Re: The map of typological features

"Yusuf B Gursey" <ybg@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote...

John Atkinson wrote:

"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote...

John Atkinson wrote:

ObSciLang: Since "phonemic aspiration has been entirely lost in
Sinhalese and Maldivian", does anyone know why Maldivian words
have so many <Ch>s in them?

Transliterating from either the Sanskrit spelling (old orthography) or
the Arabic-based spelling (current orthography)??

The current Thaana orthography of course. Anyway, WWS suggests the
answer to my question (p 565). The official Roman orthography, invented
around 1970, uses the following digraphs for the indicated Thaana
letters:

<sh> for [s^] (called 'shaviyani')
<lh> for [l^] (called 'lhaviyani')
<dh> for [d] (called 'dhaalu')
<th> for [t] ) (called 'thaa')
<ch> for [c] (called 'chaviyani')

The names for <dh> and <th> are obviously derived from those of the
arabic
letters pronounced [D] and [T], so presumably they were given the same
transcriptions as the arabic ones normally are in English. (However, the
shape of these two Thaana letters are apparently not derived from those
of
any arabic letters, but from old local symbols for the numbers 3 and 4).

IIRC the arabs in order to study the language had assigned numbers for
the local letters, leading to a new orthogrpahy.

Yes, but the numbering is completely different from that traditionally
assigned to the Arabic letters with the same (i.e., cognate) names: Thus:

Thaana letter 'haa' [h] is apparently derived from Arabic number 1; the
cognate Arabic letter denotes 8 in arabic
'noonu' [n] derives from Arabic number 3; it's 50 in Arabic
'raa' [r] derives from Arabic number 4; it's 200 in Arabic

'baa' [b] derives from Arabic number 5; it's 2 in Arabic
'kaafu' [k] derives from Arabic number7; it's 20 in Arabic
'alifu' [0] derives from Arabic number 8; it's 1 in Arabic
'vaavu' [v] derives from Arabic number 9; it's 6 in Arabic
'meemu' [m] derives from old Maldivian number 1; it's 40 in Arabic
'faafu' [f] derives from OM number 2; /fa:'/ is 80 in Arabic
'dhaalu' [d] derives from OM number 3; it's 4 in Arabic
'thaa' [t] derives from OM number 4; it's 500 in Arabic
'laamu' [l] derives from OM number 5; it's 30 in Arabic
'gaafu' [g] derives from OM number 6; /qa:f/ is 100 in Arabic
'seenu' [s] derives from OM number 8; it's 300 in Arabic

(The other 10 Thaana consonant names don't come from Arabic -- they're named
for their sounds, which don't occur in Arabic, followed by "-aviyana".)

Since hardly any of the present-day Thaana letters look much like any Arabic
letters or numbers, it's hard -- for me anyway -- to check by looking at
them which letters derive from which Arabic numbers. I haven't even tried.
I've assumed that they're the same as the present-day order of consonants in
the Thaana alphabet. I should have used the seventeenth-century order. I
know that there have been some changes in order over time, so a few of my
"derives from"s are likely wrong.

Anyway, it certainly seems that the bloke who invented the script around
1600, whether he was an arab or a local, didn't know the order of the Arabic
ABC.

John.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The map of typological features
    ... The current Thaana orthography of course. ... shape of these two Thaana letters are apparently not derived from those ... "derives from"s are likely wrong. ...
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  • Re: The map of typological features
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  • Re: The map of typological features
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  • Re: The map of typological features
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