Similarities Between Hindi, Sinhala, and Dhivehi

How similar are Hindi, Sinhala (Sinhalese), and Maldivian (Divehi)? All three languages belong to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, in the larger Indo-European language family.

In this video Devina (Hindi speaker from India), Sanuda (Sinhalese speaker from Sri Lanka), and Yanish (Divehi speaker from the Maldives) challenge each other with with several short sentences in their respective languages.

Contact me on Instagram if you'd like to participate in a future video:   / bahadoralast  

Be sure to check out the Instagram page that we mentioned to learn more about the people of the Maldives:   / humansofthemaldives  

Hindi (हिन्दी) is a standardized register of the Hindustani language. Hindi, written in the Devanagari script, is one of the official languages of India, Hindi is the fourth most-spoken first language in the world, after Mandarin, Spanish and English.

Sinhala / Sinhalese (සිංහල) is one of the official languages of Sri Lanka. The Sinhala script is a Brahmic script closely related to the Grantha script of South India. Sinhala has had a significant role in the development of Theravada Buddhist literature.

Maldivian / Dhivehi or Divehi (ދިވެހި) is primarily spoke in the Maldives where it has official status, and also by a significant number of people on the Minicoy Island, Lakshadweep, India. The language is written in the Thaana script and has had a lot of influence from different languages such as Arabic, Tamil, Persian, Portuguese, Hindi, French, and English. The Thaana script is relatively new and fairly unique with its Arabic and Indic originating letters combined together.