'Dhivehi' is a principal language of which one of the following Union Territories?

Correct — C, Lakshadweep. Dhivehi is the Indo-Aryan language of the Maldives, and it is spoken in India on Minicoy, the southernmost inhabited island of Lakshadweep, where the variety is called Mahl or the Maliku dialect. Every other island of the group speaks a form of Malayalam, so Minicoy's Dhivehi is the linguistic break inside the union territory.

• (a)Puducherry — Puducherry's languages are Tamil, with Malayalam in Mahe and Telugu in Yanam, and French survives from the colonial period. Dhivehi has no presence there.
• (b)Ladakh — Ladakh speaks Ladakhi, a Tibetic language, along with Balti, Purgi and Shina. It is at the opposite end of the country and of the language family tree.
• (d)Jammu and Kashmir — Jammu and Kashmir has Kashmiri, Dogri, Urdu, Pahari and Gojri. Nothing there is Indo-Aryan of the Maldivian branch.

Dhivehi, also called Maldivian, is an Indo-Aryan language descended from a Sinhalese-related stock, so its nearest relative is Sinhala rather than any language of mainland India. It is written in Thaana, an alphabet running right to left whose letter shapes derive in part from Arabic and Indic numerals, replacing the older Dhives Akuru script.

Minicoy — Maliku in the local name — lies south of the Nine Degree Channel, closer to the Maldives than to the rest of Lakshadweep, and its language follows that geography. The Mahl variety is close to standard Maldivian and keeps some archaic forms along with Malayalam loanwords, which is what you would expect of an island administered from India but settled from the south.

• Dhivehi is the national language of the Maldives; in India it is spoken on Minicoy in Lakshadweep.
• The Minicoy variety is called Mahl or the Maliku dialect.
• Dhivehi is written in the Thaana script, from right to left.
• The rest of Lakshadweep speaks Malayalam varieties; Minicoy is separated from them by the Nine Degree Channel.

• Assuming all of Lakshadweep speaks one language; Minicoy is the exception.
• Reading Dhivehi as a Dravidian language because the islands lie off the Kerala coast.

As language-to-territory pairing, or through Minicoy's position relative to the Nine Degree Channel.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Nine Degree Channel separates

  • (a)Lakshadweep from the Maldives
  • (b)Minicoy from the rest of Lakshadweep
  • (c)the Andamans from the Nicobars
  • (d)India from Sri Lanka

  Answer(b) Minicoy from the rest of Lakshadweep — the Eight Degree Channel is the one that separates Minicoy from the Maldives.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Dhivehi, the language of the Maldives, is written in which script?

  • (a)Sinhala
  • (b)Thaana
  • (c)Grantha
  • (d)Arabic naskh

  Answer(b) Thaana — an alphabet written from right to left, which replaced the older Dhives Akuru.