Sinhala language

Sinhala
සිංහල siṁhala
Region	Sri Lanka
Native speakers	16 million  (2007)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Southern Indo-Aryan Insular Indo-Aryan Sinhala
Early forms:	Elu Sinhala
Dialects	Vedda (perhaps a creole)
Writing system	Sinhala alphabet (Brahmic) Sinhala Braille
Official status
Official language in	Sri Lanka
Language codes
ISO 639-1	si
ISO 639-2	sin
ISO 639-3	sin
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Sinhala (සිංහල, ISO 15919: siṁhala, pronounced [ˈsiŋɦələ]), also known as Sinhalese (older spelling: Singhalese) in English, also known locally as Helabasa, is the mother tongue of the Sinhalese people, who make up the largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka, numbering about 16 million. Sinhala is also spoken, as a second language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, totalling about 3 million.^[2] It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. Sinhala is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka. Sinhala, along with Pali, played a major role in the development of Theravada Buddhist literature.

Sinhala has its own writing system, the Sinhala alphabet, which is a member of the Brahmic family of scripts, and a descendant of the ancient Indian Brahmi script.

The oldest Sinhala inscriptions found are from the 6th century BCE, on pottery;^{[citation needed]} the oldest existing literary works date from the 9th century CE.

The closest relative of Sinhala is the language of the Maldives and Minicoy Island (India), Dhivehi.

Etymology

Sinhala (Siṃhāla) is actually a Sanskrit term; the corresponding Middle Indic word is Sīhala; the actual Sinhala term is heḷa or (h)eḷu. The Sanskrit and the Middle Indic words have as their first element (siṃha and sīha) the word "lion" in the respective languages.^[3] 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 from north India 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".^[4]

As for the second element la, local tradition connects it to the Sanskrit root lā- "to seize",^[5] 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,^{[citation needed]} so that we can only safely say that the word Sinhala is somehow connected to a term meaning "lion".

Disputing this traditional etymology, however, Thomas Burrow, argued that the word may instead be Dravidian in origin. He suggests that the Dravidian word "Eelam" (or Cilam) meaning "toddy", referring to the palm trees in Sri Lanka, was later absorbed into Indo-Aryan languages. This, he says, is also likely the source for Pali '"Sīhala".^[6]

History

It is believed that about the 5th century BCE, settlers from North-Eastern India ^[7] reached the island of Sri Lanka. According to the chronicle Mahavamsa, the first settlers were Prince Vijaya and his entourage. The settlers merged with the native tribes known as Yakkha and Naga. In the following centuries, there was substantial immigration from Eastern India (Kalinga, Magadha)^[8] which led to an admixture of features of Eastern Prakrits.^{[citation needed]}

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 the Sinhala language include

• the loss of the aspiration distinction in plosives (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 intervocalic consonants (e.g. dānavā "to put" < damanavā) or in originally compound words.]
• the simplification of consonant clusters and geminate consonants into geminates and single consonants respectively (e.g. Sanskrit viṣṭā "time" > Sinhala Prakrit viṭṭa > Modern Sinhala viṭa)
• 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 viṃśati "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 vocabulary doublets, e.g. the words mässā ("fly") and mäkkā ("flea"), which both correspond to Sanskrit makṣikā but stem from two regionally different Prakrit words macchiā and makkhikā (as in Pali).

Ecology

Substratum influence in Sinhalese

According to Geiger, Sinhalese has features that set it apart from other Indo-Aryan languages. Some of the differences can be explained by the substrate influence of parent stock of the Vedda language.^[9] Sinhalese has many words that are only found in Sinhalese, or shared between Sinhalese and Vedda and not etymologically derivable from Middle or Old Indo-Aryan. Common examples are kola for leaf in Sinhalese and Vedda, dola for pig in Sinhalese and offering in Vedda. Other common words are rera for wild duck, and gala for stones (in toponyms used throughout the island).^[10] There are also high frequency words denoting body parts in Sinhalese, such as olluva for head, kakula for leg, bella for neck and kalava for thighs, that are derived from pre-Sinhalese languages of Sri Lanka.^[11] The author of the oldest Sinhalese grammar, Sidatsangarava, written in the 13th century CE, recognized a category of words that exclusively belonged to early Sinhalese. The grammar lists naramba (to see) and kolamba (ford or harbor) as belonging to an indigenous source. Kolamba is the source of the name of the commercial capital Colombo.^[12][13]

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 interactions with Dravidian 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.:

"I know that it is new."

"I do not know whether it is new."

Foreign influences

As a result of centuries of colonial rule, contemporary Sinhala contains many Portuguese, Dutch and English loanwords.

Influences on other languages

Macanese language or Macau Creole (known as Patuá to its speakers) is a creole language derived mainly from Malay, Sinhalese, Cantonese, and Portuguese, which was originally spoken by the Macanese community of the Portuguese colony of Macau. It is now spoken by a few families in Macau and in the Macanese diaspora.

The language developed first mainly among the descendants of Portuguese settlers whom often married women from Malacca and Sri Lanka rather than from neighboring China, so the language had strong Malay and Sinhalese influence from the beginning.

Numerals

Sinhala shares many features common to other Indo-European languages. Shared vocabulary includes the numbers up to ten:

Accents and dialects

Sinhalese spoken in the Southern province of Sri Lanka (Galle, Matara and Hambantota districts) uses several words that are not found elsewhere in the country; this is also the case for the Central province, North-Central province and south-eastern part (Uva & the surrounding area). For native speakers all dialects are mutually intelligible, and they might not even realize that the differences are significant.^[14]

The language of the Veddah people resembles Sinhala to a great extent, although it has a large number of words which cannot be traced to another language. Rodiya people use another dialect of Sinhala.

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 Sinhala slang and colloquialism). As a rule the literary language uses more Sanskrit-based words.

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.^{[citation needed]}

Writing system

The Sinhala alphabet, Sinhala hodiya, is based on ancient Brahmi, as are most Indo-Aryan scripts. In design, the Sinhala alphabet is what is called an "abugida" or "alphasyllabary", meaning that consonants are written with letters while vowels are indicated with diacritics (pilla) on those consonants, unlike English where both consonants and vowels are full letters, or Urdu where vowels need not be written at all. Also, when no diacritic is used, an "inherent vowel", either /a/ or /ə/, is understood, depending on the position of the consonant within the word. For example, the letter ක k on its own indicates ka, either /ka/ or /kə/. The various vowels are written කා kā, කැ kä, කෑ kǟ (after the consonant), කි ki, කී kī (above the consonant), කු ku, කූ kū (below the consonant), කෙ ke, කේ kē (before the consonant), කො ko, කෝ kō (surrounding the consonant). There are also a few diacritics for consonants, such as r. For simple /k/ without a vowel, a vowel-cancelling diacritic (virama) called hal kirīma is used: ක් k. Several of these diacritics occur in two forms, which depend on the shape of the consonant letter. Vowels also have independent letters but these are only used at the beginning of words where there is no preceding consonant to add a diacritic to.

The complete alphabet consist of 54 letters, 18 for vowels and 36 for consonants. However, only 36 (12 vowels and 24 consonants) are required for writing colloquial spoken Sinhala (suddha Sinhala). The rest indicate sounds that have gotten lost in the course of linguistic change, such as the aspirates, are restricted to Sanskrit and Pali loan words.

Sinhala is written from left to right and the Sinhala character set (the Sinhala script) is only used for this one language.^{[citation needed]} The alphabetic sequence is similar to those of other Brahmic scripts:

a/ā ä/ǟ i/ī u/ū [ŗ] e/ē [ai] o/ō [au] k [kh] g [g] ṅ c [ch] j [jh] [ñ] ṭ [ṭa] ṭ [ṭh] ḍ [ḍh] ṇ t [th] d [dh] n p [ph] b [bh] m y r l v [ś ṣ] s h ḷ f

Phonology

• The presence of so-called prenasalized consonants. A very short homorganic nasal is added before a voiced plosive. The nasal is syllabified with the onset of the following syllable, which means that the moraic weight of the preceding syllable is left unchanged.
• The pronunciation of unstressed short a as schwa ə, which otherwise has no written symbol.

Morphology

Nominal morphology

The main features marked on Sinhala nouns are case, number, definiteness and animacy.

Cases

Sinhala distinguishes several cases. Next to the cross-linguistically rather common nominative, accusative, genitive, dative and ablative, there are also less common cases like the instrumental. The exact number of these cases depends on the exact definition of cases one wishes to employ. For instance, the endings for the animate instrumental and locative cases, atiŋ and laᵑgə, are also independent words meaning "with the hand" and "near" respectively, which is why they are not regarded to be actual case endings by some scholars. Depending on how far an independent word has progressed on a grammaticalization path, scholars will see it as a case marker or not.

The brackets with most of the vowel length symbols indicate the optional shortening of long vowels in certain unstressed syllables.

Number marking

In Sinhala animate nouns, the plural is marked with -o(ː), a long consonant plus -u, or with -la(ː). Most of the inanimates mark the plural by subtractive morphology. Loan words from English mark the singular with ekə, and do not mark the plural. This can be interpreted as singulative.

On the left hand side of the table, plurals are longer than singulars. On the right hand side, it is the other way round, with the exception of paːrə "street". Note that [+animate] lexemes are mostly in the classes on the left-hand side, while [-animate] lexemes are most often in the classes on the right hand.

Indefinite article

The indefinite article is -ek for animates and -ak for inanimates. The indefinite article exists only in the singular, where its absence marks definiteness. In the plural, (in)definiteness does not receive special marking.

Verbal morphology

Sinhala distinguishes three conjugation classes. Spoken Sinhala does not mark person, number or gender on the verb (literary Sinhala does). In other words there is no subject–verb agreement.

Syntax

• Left-branching language (see branching), which means that determining elements are usually put in front of what they determine (see example below).
• SOV (subject–object–verb) word order, common to most left-branching languages.
• As a left-branching language, there are no prepositions, only postpositions (see Adposition). Example: "under the book" translates to pot̪ə yaʈə, literally "book under".
• There are almost no conjunctions as English that or whether, but only non-finite clauses that are formed by the means of participles and verbal adjectives. Example: "The man who writes books" translates to pot̪ liənə miniha, literally "books writing man".
• An exception to this is statements of quantity which usually stand behind what they define. Example: "the four flowers" translates to mal hat̪ərə, literally "flowers four". On the other hand it can be argued that the numeral is the head in this construction, and the flowers the modifier, so that a better English rendering would be "a floral foursome"
• Sinhala has no copula: "I am rich" translates to mamə poːsat̪, literally "I rich". There are two existential verbs, which are used for locative predications, but these verbs are not used for predications of class-membership or property-assignment, unlike English is.

Semantics

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

Discourse

• Sinhala is a pro-drop language; that is: arguments of a sentence can be omitted when they can be inferred from context. This is true for subject—as in Italian, for instance—but also objects and other parts of the sentence can be "dropped" in Sinhala if they can be inferred. In that sense, Sinhala can be called a "super pro-drop language", like Japanese.

Example: The sentence [koɦed̪ə ɡie], literally "where went", can mean "where did I/you/he/she/we... go".

See also

	Sri Lanka portal
	Languages portal

• Sinhala slang

Notes

References

Further reading

• 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.
• Gair, James (1998). Studies in South Asian Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509521-9. 
• Van Driem, George (Jan 15, 2002). Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-04-10390-2. 
• Indrapala, Karthigesu (2007). The evolution of an ethnic identity: The Tamils in Sri Lanka C. 300 BCE to C. 1200 CE. Colombo: Vijitha Yapa. ISBN 978-955-1266-72-1. 

External links

• Guide to Sinhala language & Culture
• Sinhala Input Method Editor
• Kapruka Sinhala dictionary
• Madura Online English-Sinhala Dictionary and Language Translator
• Sinhala dictionary (Beta)
• Sinhala dictionary resources online
• Sinhala books/novels
• Viki - The Sinhala Encyclopedia
• USA Foreign Service Institute (FSI) Sinhala basic course
• Sinhala English Dictionary for Android

Languages of Sri Lanka   Official status Sinhala Tamil (dialects)   Widely spoken English   Others Malay Pali1 Portuguese Creole Vedda Gypsy Telugu   Formerly spoken and Extinct Arwi Ceylon Dutch Rodiya2   1a liturgical language 2a dialect of Sinhala