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'Sinhalese' or 'Sinhala' (සිංහල, ISO 15919: , IPA: [], earlier referred to as ''Singhalese'') is the mother tongue of the Sinhalese, the largest ethnic group of Sri Lanka. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages.
Note: Singhalese technically and officially refers to the people and not the language, whereas Sinhala is the proper name for the language. It is important to note that many Sri Lankans will refer to both the people and their respective language as Singhalese so that colloquially and informally Singhalese also refers to the language.
Sinhala is spoken by about 16 million people in Sri Lanka, about 13 million of whom are native speakers. It is one of the constitutionally-recognised official languages of Sri Lanka, along with Tamil. Sinhala has its own writing system (see Sinhala alphabet) which is an offspring of the Brahmi script.
The oldest Sinhala inscriptions were written in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE; the oldest existing literary works date from the 9th century CE.
The closest relative of Sinhala is the language of the Maldives, Dhivehi.

Contents

Etymology

History

Stages of historical development

Phonetic development

Western vs. Eastern Prakrit features

Affinities to neighbouring languages

Foreign influences

Dialects

Diglossia

Characteristics of spoken Sinhala

Notes

References

External links

See also

Etymology

''Sinhala'' (actually Sanskrit) and the corresponding Middle Indic term ''Sīhala'' have as their first element (''siṃha''/''sīha'') the word "lion" in the respective languages. According to legend, Sinhabahu or Sīhabāhu ("Lion-arms"), was the son of a Vanga princess and a lion. He killed his father and became king of Vanga. His son Vijaya would emigrate to Lankā and become the progenitor of the Sinhala people. Taking into account linguistic and mythological evidence, we can assume that the first element of the name of the people means "lion".^[1]
As for the second element ''la'', local tradition connects it to the Sanskrit root ''lā-'' "to seize"^[2], as to translate it "lion-seizer" or "lion-killer", or to Sanskrit ''loha''/Sinhala ''lē'' "blood", to have it mean "lion blood". From a linguistic point of view however, neither interpretation is convincing , so that we can only safely say that the word ''Sinhala'' is somehow connected to a term meaning "lion".

History

About the 5th century BCE, settlers from North-Western India reached the island of Sri Lanka, bringing with them an Indo-Aryan language. (This first group of settlers is referred to as prince Vijaya and his entourage in the chronicle Mahavamsa.) In the following centuries, there was substantial immigration from North-Eastern India (Kalinga, Magadha) which led to an admixture of features of Eastern Prakrits.

Stages of historical development

The development of the Sinhala language is divided into four periods:

★ Sinhala Prakrit (until 3rd century CE)

★ Proto-Sinhala (3rd - 7th century CE)

★ Medieval Sinhala (7th - 12th century CE)

★ Modern Sinhala (12th century - present)

Phonetic development

The most important phonetic developments of Sinhala include

★ the loss of aspirate stops (e.g. ''kanavā'' "to eat" corresponds to Sanskrit ''khādati'', Hindi ''khānā'')

★ the shortening of all long vowels (compare example above) [Long vowels in the modern language are due to borrowings (e.g. ''vibāgaya'' "exam" < Sanskrit ''vibhāga'') and sandhi phenomena either after elision of consonants (e.g. ''dānavā'' "to put" < ''damanavā'') or in originally compound words.]

★ the simplification of consonant clusters and geminate consonants into geminates or single consonants respectively (e.g. Sanskrit "time" > Sinhala Prakrit > Modern Sinhala )

★ development of /j/ to /d/ (e.g. ''däla'' "web" corresponds to Sanskrit ''jāla'')

Western vs. Eastern Prakrit features

An example for a Western feature in Sinhala is the retention of initial /v/ which developed into /b/ in the Eastern languages (e.g. Sanskrit "twenty", Sinhala ''visi-'', Hindi ''bīs''). An example of an Eastern feature is the ending -e for masculine nominative singular (instead of Western -o) in Sinhala Prakrit. There are several cases of mixed vocabulary, e.g. the presence of the words ''mässā'' ("fly") and ''mäkkā'' ("flea") which both correspond to Sanskrit but stem from two regionally different Prakrit words ''macchiā'' and ''makkhikā'' (as in Pali).

Affinities to neighbouring languages

In addition to many Tamil loanwords, several phonetic and grammatical features present in neighbouring Dravidian languages, setting today's spoken Sinhala apart from its Northern Indo-Aryan siblings, bear witness to the close coexistence of the two groups of speakers. Some of the features that may be traced to Dravidian influence are

★ the distinction between short e, o and long ē, ō

★ the loss of aspiration

★ left-branching syntax

★ the use of the verbal adjective of ''kiyanavā'' "to say" as a subordinating conjunction with the meanings "that" and "if" (e.g. ''ēka alut kiyalā mama dannavā'' "it new having-said I know" = "I know that it is new", ''ēka alut-da kiyalā mama dannē nähä'' "it new-? having-said I know not" = "I don't know if it is new")

Foreign influences

Due to centuries of colonial rule, contemporary Sinhala contains many loanwords from Portuguese, Dutch and English.

Dialects

Sinhalese spoken in the southern province of Sri Lanka (Galle, Matara and Hambanthota disctricts) is highly divergent from that spoken in the northern part. Often foreigners who learn the northern dialect are unable to speak with people from the south. However, for native speakers of both dialects the two are mutually intelligible.
The language of the Veddah resembles Sinhala to a great extent, although it has a large number of words which cannot be traced to another language.

Diglossia

In Sinhala there is distinctive diglossia, as in many languages of South Asia. The literary language and the spoken language differ from each other in many aspects. The written language is used for all forms of literary texts but also orally at formal occasions (public speeches, TV and radio news broadcasts etc.), whereas the spoken language is used as the language of communication in everyday life (see also colloquialism).
The most important difference between the two varieties is the lack of inflected verb forms in the spoken language.
The situation is analogous to one where Middle or even Old English would be the written language in Great Britain. The children are taught the written language at school almost like a foreign language.
Sinhala language also has diverse slang. Some is regarded as taboo and most is frowned upon as non-scholarly.

Characteristics of spoken Sinhala

The Sinhala spoken language has the following characteristics:

★ SOV (Subject Object Verb) word order.

★ There are almost no subordinate clauses as in English, but only non-finite clauses that are formed by the means of participles and verbal adjectives. Example: "The man who writes books" translates to '', literally "books writing man".

★ It is a left-branching language (see branching), which means that determining elements are usually put in front of what they determine (see example above).

★ An exemption to this are statements of quantity which usually stand behind what they define. Example: "the four books" translates to '', literally "books four".

★ There are no prepositions, only postpositions (see Adposition). Example: "under the book" translates to '', literally "book under".

★ Sinhala is a Pro-drop language: The subject of a sentence can be omitted when it is redundant because of the context. Example: The sentence '', literally "where went", can mean "where did I/you/he/she/we... go". Also the copula "to be" is generally omitted: "I am rich" translates to '', literally "I rich".

★ There is a four-way deictic system (which is rare): There are four demonstrative stems (see demonstrative pronouns) '' "here, close to the speaker", '' "there, close to the person addressed", '' "there, close to a third person, visible" and '' "there, close to a third person, not visible".

★ The presence of so-called prenasalized stops. A very short homorganic nasal is added preceding a voiced stop, in which case the syllable remains monomoraic (see mora).

Notes

1. Geiger, Wilhelm: ''Culture of Ceylon in Mediaeval Times''. 2nd edition, Stuttgart 1986. ISBN 3-515-04447-7. §21.
2. Carter, Charles: ''A Sinhalese-English Dictionary''. Reprint, New Delhi 1996. ISBN 81-206-1174-8. p678.

References

★ Gair, James: ''Sinhala and Other South Asian Languages'', New York 1998.

★ Gair, James and Paolillo, John C.: ''Sinhala'', München, Newcastle 1997.

★ Geiger, Wilhelm: ''A Grammar of the Sinhalese Language'', Colombo 1938.

★ Karunatillake, W.S.: ''An Introduction to Spoken Sinhala'', Colombo 1992 [several new editions].

★ Clough, B.: ''Sinhala English Dictionary'', 2nd new & enlarged edition, New Delhi, Asian Educational Services, 1997.

External links

★ Guide to Sinhala language & Culture

★ Let's Speak Sinhala - online lessons

★ Sinhala Word Processor

★ Online dictionary (Beta)

★ Kapruka Sinhala dictionary

★ Madhura Sinhala English Dictionary

★ Sinhala dictionary (Beta)

★ Sinhala books/novels

See also

★ Elu