Sinhala language
| Sinhala | |
|---|---|
| සිංහල siṃhala | |
| Region | Sri Lanka |
Native speakers | 13 million |
| Sinhala abugida (developed from the Brahmi) | |
| Official status | |
Official language in | Sri Lanka |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | si |
| ISO 639-2 | sin |
| ISO 639-3 | sin |
Sinhala (also referred to as Sinhalese; 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 Indoeuropean languages. The term Sinhala is derived from the Sinhalese term සිංහල (siṃhala, pronounced /ˈsiŋhələ/).
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 and English. 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 literary works date from the 9th century BCE.
The closest relative of Sinhala is the language of the Maldives, Dhivehi.
History
About the 5th century BCE, settlers from North-Western India reached the island of Lanka, bringing with them a Western Prakrit 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.
Western vs. Eastern Prakrit features
An example for a Western feature in Sinhala is the retainment of initial /v/ which developed into /b/ in the Eastern languages (e.g. Sanskrit viṃśati "twenty", Sinhala visi-, Hindi bīs). An example for 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 makṣikā but stem from two regionally different Prakrit words macchiā and makkhikā (as in Pali).
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 intervocalic 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 viṣṭā "time" > Sinhala Prakrit viṭṭa > Modern Sinhala viṭa)
- development of /j/ to /d/ (e.g. däla "web" corresponds to Sanskrit jāla)
Affinities to neighbouring Languages
In addition to many Tamil loanwords (see List of Tamil words in Sinhala), several phonetic and grammatical features of neighbouring Dravidian languages, setting today's spoken Sinhala apart from its Northern Indo-Aryan siblings, bear witness to long periods of peaceful 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 "that new having-said I know" = "I know that it's new", ēka alut-da kiyalā mama dannē nähä "that new-? having-said I know not" = "I don't know if it's new")
Foreign Influences
Due to centuries of colonial rule, contemporary Sinhala contains many loanwords from Portuguese, Dutch (see List of Dutch words in Sinhala) and English.
Dialects
A strongly divergent dialect of Sinhala is spoken by the Rodiya (Rodi) caste.
The language of the Veddah resembles Sinhala to a far 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.
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 /pot 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 exemption to this are statements of quantity which usually stand behind what they define. Example: "the four books" translates to /pot hatərə/, literally "books four".
- There are no prepositions, only postpositions (see Adposition). Example: "under the book" translates to /potə jaʈə/, 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 /kohedə gie/, 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 /mamə poːsat/, literally "I rich".
- 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 adressed", /arə/ "there, close to a third person, visible" and /eː/ "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 (see voice), in which case the syllable remains monomoraic (see mora).
Reference
- Gair, James: Sinhala and Other South Asian Languages, New York 1998.
- Gair, James und 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].
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