What makes the Dhivehi language unique to the Maldives?

A prominent feature of Dhivehi grammar is its agglutinative nature, meaning words are created by joining multiple morphemes to construct a full meaning. With a subject-object-verb (SOV) sentence structure, Dhivehi employs postpositions rather than prepositions to convey meaning and indicate relationships between words, distinguishing it from other languages. Dhivehi phonology is characterized by an extensive range of geminate consonants, long-short vowel distinctions, and the presence of retroflex consonants, which are particularly rare and often considered a defining feature of the language.