come back to that character in a day, not in an hour.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
That is why the alphabet in the app is learned a few characters at a time, not all at once: nobody holds 35 signs in one sitting.
Frequently asked
How many letters in the Maldivian alphabet?
35 letters — the Thaana script. There are no capital and small forms: the character is written the same way everywhere.
Can I listen to how the Maldivian letters sound?
Yes. 35 signs on this page have sound: click a character to hear it. The sound works on any phone, and nothing needs to be installed.
How long does it take to learn the Maldivian alphabet?
A few characters a day — one to two weeks, if you come back to what you covered. The whole alphabet crammed in an evening is remembered for an evening: without reviews the next day and three days later, the characters are almost entirely gone.
Where to start: letters or words?
With the letters. A word in an unfamiliar script cannot be read at all, and a word card tells you no more than a picture.