Re: The map of typological features


John Atkinson wrote:
"Yusuf B Gursey" <ybg@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote...

John Atkinson wrote:

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

IIRC Jensen or Diringer in theri books on alphabets specualted that the
inventor just assigned numbers for the previous letters just to make it
easier to study.

The first twelve letters of the original Divehi script were already used
for
numbers -- the inventor just transfered ten of them to be the second ten
letters of his new system (not corresponding to the same phonemes as in
the
old script, though, it appears).

Seems to me that, since there were already two scripts available and
known
to many of the speakers of the language (the Divehi and Arabic scripts),
there must of been an incentive for them to invent and then to take up a
new
one. It makes sense that (as the royal family website implies) the
Divehi
script was unacceptable to some enthusiastic muslims because it was
closely
associated with the old buddhist religion, but at the same time the
nobility
and/or the intellegentsia didn't want to it to look like they were
letting
foreigners impose their script on them. So they threw them both out and
invented a completely new script with elements of both (and better than
either for representing the Maldivian language, as it turned out).

The old script continued to be used in parallel with Thaana for three
hundred years, up to early in the 20th century.

Government literature from Maldives says that "Thaana script was invented
and introduced to accommodate Arabic sentences and words into the Dhivehi
texts." It's hard to see the logic in this statement. The only
advantage
of Thaana over the old script for "accomodating Arabic sentences" is that
it's written from right to left instead of left to right. Anyway, Arabic
isn't written as such in Thaana text.

it might have been in older times,

True It likely was. The extra letters do give an impression of being an
afterthought, put in much later by someone else, someone not nearly as smart
as the original inventer.

the extra letters are for writing arabic words in Thaana, the direction
for writing actual arabic.



as was done in ottoman turkish. and
buddhists used the uighur script (to accomodate chinese) vertically
while muslims used it horizontally (to accomodate arabic). so there are
precedents, and it may have been done earlier.

If this is the _only_ consideration, they could have simply turned the old
Brahmi-based script round so it read right to left. This would have been
much easier than inventing a new one, and much more analogous to the uighur
situation.

Anyway, without some information on what was really going on back then,
everything I've said is pure speculation. Taking into account the almost
complete lack of European writing on the history of Maldives prior to the
last few decades, and, since then, the strict censorship in that country and
the ongoing attempts to eliminate from Maldivian culture and history
anything which doesn't tie in with President Gayoom's perverted idea of what
"Maldivian identity" is, it seems unlikely that it'll be possible for me to
find out any more.

John.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The map of typological features
    ... inventor just assigned numbers for the previous letters just to make it ... numbers -- the inventor just transfered ten of them to be the second ten ... old script, though, it appears). ... Government literature from Maldives says that "Thaana script was invented ...
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  • Re: The map of typological features
    ... inventor just assigned numbers for the previous letters just to make it ... numbers -- the inventor just transfered ten of them to be the second ten ... old script, though, it appears). ... Government literature from Maldives says that "Thaana script was invented ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: The map of typological features
    ... The first twelve letters of the original Divehi script were already used ... numbers -- the inventor just transfered ten of them to be the second ten ... either for representing the Maldivian language, ...
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  • Voynich script.
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  • Voynich script.
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