How to read in Maldivian

The line runs right to left

The first thing to know about Thaana: it is written and read right to left. A word starts at the right edge: the first letter stands where the last one would stand for you.

Three small things follow from that, and they throw you off until you know them:

- the question mark ؟ is mirrored and stands on the left, because that is where the line ends; - the comma ، is turned the same way; - but numbers keep running left to right: 2026 is written exactly the way you are used to.

The app lays the line out for you. Your only job is to start reading from the right edge.

A consonant never goes without a vowel

In Thaana the letters are consonants, and only consonants. The vowel is added by a small sign above or below the letter; the sign is called a fili.

The rule is strict: every consonant must carry a fili. If there is no vowel, they put sukun — the circle ް, which means “no sound here”.

That is why a word holds twice as many marks as letters at first glance. ބ is not yet “b”, it is a blank: ބަ is “ba”, ބި is “bi”, ބް is plain “b”.

All ten fili at once

There are exactly ten vowel signs, split into “short — long” pairs. Length changes meaning in Divehi, so the pairs are worth memorizing together.

All of them are written above the letter except i and long i — those two live below it. The eleventh sign is sukun: not a vowel but the absence of one.

In the table each sign stands twice. On the left it sits on alifu (އ), a letter with no sound of its own. That way you hear the bare vowel: އަ is simply “a”. On the right it sits on baa (ބ), so you see what the same sign does to a consonant: ބަ is “ba”. There is no need to memorize the table now: the signs will arrive two or three at a time.

How a word begins with a vowel

A fili cannot stand on its own. So a word cannot begin with a vowel: there is nothing for it to sit on.

For that there is alifu އ — a letter with no sound of its own, a pure placeholder. އަ reads “a”, އި reads “i”, އޭ reads “ey”.

Inside a word alifu with sukun, އް, works differently: it doubles the consonant that follows. ބައްޕަ — “bappa”, dad.

The whole script

Thaana is about four hundred years old, and it was invented in an unusual way: the first nine letters are reshaped digits ١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩. The next nine are digits too, the local ones, and the rest were added later for words that came from elsewhere.

Here the signs came in order of usefulness for reading. Below is the traditional order — the one in which Thaana stands in dictionaries.

Fourteen more letters ޘ ޙ ޚ ޛ ޜ ޝ ޞ ޟ ޠ ޡ ޢ ޣ ޤ ޥ stand only in borrowed words and quotations; ordinary text never meets them.

What order to take the characters in

The writing course is split into 7 steps: one step is one lesson, a few characters at a time. Nobody takes the whole script at once out of mercy: 35 letters in an evening stay in memory for exactly that, an evening.

• Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many times
  Donovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
• 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 times
  Adesope, 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.

Next

• Maldivian alphabetA reference of all the characters
• TransliterationThe table, both ways
• PronunciationWhat you hear and what is hard
• How to break down an unfamiliar scripta note