Singhalese Language
Singhalese dialects, Singhalese alphabet, Singhalese orthography, Singhalese language history and sources
Singhalese language
Singhalese: It became the official language of Sri Lanka in 1956. Singhalese was spoken on the island of Ceylon primarily by majority Buddhists. Tamil is spoken by Hindu minority.
Number of Singhalese Speakers: Over 13 million in the Democratic Republic of Sri Lanka having a total population over 19 million and over three million Tamil speakers.
Singhalese Speakers: Canada, Maldives, United Arab Emirates, and Singapore.
Language Classification: It belongs to the Indic group of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages.
Singhalese Dialects: Not known.
Singhalese Alphabet: The Sinhala alphabet has 56 characters.
Singhalese Standardization Efforts: No major standardization.
Singhalese Orthography: In terms of phonetics in the Indic languages, the Singhalese language preserved the length of its vowels. In terms of morphology, there are strong elements of agglutination and the newly appearing inflections.
Singhalese Language History: We can see inscrioptions of Singhalese Prakrit language going back to the 3rd century. The Sinhala script was evolved from the Brahmi script.
Singhalese Language Enriched by: Tamil, English, Portuguese, Malay, and Persian. Buddhism had an influence on the Singhalese literature.
Unique Features of Singhalese: Nouns are declined, adjectives, on the other hand, have no gender, case or number.
Visit Ceylon Online for free online Singhalese dictionary and Sinhala language characters.
"Free" instant quote for Singhalese translation by email: translation@acrusa.net or call: 858-922-7724 or Fax: 480-247-5474
