| Sinhala සිංහල siṃhala |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Sri Lanka | |||
| Total speakers: | 19 million | |||
| Language family: | Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Insular Indo-Aryan Sinhala |
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| Writing system: | Sinhala abugida (developed from the Brahmi) | |||
| Official status | ||||
| Official language in: | Sri Lanka | |||
| Regulated by: | no official regulation | |||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-1: | si | |||
| ISO 639-2: | sin | |||
| ISO 639-3: | sin | |||
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Sinhalese or Sinhala (සිංහල, ISO 15919: siṃhala, pronounced [ˈsiŋhələ], earlier referred to as Singhalese) is the language of the Sinhalese, the largest ethnic group of Sri Lanka. ISO 15919 Transliteration of Devanagari and related Indic scripts into Latin characters is an international standard for the Transliteration of Indic scripts to the The Sinhalese are the main ethnic group of Sri Lanka. They speak Sinhala, an Indo-Aryan language and number approximately 15 million people with the Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka ( Sinhalese:, இலங்கை known as Ceylon before 1972 is an Island It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. The Indo-Aryan languages (within the context of Indo-European studies also Indic) are a branch of the Indo-European language family
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. Tamil (ta தமிழ்; t̪əmɨɻ is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. Sinhala has its own writing system (see Sinhala alphabet) which is an offspring of the Brahmi script. The Sinhala script is an Abugida script used in Sri Lanka to write the Official language Sinhala and also sometimes the Liturgical Brāhmī script refers to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of alphabets.
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. The Maldives ( or, or Maldive Islands) officially the Republic of Maldives, is an Island nation consisting of a group of atolls stretching Dhivehi Writing Systems Dhivehi (or Divehi) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by more than about 300000 people in the Republic of Maldives where it is the
Contents |
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. Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical The Middle Indo-Aryan ( Middle Indic) languages are the early medieval dialects of the Indo-Aryan languages, the descendants of the Old Indo-Aryan dialects such as According to legend, Sinhabahu or Sīhabāhu ("Lion-arms"), was the son of a Vanga princess and a lion. Sinhabahu was father of Vijaya and king of Sinhapura According to the Mahavamsa 's folklore (the chronicled history of Sri Lanka) Sinhabahu's father Vanga (also known as Banga was a kingdom located in the eastern part of the Indian sub-continent and comprised of modern West Bengal and what is now Bangladesh The lion ( Panthera leo) is a member of the family Felidae and one of four Big cats in the Genus Panthera. He killed his father and became king of Vanga. His son Vijaya would emigrate to Lankā and become the progenitor of the Sinhala people. Vijaya (c 543 BC - 504 BC) was the first king of Sri Lanka mentioned in the ancient Sri Lankan Pali chronicles Lanka ( Sanskrit: लंका lankā means "island" is the name given in Hindu mythology to the island fortress capital of the Taking into account linguistic and mythological evidence, we can assume that the first element of the name of the people means "lion". [1]
As for the second element la, local tradition connects it to the Sanskrit root lā- "to seize",[2] 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. The 5th century BC started the first day of 500 BC and ended the last day of 401 BC. Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka ( Sinhalese:, இலங்கை known as Ceylon before 1972 is an Island The Indo-Aryan languages (within the context of Indo-European studies also Indic) are a branch of the Indo-European language family (This first group of settlers is referred to as prince Vijaya and his entourage in the chronicle Mahavamsa. Vijaya (c 543 BC - 504 BC) was the first king of Sri Lanka mentioned in the ancient Sri Lankan Pali chronicles The Mahavamsa, ("Great Chronicle " is a historical poem written in the Pali language of the kings of Sri Lanka. ) In the following centuries, there was substantial immigration from North-Eastern India (Kalinga, Magadha) which led to an admixture of features of Eastern Prakrits. Kalinga was a Kingdom in central-eastern India, which comprised most of the modern state of Orissa, as well as some northern areas of the bordering state Magadha (मगध formed one of the sixteen Mahājanapadas ( Sanskrit, "great countries" or regions in ancient India. Prakrit (also transliterated as Pracrit) ( Sanskrit: prākṛta प्राकृत (from pra-kṛti प्रकृति according to one
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 (e. Description Voiceless consonants are produced with the Vocal cords open and voiced consonants are produced when the vocal folds are fractionally closed A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. 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. In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one Language from another with little or no translation g. vibāgaya "exam" < Sanskrit vibhāga) and sandhi phenomena either after elision of intervocalic consonants (e. Sandhi ( Sanskrit saṃdhi sa संधि "joining" is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at Morpheme Elision is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a Vowel, a Consonant, or a whole Syllable) in a word or phrase producing a result that is easier g. dānavā "to put" < damanavā) or in originally compound words. In Linguistics, a compound is a Lexeme (less precisely a Word) that consists of more than one stem. ]
- the simplification of consonant clusters and geminate consonants into geminates or single consonants respectively (e. In Linguistics, a consonant cluster (or consonant blend) is a group of Consonants which have no intervening Vowel. In Phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken Consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short Consonant. 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. In Etymology, two or more words in the same language are called doublets or etymological twins (or possibly triplets etc 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). Pali ( ISO 15919 / ALA-LC: Pāḷi is a Middle Indo-Aryan language or Prakrit of India.
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. Sinhala words of Tamil origin came about as part of the more than 2000 years of language interactions between Sinhala and Tamil in the Island The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 73 languages (including the four literary languages of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada 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. In Linguistics, branching is the general tendency towards a given order of Words within sentences and smaller grammatical units within sentences (such as In Linguistics, a non-finite verb (or a verbal) is a Verb form that is not limited by a subject and more generally is not fully inflected by g. :
| ēka | alut | kiyalā | mama | dannavā |
| it | new | having-said | I | know |
"I know that it is new. "
| ēka | alut-da | kiyalā | mama | dannē | nähä |
| it | new-? | having-said | I | know. emph | not |
"I do not know whether it is new. "
Foreign influences
Due to centuries of colonial rule, contemporary Sinhala contains many loanwords from Portuguese, Dutch and English. This article is about Sinhala words of Portuguese origin. Note For information on the transcription used see National Library at Calcutta romanization This is a list of Sinhala words of Dutch origin. Note For information on the transcription used see National Library at Calcutta romanization These are examples of Sinhalese words of English origin
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. The Southern Province ( Sinhala: Dakunu Palata) of Sri Lanka is a small geographic area consisting of the districts of Galle, Matara Galle is a district in Southern Province, Sri Lanka. Geological Background Its area is 1652 km² in which 35 km² is water and 1617 Matara is a district in Southern Province, Sri Lanka. Its area is 1246 km² Hambantota District is located on the southeastern coast of Sri Lanka, in the Southern Province. 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. A standard language (also standard dialect, standardized dialect, or standardised dialect) is a particular variety of a Language that 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 cannot be traced to another language. "Vedda" and "Veddas" redirect here For the Sanskrit texts see Vedas.
Diglossia
In Sinhala there is distinctive diglossia, as in many languages of South Asia. In Linguistics, diglossia is a situation where in a given society there are two (often closely-related languages one of high prestige, which is generally used The literary language and the spoken language differ from each other in many aspects. A literary language is a register of a Language that is used in Literary Writing. A spoken language is a human Natural language in which the Words are uttered through the Mouth. 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. Literature is the Art of written works Literally translated the word means "acquaintance with letters" (from Latin littera letter ), whereas the spoken language is used as the language of communication in everyday life (see also colloquialism). A colloquialism is an expression not used in formal speech, writing or Paralinguistics.
The most important difference between the two varieties is the lack of inflected verb forms in the spoken language. In Grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language handles grammatical relations and relational categories such as tense, mood, voice For English usage of verbs see the wiki article English verbs.
The situation is analogous to one where Middle or even Old English would be the written language in Great Britain. Middle English is the name given by Historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of See also Kingdom of Great Britain Great Britain (Breatainn Mhòr Prydain Fawr Breten Veur Graet Breetain is the larger of the two main islands The children are taught the written language at school almost like a foreign language. A foreign language is a Language not spoken by the people of a certain place for example English is a foreign language in Japan.
Sinhala language also has diverse slang. Slang is the use of highly informal Words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's Dialect or Language. 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. Prenasalized stops or consonants are phonetic sequences of nasal plus plosive that behave phonologically like single consonants A very short homorganic nasal is added before a voiced stop. In Articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a Consonant is the point of contact where an Obstruction A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. 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 | 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. Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips ( bilabial articulation or with the lower lip and the upper teeth ( labiodental articulation In Linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a Consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth such as /t/ /d/ /n/ and Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior Alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets In Phonetics, retroflex consonants are Consonant sounds used in some Languages (They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants Palatal consonants are Consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the Hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth Glottal consonants are Consonants articulated with the Glottis. A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. Fricatives are Consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together Rhotic consonants, or "R"-like sounds are non-lateral Liquid consonants This class of sounds is difficult to characterise phonetically though most of them share Approximants are speech sounds ( Phonemes) that could be regarded as intermediate between Vowels and typical Consonants In the articulation of approximants A front vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward A central vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between A back vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as A close vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in many spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as A mid vowel is a Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an An open vowel is a Vowel sound of a type used in most spoken Languages The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as Animacy is a grammatical and/or Semantic category of Nouns based on how Sentient or alive the Referent of the noun is
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 nominative case is a Grammatical case for a Noun, which generally marks the subject of a Verb, as opposed to its object or other The accusative case ( abbreviated ACC) of a Noun is the Grammatical case used to mark the Direct object of a Transitive In Grammar, the genitive case or possessive case (also called the second case) is the case that marks a Noun as modifying another In Linguistics, ablative case ( abbreviated ABL) is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic 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. An affix is a Morpheme that is attached to a stem to form a word Depending on how far an independent word has progressed on a grammaticalization path, scholars will see it as a case marker or not. In Historical linguistics, grammaticalisation (also known as grammaticisation or grammatisation) is a process of linguistic change by which a Content
The brackets with most of the vowel length symbols indicate the optional shortening of long vowels in certain unstressed syllables. In Linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain Syllables in a word
| 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) laŋgə | pote(ː) | minissu(n) laŋgə | 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). The nominative case is a Grammatical case for a Noun, which generally marks the subject of a Verb, as opposed to its object or other The accusative case ( abbreviated ACC) of a Noun is the Grammatical case used to mark the Direct object of a Transitive The instrumental case (also called the eighth case) is a Grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the The dative case is a Grammatical case generally used to indicate the Noun to whom something is given In Linguistics, ablative case ( abbreviated ABL) is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic In Grammar, the genitive case or possessive case (also called the second case) is the case that marks a Noun as modifying another Locative (also called the seventh case) is a Grammatical case which indicates a location The vocative case is the case used for a Noun identifying the person (animal object etc In Phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken Consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short Consonant. 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. In Linguistics, singulative number and collective number are terms used when the Grammatical number for multiple items is the unmarked form
| 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 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.
| 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. In Linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and Verb of a sentence appear or usually In Linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the different ways in which languages arrange the constituents of their sentences relative to each other and the systematic
- 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. Conjunctions is a biannual American literary journal publishing innovative fiction poetry criticism drama art and interviews by both emerging and established In Linguistics, a non-finite clause is a Subordinate clause whose verb is non-finite; for example many languages can form non-finite clauses from In Linguistics, a participle (from Latin participium, a Calque of Greek μετοχη "partaking" is a derivative of a non-finite In Linguistics, a non-finite verb (or a verbal) is a Verb form that is not limited by a subject and more generally is not fully inflected by 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). In Linguistics, branching is the general tendency towards a given order of Words within sentences and smaller grammatical units within sentences (such as
- 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). In Grammar, a preposition is a Part of speech that introduces a prepositional phrase. 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". In Pragmatics and Linguistics, deixis is collectively the orientational features of human languages to have reference to points in time space and the speaking event In Linguistics, a stem (sometimes also theme) is the part of a word that is common to all its inflected variants Demonstratives are deictic words (they depend on an external frame of reference that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others
Discourse
- Sinhala is a Pro-drop language: arguments of a sentence can be omitted when they can be inferred from context. A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping" is a Language in which certain classes of Pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatically 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. According to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle, every sentence can be divided in two main constituents, one being the subject of the sentence and the 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".
Notes
- ^ Geiger, Wilhelm: Culture of Ceylon in Mediaeval Times. Wilhelm Ludwig Geiger (1856-1943 was a German Orientalist in the fields of Indian and Iranian languages 2nd edition, Stuttgart 1986. ISBN 3-515-04447-7. §21.
- ^ Carter, Charles: A Sinhalese-English Dictionary. Reprint, New Delhi 1996. ISBN 81-206-1174-8. p678.
References
- 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.
External links
- Guide to Sinhala language & Culture
- Let's Speak Sinhala - online lessons
- Sinhala Word Processor
- Online dictionary (Beta)
- Kapruka Sinhala dictionary
- Madhura Sinhala English Dictionary
- Sinhala dictionary (Beta)
- Sinhala books/novels
- Sinhala Slang
See also
Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic