Name | Sinhala |
---|---|
Nativename | සිංහල |
Region | |
Speakers | 15.6 million |
Familycolor | Indo-European |
Fam2 | Indo-Iranian |
Fam3 | Indo-Aryan |
Fam4 | Southern Indo-Aryan |
Fam5 | Insular Indo-Aryan |
Script | Sinhala abugida (developed from the Brahmi) |
Nation | |
Iso1 | si|iso2sin|iso3sin |
Notice | Indic |
Notice2 | IPA}} |
Sinhala has its own writing system (see Sinhala alphabet) which is a member of the Brahmic family of scripts, and a descendant of the ancient Indian Brahmi script.
The oldest Indian Prakrit inscriptions found are from the 6th century BCE, on pottery; 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.
In 1956 Sinhala replaced English as the official language. This has historically been viewed by academics as a key point in the development of ethnic discontent between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils. It was implemented by the Sri Lankan Freedom Party as one of its first acts in government and was perceived by the Tamils as a part of a strategy of placing "Sinhalese culture, language, and religion (Buddhism) to a position of dominance in the society." (Baxter, 2002, p. 354).
ēka | aluth| | kiyalā | mama | dannawā |
it | new| | having-said | I | know |
ēka | aluth-da| | kiyalā | mama | dannē | nähä |
it | new-?| | having-said | I | know | not |
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.
Numeral | Sinhala| | Konkani | Sanskrit | Telugu language>Telugu | Ancient Greek language>Greek | Latin | Portuguese language>Portuguese | German language>German | English language>English | French language>French | Russian language>Russian | Latvian language>Latvian |
1 | eka (එක)| | eka | éka | okati (ఒకటి) | heis | unus | um | eins | one | un | odin | viens |
2 | deka (දෙක)| | don | dvá | rendu (రెండు) | dúo | duo | dois | zwei | two | deux | dva | divi |
3 | thuna (තුන)| | theen | trí | moodu (మూడు) | treis | tres | três | drei | three | trois | tri | trīs |
4 | hathara (හතර)| | chaar | chatúr | naalugu (నాలుగు) | téttares | quattuor | quatro | vier | four | quatre | chetyre | četri |
5 | paha (පහ)| | panch | páñca | ídu (ఐదు) | pénte | quinque | cinco | fünf | five | cinq | pyat' | pieci |
6 | haya (හය)| | sa | shat | aaru (ఆరు) | héx | sex | seis | sechs | six | six | shest' | seši |
7 | hatha (හත)| | saath | saptá | yedu (ఏడు) | heptá | septem | sete | sieben | seven | sept | sem' | septiņi |
8 | ata (අට)| | aat | aṣṭá | yenimidi (ఎనిమిది) | októ | octo | oito | acht | eight | huit | vosem' | astoņi |
9 | navaya (නවය)| | nav | náva | tommidi (తొమ్మిది) | ennéa | novem | nove | neun | nine | neuf | devyat' | deviņi |
10 | dahaya (දහය)| | dha | dáça | padi (పది) | déka | decem | dez | zehn | ten | dix | desyat' | desmit |
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.
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.
The Sinhalese writing system, Sinhala Hodiya, is based (as are all other surviving Indo-aryan language scripts) on ancient Brahmi. The Sinhala script can be considered semi-syllabic, sometimes referred to as abugida or alphasyllabic, meaning that a basic letter such as ක represents a syllable with a default vowel, in this case ka ([kə]). This inherent vowel may be changed by adding so called pilla, vowel marks (diacritics), around the syllabic character, producing syllables such as කා kā, කැ kä, කෑ kǟ, කි ki, කී kī, කු ku, කූ kū, කෙ ke, කේ kē, කො ko, කෝ kō. Pili may appear above, below, to the left, to the right, or around the consonant. Sinhala also knows hal kirama and uses two differing virama symbols depending on the basic grapheme to explicitly indicate the lack of a vowel.
The complete writing system, Elu Hodiya, consist of 54 basic characters. It includes 18 vowel characters and 36 consonant characters. Only 36 characters (12 vowel and 24 consonant symbols) are required for writing spoken Sinhala in Suddha Sinhala. The remaining symbols for sounds that have gotten lost in the course of linguistic change, such as aspirates, are required to write Sanskrit and Pali loan words.
Sinhala is written from left to right and the Sinhala character set is only used for this singular Indo-Aryan language. 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
colspan=2 | Labial consonant>Labial | ! Dental consonant | Retroflex | Palatal consonant>Palatal | Velar consonant>Velar | Glottal consonant>Glottal | |
! colspan=2 | | | ||||||
rowspan=3 | Stop | voiceless | | | ||||
voiced | | | ||||||
prenasalized | | | ||||||
!colspan=2 | | | ||||||
colspan=2 | Rhotic | | | |||||
colspan=2 | Approximant | | |
{|class="wikitable" ! rowspan=2| ! colspan=2|Front ! colspan=2|Central ! colspan=2|Back |- !long !short !long !short !long !short |-align=center ! Close | | | | | | |-align=center ! Mid | | | | () | | |-align=center !Open | | | | | | |}
The brackets with most of the vowel length symbols indicate the optional shortening of long vowels in certain unstressed syllables.
! | ! animate sg | ! inanimate sg | ! animate pl | ! inanimate pl |
miniha(ː) | potə | minissu | pot | |
miniha(ː)və | potə | minissu(nvə) | pot | |
miniha(ː) atiŋ | poteŋ | minissu(n) atiŋ | potvəliŋ | |
miniha(ː)ʈə | potəʈə | minissu(ɳ)ʈə | potvələʈə | |
miniha(ː)geŋ | poteŋ | minissu(n)geŋ | potvaliŋ | |
miniha(ː)ge(ː) | pote(ː) | minissu(ŋ)ge(ː) | potvələ | |
miniha(ː) laᵑgə | pote(ː) | minissu(n) laᵑgə | potvələ | |
miniho(ː) | - | minissuneː | - | |
Gloss | man | book | men | books |
SG | ammaː| | deviyaː | horaː | potə | reddə | kantoːruvə | satiyə | bas ekə | paːrə |
PL | amməla(ː)| | deviyo(ː) | horu | pot | redi | kantoːru | sati | bas | paːrəval |
Gloss | mother(s)| | god(s) | thief(ves) | book(s) | cloth(es) | office(s) | week(s) | bus(ses) | street(s) |
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.
1st class | 2nd class | 3rd class | ||||
verb | verbal adjective | verb | verbal adjective | verb | verbal adjective | |
present (future) | kanəvaː | kanə | arinəvaː | arinə | pipenəvaː | pipenə |
past | kæːvaː | kæːvə | æriyaː | æriyə | pipunaː | pipunə |
anterior | kaːlaː | kaːpu | ærəlaː | ærəpu | pipilaː | pipicca |
simultaneous | kanə kanə / ka kaa(spoken) | / | arinə arinə / ara ara(spoken) | / | pipenə pipenə/ pipi pipi(spoken) | / |
infinitive | kannə/kanḍə | / | arinnə/arinḍə | / | pipennə/pipenḍə | / |
emphatic form | kanneː | / | arinneː | / | pipenneː | / |
gloss | eat | / | open | / | blossom | / |
Example: The sentence , literally "where went", can mean "where did I/you/he/she/we... go".
Category:Indo-Aryan languages Category:Languages of Sri Lanka Category:SOV languages Category:Sinhala
ar:لغة سنهالية bn:সিংহলি ভাষা be:Сінгальская мова br:Sinhaleg bg:Синхалски език ca:Singalès cs:Sinhálština da:Singalesisk de:Singhalesische Sprache es:Idioma cingalés eo:Sinhala lingvo eu:Sinhala fa:زبان سینهالی hif:Sinhalese bhasa fr:Cingalais ko:싱할라어 hi:सिंहली भाषा id:Bahasa Sinhala it:Lingua singalese la:Lingua Singhalensis lt:Sinhalų kalba lij:Lengua singaleise mg:Fiteny singalesa mr:सिंहला भाषा arz:سنهالى nl:Singalees nds-nl:Singalees ja:シンハラ語 no:Singalesisk pnb:سنہالا بولی pl:Język syngaleski pt:Língua cingalesa ro:Limba singaleză qu:Sinhala simi ru:Сингальский язык si:සිංහල භාෂාව simple:Sinhala language sl:Singalščina fi:Sinhali sv:Singalesiska ta:சிங்களம் th:ภาษาสิงหล tr:Seylanca uk:Сингальська мова ug:سىنگال تىلى vi:Tiếng Sinhala zh:僧伽罗语This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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