Thaana is the writing system for the Dhivehi language spoken in the Maldives. It shows clear influences from Arabic, but whereas Arabic has numerous forms for every letter, Thaana has one form for each letter. It is also by and large a 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.
Thaana, like Arabic, is written right to left. It also indicates vowels with superscripts (or, in the case of /i/ and /i:/, subscripts). Each letter must carry a vowel or a sukun (which indicates "no vowel"). The letter alifu has three main uses: It can act as a carrier for a vowel with no preceding consonant; 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/.
It is an abugida, with vowels derived from the vowel diacritics of the Arabic abjad.
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.
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).
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