Friday, May 05, 2006

Search the meanings of dhivehi words!

Dhivehi dictionary (Radheef) is available for online uses at www.radheef.com. I belive this is a great work done for development of Divehi linguistics. This would have enormous impact on the quality of writing, especially by beginners. This program uses the information provided by the National Centre for Linguistic and Historic Research (NCLHR). So all praises go to the designer Technova Pvt. Ltd, and NCLHR. Click here to go to RADHEEF

However there are some of the things I found which are misleading when I used the dictionary. I have put some of them up for readers' comments;

kaleyaa” – the meaning in Radheef says; “The way wife calls husband, or husband calls wife

I have found this strange. I have never heard anyone calling his/her wife or husband “kaleyaa”. May be this is an old version of Dhivehi used by our ancestors. If so I might not have heard. But, why don’t the radheef says that this is a world used in old ages. Probably this might be what Shoadhube calls his wife, who knows!

Let me look at another example. “kaarisaa” is a word Maumoon uses in his speeches whenever a natural tragedy happens, whatever the meaning is. However, suprsingly Radheef has no knowledge of what this word means. Also I have noticed that some of the words used by the Dhivehi language have different meanings in some dialects of Maldives. Radheef does not give the meaning of such words in all dialects.

For example “mahaa”, means extremely noble, great..etc…However in Addu dialect “mahaa” is referred to as a single fish. Radheef does not tell the meaning of this word in Addu dialect.

These are just few examples. I found many such things which need to be edited. I hope as more and more people use the program, there will be better ideas about how the program can be edited, probably in the 2nd edition of Radheef.

I do appreciate the work by Technova Pvt. Ltd.!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

lol...did u check the meanin of "muraaja'aa" in Radheef...Maumoon uses his own language when he wants to hide wot he says...Maumoonah salaaam! n e ways u've done gud work!

shweetikle said...

kaarisaa is an arab word..not a dhivehi word :)
and thats why it is not in radheef..radheef gives the meanings of dhivehi words..
yet, this article was cool.. :)

Anonymous said...

i need dhivei word for the following,can anybody help?
>starfish
>jellyfish
>hermit crab
>sea anemones
>sea urchins
>lanternfish
>barnacles
>clown fish
>sand dollars
>electric eels

Haxon said...

Frankly I don't know the names either. The names are not very common. I bet your looking for these names for an academic purpose. The best way would be to contact Marine Research Centre of Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture of Maldives. They have a good collection of books which lists details of almost all the books identified in Maldives seas. And surely they have Dhivehi (local) names as well.

Cheers

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