The Origins of this Fascinating Writing System!

[adamnaameeazim]

Hi! I'm Maldivian, I've been watching your videos for a little while. I was amazed when I woke up this morning and saw that you made a video about my native writing system! I wanted to shed a little light on why this exists. Out of pure coincidence, I happen to have been working on writing an essay on the origins of our writing system.

Basically, the reason that it's made up of numbers (or at least the very first 18 characters, we have other characters too) is because Thaana was a constructed script. But it's an incredibly old one as far as constructed scripts go. It's been around since at least the 16th century iirc. Writing systems that we used in the past went from left to right, but as Islam spread throughout the country, people started to include Arabic phrases and words in the written language. The problem is, because the script had to keep switching directions to accommodate for that, it ended up being really annoying. Somebody basically devised an entirely new writing system to solve this issue.

Unfortunately it's been lost in history who designed it. This would have been done way back when literacy was fairly low in the country, which fortunately isn't the case centuries later. Thaana is believed to be a pretty big part of the reason since it was a far easier script to learn how to write as opposed to the ones that we used previously. Some people think it might have been related to weird black magic practices, and I've been hunting for a primary source to verify that. Unfortunately they're not the easiest to come across.

One of the big problems with Maldivian history is that a lot of our writing was on leaves or carved into wood, and sadly they decayed over time. A lot of stuff that survived from the pre-Islamic era especially were destroyed as well. And even if a lot of that stuff existed, there really aren't enough people interested in our history. Most people see the Maldives as this really dope tourist destination and not a culture with centuries of its own history. We have a language, culture, history, and economy vastly different from anywhere else in South Asia. There's also very few of us in general, less than half a million Maldivians, so not too many historians to boot.

I've always been interested in linguistics but I'm not educated in that. My degree is in international relations, I just happen to be a huge history nerd and wannabe fantasy author and academic. I research a ton of this stuff either just for fun or for future projects. I would love to teach more people about this or even share my essay eventually.

[StormMedic]

Never in my life did i think I'd see my native tongue featured in a linguistics video

[Noobixm]

Me: *tells my friend my phone number*

The Maldivian guy wondering why I just told him to steal the declaration of independence from the center of a neutron star:

[NerdyMouse]

I'm so curious as to why they took numbers and made them letters in their own language! I wonder why they didn't take the letters...

[AbdullahKhagga]

It looks like I'm reading Arabic but in a dream.

[alvaro_]

Man, I love linguistcs. How the people we live with and the nature being influent in our script or sounds is just... amazing.

[RiskOfficial-ry]

I'm from the Maldives and I didn't know that my writing system is this unique

[usmanfaisal]

No comment yet but I gotta say that’s one of the most coolest writing system I have ever seen

[giraffestreet]

My favorite writing system is the Bugis script. It looks very cool with its triangular shape and has a futuristic alien feel to it.

[rayexception]

As a Pakistani I absolutely love the Maldives and Dhivehi. I hope to learn it one day.

[calypsosnowy]

I've been waiting for someone to do a video on Divehi. I love that script so much

[ryles]

but if a fantasy writer did that, they'd be called a hack lmaoo

[fordan_gamsy]

I wonder what their mathematics system is like.

[princewish]

FUCK I GOT JUMPSCARED SO HARD THAT'S MY NATIVE TONGUE BRO

[hmmm]

Damn, I subscribed a few days ago and coincidentally you make a video on my native language ❤😂

[jawijawijawi]

in Indonesia there's a writing system used the same concept of making their writing called Bilang-bilang script... Bilang is a Malay word means to count.

[RenderingUser]

No waaay. Rare Maldives mention. Also I've always known the first 9 letters were Arabic numbers. But I had no idea the other letters were also from numbers.

[maddiek]

I love reading about the Maldives as I’m falling asleep. Such a fascinating country. My brain went ‘Maldives’ as soon as I saw that script.

[ben_jammin]

That started with a bold claim, but bro delivered! That's seriously cool

[raiboi]

i learned more about my language than i did in school from this video😂