Dhivehi Latin or Maldivian Latin, known colloquially as Malé Latin or Nasiri Latin, is a Latin Dhivehi alphabet briefly mandated in the Maldives

Maldives

The Maldives , , officially Republic of Maldives , also referred to as the Maldive Islands, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean formed by a double chain of twenty-six atolls oriented north-south off India's Lakshadweep islands, between Minicoy Island and...

 from 1976, but the country reverted to the native Tāna and Arabic alphabets in 1978. Dhivehi Latin is still widely used in non-academic literature for romanizing Maldivian place names.

History

Maldivians traditionally used two alphabets simultaneously, the Tāna script for Dhivehi and the Arabic script for Arabic. All learned Maldivians were well versed in the Quran and Arabic was the first script they learned since childhood. This was followed by their local script, Tāna, in which there were not many books printed, but that was important for official use. Therefore the primary knowledge of the letters was called Arabitāna.

Toward the mid-1970s, during President Ibrahim Nasir

Ibrahim Nasir

Ibrahim Nasir Rannabandeyri Kilegefan , KCMG, NGIV was a Maldivian politician who served as Prime Minister of the Maldives under Sultan Muhammad Fareed Didi from 1957 to 1968 and succeeded him to become the first President of the Second Republic from...

's tenure, Telex

Telegraphy

Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages via some form of signalling technology. Telegraphy requires messages to be converted to a code which is known to both sender and receiver...

 machines were introduced by the Maldivian Government in the local administration. The new telex equipment was viewed as a great progress, however the local Tāna script was deemed to be an obstacle because messages on the telex machines

Teleprinter

A teleprinter is a electromechanical typewriter that can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point and point to multipoint over a variety of communication channels that range from a simple electrical connection, such as a pair of wires, to the use of radio and microwave as the...

 could only be written in the Latin script.

Following this, a Latin transliteration not done by experts in linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 was swiftly approved by the Maldive government in 1976 and was quickly implemented by the administration. Booklets were printed and dispatched to all atoll and island offices, as well as schools and merchant liners.

This official Latin script has been criticized by several scholars because the transliteration of vowels did not follow the consistency of the Thaana alphabet and was more difficult to master for Maldivian learners. In the Maldivian alphabet there is one single diacritical sign (fili) for 'a' 'e' 'i' and 'u', and this single sign is repeated when the sound is lengthened. In the new romanization only one of the short vowels is consistent with the way of the traditional script "aa", but most long vowels "oo", "ee", "ey" and "oa" are pronounced as in English. However, only a very small group of Maldivians belonging to the elite were familiar with written English in 1977.

Anthropologist Clarence Maloney notes that the use of th and dh to represent unaspirated dental consonants but lh for retroflex l; is confusing and misleading, as in IAST, the most common transcription method for Indic languages, the first two would be read as aspirated

Aspiration (phonetics)

In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...

 consonants and the latter, which is instead a retroflex, as an aspirated "l".

The new romanization also used aberrant combinations of letters and apostrophes for some Arabic sounds, effectively ignoring the Arabic transliterations accepted in academic circles worldwide. Maldivian officials were used to read Arabic since childhood, as the religious education had precedence over the secular one. In documents which contained only one script, it became harder to identify religious Arabic quotations, a fact which was important because they had to be read in a different tone.

The Tāna script was reinstated by President Maumoon shortly after he took power in 1978.

Romanization of the Arabitāna scripts; CONSONANTS

Arabitāna	HTML Unicode	Maldivian Latin	Observations	IPA value
ހ and ﻫ	ހ	h		[h]
ށ	ށ	sh	No Arabic equivalent	[ʂ]
ނ and ن	ނ	n		[n]
ރ and ر	ރ	r		[r]
ބ and ب	ބ	b		[b]
ޅ	ޅ	lh	No Arabic equivalent	[ɭ]
ކ and ك	ކ	k		[k]
އ and ا	އ	(alifu)	See vowel list
ވ and و	ވ	v		[v]
މ and م	މ	m		[m]
ފ and ف	ފ	f		[f]
ދ and د	ދ	dh		[d]
ތ and ت‎	ތ	th		[t]
ލ and ل	ލ	l		[l]
ގ	ގ	g	No Arabic equivalent	[ɡ]
ޏ	ޏ	gn	No Arabic equivalent	[ɲ]
ސ and س	ސ	s		[s]
ޑ	ޑ	d	No Arabic equivalent	[ɖ]
ޒ and ز‎	ޒ	z		[z]
ޓ	ޓ	t	No Arabic equivalent	[ʈ]
ޔ and ي	ޔ	y		[j]
ޕ	ޕ	p	No Arabic equivalent	[p]
ޖ and ج	ޖ	j		[ɟ]
ޗ	ޗ	ch	No Arabic equivalent	[c]
ޝ and ش	ޝ	sh'	Arabic letters without Divehi equivalent
ث	ޘ	th'
ﺡ	ޙ	h'
خ	ޚ	kh
ذ‎	ޛ	dh'
ص	ޞ	s
ض‎	ޟ	s”
ط‎	ޠ	th”
ظ‎	ޡ	dh”
ع‎	ޢ	(vowel) + ”
غ‎	ޣ	gh
ق	ޤ	q

Romanization of the Arabitāna Scripts; VOWELS

Arabitāna	HTML Unicode	Maldivian Latin	Observations	IPA International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...  value
އަ	ަ	a		[a]
އާ	ާ	aa		[ā]
އި	ި	i		[i]
އީ	ީ	ee		[ī]
އު	ު	u		[u]
އޫ	ޫ	oo		[ū]
އެ	ެ	e		[e]
އޭ	ޭ	ey		[ē]
އޮ	ޮ	o		[o]
އޯ	ޯ	oa		[ō]
އް	ް	“alifu sukun”	silent when on a consonant

Being able to master and combine both Arabic and Tāna was a prerequisite to be a Katiibu, Mudiimu or Atoll chief. The weekly Khutuba or Friday prayer sermon, was sent by the government to every inhabited island, and it was written in both scripts, because it contained texts both in Arabic and in the Maldivian language.

Even other documents of the time, like private letters, astrological writings or storybooks contained texts, in which both scripts were present, because not only quotations from the Muslim religious texts, but also certain words of Arabic origin (for example the local words for "special", "rule", "important", "declaration", and "service" among others) were written in the Arabic script.

At the time of the romanization every island's officials were required to use only one script and they became illiterate overnight. From their point of view it was a traumatic period and these old government officers were indeed relieved when the romanization was revoked.