Sinhala
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| Sinhala (සිංහල) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Sri Lanka, India, and several other countries |
| Region: | Eastern South Asia |
| Total speakers: | 13 million |
| Ranking: | not in top 100 |
| Genetic classification: | Indo-European Indo-Iranian Sinhala |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | Sri Lanka |
| Regulated by: | - |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | si |
| ISO 639-2 | sin |
| SIL | SNH |
| See also: Language – List of languages | |
Sinhala (or Sinhalese) is the language spoken by the Sinhalese, the largest ethnic group of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon). It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It is closely related to Maldivian, the language of the Maldives. There are about 13 million native speakers of Sinhala.
The Legend of Prince Vijaya has Sinhala brought to Sri Lanka from India around 500 BC by the Prince and his party of several hundred. Stone inscriptions, as well as written texts (the Mahavamsa, a history of the kings of Sri Lanka going back to almost the Buddha's time) attest to the long history of Sinhala spoken in Sri Lanka.
Sinhala has many literary works strongly influenced by Buddhism, and often followed the literary trends of India—e.g. the sandesha poetry of India, the literary modes used by Kalidasa and similar Indian dramatic poets are all echoed in Sinhalese literature as attested in the literary debates known as kukavi vada. While Sri Lanka came under Portuguese, Dutch and British colonial rule in turn, it regained its independence in 1948. Nationalist movements in the first half of the 20th century saw the establishment of the helabasa movement, led by the grammarian Munidasa Kumaratunga, which gave new vigour to the language. A more important influence was the rise of an important newspaper culture (led by the Dinamina newspaper established by the Wijaywardena group). A celebrated writer, Martin Wickremasinghe, was one of the well known and influential editors of the Dinamina.
The Sinhala script evolved from the ancient Brahmi script which was introduced to the island in the 3rd century BC. At present the Sinhala alphabet has 56 characters with four additional characters added recently. The Sinhala language is characterized by a high vowel content.
The most divergent dialect of Sinhala is spoken by the Rodiya (Rodi) Caste. The language of the Veddahs is closely related to Sinhala, although it has a large number of words which cannot be related to any other language which seems to support the claim that the Veddahs once spoke another language.
Sinhala is one of the constitutionally recognised official languages of Sri Lanka.
