Sinhala ( ; Sinhala: , , ), sometimes called Sinhalese ( ), is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka, who make up the largest ethnic group on the island, numbering about 16 million. Sinhala is also spoken as the first language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, totalling about 2 million people as of 2001. It is written using the Sinhala script, which is a Brahmic script closely related to the Grantha script of South India.
Sinhala is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka. Along with Pali, it played a major role in the development of Theravada Buddhist literature.
The early form of the Sinhala language is attested as early as the 3rd century BCE. The language of these inscriptions with long vowels and aspirated consonants is a Prakrit similar to Magadhi, a regional associate of the Middle Indian Prakrits that has been used during the time of the Buddha. The closest relatives are the Vedda language (an endangered, indigenous creole still spoken by a minority of Sri Lankans, mixing Sinhala with an isolate of unknown origin and from which Old Sinhala borrowed various aspects into its main Indo-Aryan substrate), and the Maldivian language. It has two main varieties, written and spoken, and is a conspicuous example of the linguistic phenomenon known as diglossia.
Etymology
Sinhala () is a Sanskrit term; the corresponding Middle Indo-Aryan (Eḷu) word is . The name is a derivation from , the Sanskrit word for 'lion'. The name is sometimes glossed as 'abode of lions', and attributed to a supposed former abundance of lions on the island.
History
According to the chronicle Mahavansa, written in Pali, Vanga kingdom's Prince Vijaya and his entourage merged with later settlers from the Pandya kingdom. In the following centuries, there was substantial immigration from Eastern India (Vanga Kingdom (Bengal), Kalinga, Magadha) which led to an admixture of features of Eastern Prakrits.
Stages of historical development
The development of Sinhala is divided into four epochs:
Elu (3rd c BCE to 4th c CE) Proto-Sinhala (4th c CE to 8th c CE) Medieval Sinhala (8th c CE to 13th c CE) Modern Sinhala (13th c CE to the present)
Phonetic development
The most important phonetic developments of Sinhala include: the loss of the aspiration distinction (e.g. kanavā "to eat" corresponds to Sanskrit khādati, Hindustani khānā) the loss of original vowel length distinction; long vowels in the modern language are due to loanwords (e.g. vibāgaya "exam" < Sanskrit vibhāga) and sandhi, 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 and single consonants respectively (e.g. Sanskrit viṣṭā "time" > Sinhalese Prakrit viṭṭa > Modern Sinhala viṭa) development of to (e.g. san̆da/han̆da "moon" corresponds to Sanskrit candra) and development of to (e.g. däla "web" corresponds to Sanskrit jāla)
Western vs. Eastern Prakrit features
According to Wilhelm Geiger, an example of a possible Western feature in Sinhala is the retention of initial which developed into in the Eastern languages (e.g. Sanskrit viṃśati "twenty", Sinhala visi-, Hindi bīs). This is disputed by Muhammad Shahidullah who says that Sinhala Prakrit branched off from the Eastern Prakrits prior to this change. He cites the inscriptions of Asoka, none of which show this sound change.
An example of an Eastern feature is the ending -e for masculine nominative singular (instead of Western -o) in Sinhalese Prakrit. There are several cases of vocabulary doublets, e.g. the words mässā ("fly") and mäkkā ("flea"), which both correspond to Sanskrit makṣikā but stem from two regionally different Prakrit words macchiā (Western prakrits) and makkhikā (as in Eastern prakrits like Pali).
Pre-1815 Sinhalese literature
In 1815 the island of Ceylon came under British rule. During the career of Christopher Reynolds (1922–2015) as a Sinhalese lecturer at the SOAS, University of London, he extensively researched the Sinhalese language and its pre-1815 literature: the Sri Lankan government awarded him the Sri Lanka Ranjana medal for this. He wrote the 377-page An anthology of Sinhalese literature up to 1815, selected by the UNESCO National Commission of Ceylon