Sinhalese language Totally Explained

Everything about Sinhalese Language totally explained

Sinhalese or Sinhala (සිංහල, ISO 15919: siṃhala,, earlier referred to as Singhalese) is the language of the Sinhalese, the largest ethnic group of Sri Lanka. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages.
   Sinhala is spoken by about 19 million people in Sri Lanka, about 16 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.

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".
As for the second element la, local tradition connects it to the Sanskrit root lā- "to seize", 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 language include

the loss of the aspiration distinction in stops (for example kanavā "to eat" corresponds to Sanskrit khādati, Hindi khānā)

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

the simplification of consonant clusters and geminate consonants into geminates or single consonants respectively (for example Sanskrit viṣṭā "time" > Sinhala Prakrit viṭṭa > Modern Sinhala viṭa)

development of /j/ to /d/ (for example 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 (for example 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, for example 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

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", for example:

ēka	alut	kiyalā	mama	dannavā
it	new	having-said	I	know

"I know that it's new."

ēka	alut-da	kiyalā	mama	dannē	nähä
it	new-?	having-said	I	know.emph	not

"I don't know whether it's 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 Hambantota districts) is highly divergent from that spoken in the Western and Central part. Often foreigners who learn the Western dialect (which is generally considered to be the standard language today) are unable to speak with people from the South. However, for native speakers both dialects are mutually intelligible.
The language of the Veddah resembles Sinhala to a great extent, although it has a large number of words which can't be traced to another language.

Diglossia

In Sinhala there's 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:

Phonology

The presence of so-called prenasalized stops. A very short homorganic nasal is added before a voiced stop. 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.

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m		n	ɲ	ŋ
Stop	small>voiceless	p	t̪	ʈ	tʃ	k
	voiced	b	d̪	ɖ	dʒ	g
	prenasalized	^mb	^n̪d̪	^ɳɖ		^ŋg
Fricative		(f)	s		(ʃ)		h
Rhotic			r
Approximant		ʋ	l		j

	Front		Central		Back
	long	short	long	short	long	short
Close	iː	i			uː	u
Mid	eː	e		(ə)	oː	o
Open	æː	æ	aː	a

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 la^ŋgə, are also independent words meaning "with the hand" and "near" respectively, which is why they're 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.

	animate sg	inanimate sg	animate pl	inanimate pl
NOM	miniha(ː)	potə	minissu	pot
ACC	miniha(ː)və	potə	minissu(nvə)	pot
INSTR	miniha(ː) atiŋ	poteŋ	minissu(n) atiŋ	potvəliŋ
DAT	miniha(ː)ʈə	potəʈə	minissu(ɳ)ʈə	potvələʈə
ABL	miniha(ː)geŋ	poteŋ	minissu(n)geŋ	potvaliŋ
GEN	miniha(ː)ge(ː)	pote(ː)	minissu(ŋ)ge(ː)	potvələ
LOC	miniha(ː) la^ŋgə	pote(ː)	minissu(n) la^ŋgə	potvələ
VOC	miniho(ː)	-	minissuneː	-

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 don't mark the plural. This can be interpreted as singulative.

SG	ammaː	ballaː	horaː	potə	reddə	kantoːruvə	satiyə	bas ekə	paːrə
PL	amməla(ː)	ballo(ː)	horu	pot	redi	kantoːru	sati	bas	paːrəval
Gloss	mother(s)	dog(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's 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 doesn't receive special marking.

Verbal morphology

Sinhala distinguishes three conjugation classes. Spoken Sinhala doesn't mark person, number or gender on the verb (literary Sinhala does). In other words there's no Subject-Verb-agreement.

	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	/	arinə arinə	/	pipenə pipenə	/
infinitive	kannə/kanḍə	/	arinnə/arinḍə	/	pipennə/pipenḍə	/
emphatic form	kanneː	/	arinneː	/	pipenneː	/
gloss	eat	/	open	/	blossom	/

Syntax

SOV (Subject Object Verb) word order.

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".

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 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"

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

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: 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". Example: The sentence kohed̪ə gie, literally "where went", can mean "where did I/you/he/she/we... go".

Further Information

Get more info on 'Sinhalese Language'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://sinhalese_language.totallyexplained.com">Sinhalese language Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.