| Group | Indic (with Sanskrit, Pali etc.), New Indic (with Marathi, Punjabi etc.) |
| Geography & History | Spoken and written on the islands of the Maldivian Republic and a few islands belonging to India, the Maldivian language is usually believed to have been an early offspring of Singhalese dating back to the 9th century; according to another hypothesis, the Maldivian languages were settled by Indo-Aryan migrants at the same time as was Ceylon, and in this case Maldivian and Singhalese result from a common language. Documents and inscriptions in Maldivian date from the 12th century. |
| Phonetics | Together with Singhalese, Maldivian possesses some phonetic traits not known by modern Indic tongues: there are no aspirated consonants, no nasal vowels; on the other hand, the umlaut mutation is widespread. In Maldivian, different from Singhalese, the umlaut exists only for a which becomes e in certain positions. Old Indic palatal stops coincide in s/h. There are two l sounds: alveolar and retroflex. |
| Morphology | In Maldivian, the category of definite and indefinite words acts not only for singular, as in all other Indo-Aryan tongues, but also in the plural number. There is the so-called "emphatic" noun case in -akó. Negative imperative verbs have two forms: e.g. nuhadáti 'do not do, do not start doing', nuhadá 'do not do, stop doing'. |
| Writing | Evela Akuru script (resulting from Granthi), in modern times - the Tana alphabet (Arabic-based) |
| Close Contacts | Along its history, Maldivian suffered influence of Arabic (since the 12th cent.), Singhalese, Portuguese (since the 16th cent.) and English. Today, the majority of citizens of the Republic speak either Arabic or English - together with the native tongue. |
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