By Annie Guo
The Republic of Maldives is an archipelago, a group of islands located in South Asia. Although it spent many years under Sultan and British control, it is now an independent country with an ever-increasing variety of cultures and people.
The majority of people living in the Maldives are Maldivians, who are native to the Maldive Islands area. However, there is a mixture of people with Sinhalese, Dravidian, Arab, Australasian, and African roots, coming together to share the Maldivian culture and identity.
Early on, a portion of the population of India inhabited the islands, bringing the original Dravidian languages and leaving remnants in the form of modern-day place names and languages. Dravidian languages are a family of languages, mainly originating in Southern India and Sri Lanka, and for a while were the primary languages used in the Maldives.
Further emigration from Sri Lanka brought Dhivehi, the modern-day national language of the Republic of Maldives. Dhivehi, sometimes written Divehi, is an Indic language originating in the South Asian area. The language itself has been modified over time, with influence from various other cultures demonstrating the cultural diversity within the Maldives. It has Arabic, Portuguese, French, Persian, and Hindustani influence, incorporated over the years as different ethnicities took predominance in the islands.
Dhivehi is the spoken language, accompanying the written system Thaana. Similar to the English language, Thaana is a somewhat phonemic language. However, like many other Asian languages, it has a distinction between its spoken and written language. Both the spoken and written language systems have heavy influence from Arabic, as Dhivehi shares phonetic sounds, and Thaana is written right to left, with the alphabet coming from both Arabic and Indic origins.
Several dialects of Dhivehi are spoken in the Maldives, with the primary one being the Malé dialect spoken in the capital, Malé. Despite the development of their languages being relatively independent from the rest of the world, they have the same tendencies as every other language: people in different environments adapt differently. Dhivehi is spoken by over 350,000 people in the Maldives, a changing number as English and other languages begin to rise.
Visitors and residents in the Maldives are from beyond the Asian area, with tourists and immigrants from Europe and America as well. The influx of tourists has increased the usage of German, French, and Arabic in the Maldives. English is becoming an increasingly used language, officially recognized by the Maldives, and various Eurasian languages are spoken by minorities in the Maldives.
As the Maldives grow and flourish as a country and have an increasingly larger presence on the international stage, the cultures represented are becoming more diverse. Dhivehi is a language unique to the Maldives, but the spoken and written languages are constantly changing and adapting as the Maldives become a cultural center for people throughout the world.
Sources
Chepkemoi, Joyce. “What Languages Are Spoken In Maldives?” WorldAtlas, 28 Aug. 2017, www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-languages-are-spoken-in-maldives.html.
“Maldives - Ethnic Groups and Language.” Countrystudies, countrystudies.us/maldives/5.htm. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.
“Maldives | History, Points of Interest, & Tourism.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 Apr. 2019,
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