Sinhala

Where it’s spoken

Sinhala (සිංහල) is the language of the Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka, where it is one of two official languages (alongside Tamil). About 16 million people speak it as a first language, and most non-Sinhalese Sri Lankans understand it as a second language. The Sinhala diaspora in Australia, the UK, Canada, and the US preserves the language abroad.

What it sounds like

Sinhala is unusual among Indo-Aryan languages for its long separation from the mainland — it preserves some Indo-Aryan archaisms while developing innovations like prenasalized consonants (ඬ, ඳ) influenced by Dravidian contact. It has a vowel-length distinction and a unique system of definite/indefinite marking on nouns.

How it’s written

The Sinhala script is a Brahmic abugida descended from the Brahmi script of Ashokan India via Granthi. Its letterforms are highly rounded — a result of being written on palm leaves, where angles would split the leaf. The script has many ligatures and conjunct consonants.

History

Sinhala speakers arrived in Sri Lanka from northern India around the 5th–6th century BCE. The chronicles Mahavamsa and Dipavamsa, composed in Pali but reflecting Sinhalese tradition, recount this. Sinhala literature has flourished continuously since the 8th–9th centuries.