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Thaana (written ތާނަ‎ in Thaana) is the writing system for the Dhivehi language spoken in the Maldives. It is an abjad, with vowels derived from the vowel diacritics of the Arabic abjad. It is a largely phonemic script: With a few minor exceptions, spelling can be predicted from pronunciation, and pronunciation from spelling. It is also easily mapped from the romanization system used for Dhivehi. Image File history File links Example. ... The Brahmic family is a family of abugidas (writing systems) used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria. ... An abjad is a type of writing system where there is one symbol per consonantal phoneme, sometimes also called a consonantary. ... Dhivehi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by about 300,000 people in the Republic of Maldives where it is the official language of the country and in the island of Minicoy (Maliku) in neighbouring India where it is known as Mahl. ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of sounds and the human voice. ... Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consistently represented and manipulated by computers. ... This chart shows concisely the most common way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is applied to represent the English language. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Dhivehi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by about 300,000 people in the Republic of Maldives where it is the official language of the country and in the island of Minicoy (Maliku) in neighbouring India where it is known as Mahl. ... An abjad is a type of writing system where there is one symbol per consonantal phoneme, sometimes also called a consonantary. ... The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing Arabic and various other languages, together with various closely related scripts that typically differ in the presence or absence of a few letters. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ...

The origins of Thaana are unique among the world's alphabets: The first nine letters (h–v) are derived from the Arabic numerals, whereas the next nine (m–d) were the local Indic numerals. (See Hindu-Arabic numerals.) The remaining letters for loanwords (z–ch) and Arabic transliteration are derived from phonetically similar native consonants by means of diacritics, with the exception of y, which is of unknown origin. This means that Thaana is one of the few alphabets not derived graphically from the original Semitic alphabet — unless the Indic numerals were (see Brahmi numerals). The Hindu-Arabic numeral system (also called Algorism) is a positional decimal numeral system documented from the 9th century. ... The Middle Bronze Age alphabets are two similar but undeciphered scripts, dated to be from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 BC), and believed to be ancestral to nearly all modern alphabets: the Proto-Sinaitic script discovered in the winter of 1904-1905 by William Flinders Petrie, and dated to... The Brahmi numerals are an indigenous Indian numeral system attested from the 3rd century BCE (somewhat later in the case of most of the tens). ...

Thaana was developed during the 16th century by an unknown inventor. It first appeared in government documents in 1703, replacing the older alphabet Dhives Akuru. (15th century - 16th century - 17th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 16th century was that century which lasted from 1501 to 1600. ... Events February 2 - Earthquake in Aquila, Italy February 4 - In Japan, the 47 samurai commit seppuku (ritual suicide) February 14 - Earthquake in Norcia, Italy April 21 - Company of Quenching of Fire (ie. ... A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ... This page meets Wikipedias criteria for speedy deletion. ...

Thaana, like Arabic, is written right to left. It indicates vowels with diacritic marks derived from Arabic. Each letter must carry either a vowel or a sukun (which indicates "no vowel"). The only exception to this rule is noonu which, when written without a diacritic, indicates prenasalization of a following stop. Prenasalized stops are phonetic sequences of nasal plus plosive that behave phonologically like single consonant. ... A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ...

The vowel signs are called fili; there are five fili for short vowels (a,i,u,e,o), where the first three look identical to the Arabic vowel signs (fatha, kasra and damma). Long vowels (aa,ee,oo,ey,oa) are denoted by doubled fili (except oa, which is a modification of the short obofili). Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing Arabic and various other languages, together with various closely related scripts that typically differ in the presence or absence of a few letters. ... In Arabic orthography, harakat are the diacritic marks used to represent vowel sounds. ...

The letter alifu has no sound value of its own and is used for three different purposes: It can act as a carrier for a vowel with no preceding consonant, that is, a word-initial vowel or the second part of a diphthong; when it carries a sukun, it indicates gemination (lengthening) of the following consonant; and if alifu+sukun occurs at the end of a word, it indicates that the word ends in /eh/. Gemination of nasals, however, is indicated by noonu+sukun preceding the nasal to be geminated. In phonetics, a diphthong (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds, or with two tones) is a vowel combination in a single syllable involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ... Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-07-20, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ...

Thaana occupies Unicode codepoints 1920-1983 (hexadecimal 0780-07BF).

For a sample text, see the article on Gaumii salaam, the Maldives' national anthem. In typography, a grapheme is the atomic unit in written language. ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ... Addu or Seenu Atoll is the southernmost atoll of the Republic of Maldives. ... Gavmee Salaam (Dhivehi: ޤައުމީ ސަލާމް, National Salute) is the current national anthem of the Maldives. ...

Sources

• Ager, Simon. Thaana (Maldivian) script. Omniglot, writing systems & languages of the world. Retrieved on 2006-09-12.
• Gair, James W. & Cain, Bruce D. (1996), "Divehi Writing" in Peter T. Daniels & William Bright, ed., The World's Writing Systems, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 564-568. ISBN 0-19-507993-0.

For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... September 12 is the 255th day of the year (256th in leap years). ...

External links

• http://www.omniglot.com/writing/thaana.htm
• A brief description of Thaana is available at this website