Old Dhivehi

Old Dhivehi
Old Dhivehi
	Dhanbidhoo Loamaafaanu (1195 CE) is written in the Old Dhivehi language
Region	Maldives
Era	12-13th century CE
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Southern Zone Insular Indo-Aryan Elu Old Dhivehi; ; ; ; ; ;
Writing system	Eveylaa akuru (older variant of Dhives Akuru)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
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Old Dhivehi is the earliest attested form of the Maldivian language, recorded in Loamaafaanu in the 12th and 13th centuries CE and various Buddhist texts beginning from the 6th century CE. It is the ancestral form which gave rise to the modern northern dialect of the Dhivehi language. Old dhivehi belongs to Indo-Aryan branch of wider Indo-European language family.

No endonym for the language is known. However the language may have been called "Dhuvesi" or "Dhivesi" meaning "Islander", which has evolved into the endonym for the modern language.^[1]

^ Fritz, Sonja (2002). "The Dhivehi Language: A Descriptive and Historical Grammar of Maldivian and Its Dialects" (PDF). Beiträge zur Südasienforschung. 191: 32, 61 – via TITUS.

[1] Fritz, Sonja (2002). "The Dhivehi Language: A Descriptive and Historical Grammar of Maldivian and Its Dialects" (PDF). Beiträge zur Südasienforschung. 191: 32, 61 – via TITUS.

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