Thursday, April 27, 2006

dhivehi bas, arabi bas; same same bas?

Now I am not much of a language guy, but here is something that was talked over a tea with some friends. Any new word which needs to be imported to dhivehi is taken from Arabic or Urdu. The rules are as follows if the word exists in Arabic, use it. If the word is an English word; invent a word. Example words like "terminal"; is now called "gematha" or something. Words like tragedy is taken from Arabic , I guess its called "kaarisaa" or something. Finally my view on this is ; words (bas as we call it) should not be invented or created by one person or group of 2 or 6 individuals. Or a ministry or a department. The language does not belong to the government or any organization.

Some other things to note are words like "bitu" is used by everyone for years now. But this word you will not find in the official "Radheef". But words like "saaskaf" which was invented a few years back is listed. New words which is being used include "partey"; I think this is adopted now. Other example include "salhi"; the meaning of this has changed over the years,but this is not reflect in the official books. Now I don't know much about these stuff; this is just my view. I might be wrong and very wrong. One of the recent words that I came across was "karaaseebu"; I don't know from where this came, but sounds like a nice word. I was told that this means corrupt.

3 comments:

Inash said...

Hey man. You very right indeed there. My personal opinion is you have just come up with your idea, which is quite logical for me of maintaining and adopting the radheef along with our society. Those words should go into it and have to be described either way.

A word is meaningless unless an individual puts meaning to it. A word invented for a situation may not be accepted by the majority because, there are certain words that I myself just do not want to believe that they are in our Dhivehi language.

So words that a more widely adopted and spoken by the community are words that have to be implemented in radheef.

Anonymous said...

Dhivehi language is going nowhere. All this tinkering is not going to make it any better. I believe we should adopt English as a national language. Then Dhivehi language can flourish as an art form. Dhivehi language is not good for anything else.

Anonymous said...

regarding what anonymous said abt dhivhi language going nowhere.
well obviosly if people like you are constantly dissing the language using english then of course dhivehi wont thrive.
we should be proud taht we have our own unique language. its a gift that few other nations have. we should do all we can to see that the dhivehi language is safe gaurded ant reachees the future generations.