Lingoflyއ — alifu
«alifu» is a consonant of the Maldivian script, read as “alifu (a placeholder)”. No sound of its own: it carries the vowel sign. For example, in the word “އަގު” (agu) — price. The Maldivian alphabet has 24 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. A word cannot begin with a bare vowel, so alifu އ stands at the start with the right fili: އަ is “a”, އި is “i”. It appears, for example, in the word “ކިހިނެއް؟” (kihineh) — how are you?
In short
| Character | އ |
| Name | alifu |
| Sound | alifu (a placeholder) |
| What it is | a consonant |
In our course the character comes 25th of 35: the order here is not alphabetical but from familiar to unfamiliar, its neighbours in the course are ގ and ޔ, appears in roughly every other word on this site.
How to type އ
- On a phone: add the Dhivehi keyboard in the keyboard settings (Gboard on Android; Keyboards in the iPhone settings).
- In Word on Windows: type U+0787 and press Alt+X right after it — the code turns into the character.
- On a Mac: switch to the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type 0787.
- Unicode code point: U+0787. With it, the character can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
No sound of its own: it carries the vowel sign
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
The character in the “twenty-four consonants” group
The order is the canonical one — haa, shaviyani, noonu, raa… It is not an alphabet in the familiar sense: the first nine signs descend from numerals. You can see it in their shapes.
Words with this character
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound (for «alifu» it is “alifu (a placeholder)”, as in the word “އަގު” (agu)), see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 24 letters — at once.
- 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.
Frequently asked
How does the Maldivian character އ read?
As “alifu (a placeholder)” — it is a consonant of the Maldivian script. No sound of its own: it carries the vowel sign. For example, in the word “އަގު” (agu) — price.
What is the letter އ called?
Alifu. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Maldivian script: it is called “alifu” and reads as “alifu (a placeholder)”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.