President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih has been gifted a personal copy of the official Dhivehi translation of the first volume of Sonja Fritz’s ‘The Dhivehi Language, a Descriptive and Historical Grammar of Maldivian and its Dialects’, by the Dhivehi Bahuge Academy. The President was presented with the book this afternoon at the President’s Office by Al Ustad Nazim Sattar who translated the text into Dhivehi.
The book, which outlines the morphology of Dhivehi words, is part of a series that examines the history and evolution of the Maldivian language based on comprehensive research undertaken by the German author for her doctoral dissertation, which was published in 2002. It traces the linguistic development of the Dhivehi language through the variations of its written scripts, from eveyla akuru to dives akuru to the modern thaana script, and the different ways in which multiple Dhivehi dialects are spoken today.
The book also surveys the relationship between the Dhivehi and Singhala languages, and argues that modern Dhivehi has three linguistic stems from three different locations in the Maldives: Addu, Fuvahmulah and Male'.
Due to its highly informative content, the book is currently used in Maldivian Universities to teach modules on the local language.
