Talk:Sinhala language/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2

moved from article

I moved the following contribution of 198.61.20.7 out of the arucle. It is not in encyclopedic style and the copyright is unclear:

Reference Devices in Sinhala

Neelakshi Chandrasena Premawardhena, University of Siegen, Germany

Abstract

This study examines various reference devices employed by Sinhala native speakers in order to keep track of participants in the discourse. Sinhala is the majority language spoken in Sri Lanka. Besides Divehi, the language of the Maldives, Sinhala is the only Indo-Aryan language geographically separated from the other members of its family, such as Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati spoken in India. Disanayaka (1998:118/19) argues that "Sinhala occupies a unique position among the languages of South Asia because of its close affinities with two of the major linguistic families of the Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Aryan and Dravidian". Tamil, the oldest of the Dravidian languages and Sinhala have coexisted for generations interacting with each other, thus bearing an impact on the phonology, morphology and syntax of Sinhala (Karunatillake, 1984; Disanayaka, 1991) There exists a vast difference between the spoken and the written variety of modern Sinhala. The Sinhala diglossia situation has made many linguists refer to the two forms of written and spoken language as 'Literary Sinhala' and 'Spoken Sinhala'. The latter makes a further distinction between Formal and Colloquial varieties (see Karunatillake 1992; Disanayaka 1998; Gair 1998). The Formal Spoken Sinhala is usually used in speeches, lectures or in the media and the Colloquial Sinhala is the language of ordinary conversation. In this study I will refer to Spoken Sinhala, where in fact the language of normal day to day conversation is meant. Due to the vast differences between the two varieties of Sinhala, this study concentrates on data available from Spoken Sinhala only. The aim of the study is to discuss reference devices employed by Sinhala native speakers in discourse cohesion. The identity of the speaker (first person) and the addressee (second person) is generally evident in discourse and does not cause much difficulty to decode who it is being referred to. Hence the focus will be mainly on devices employed to identify third persons referred to in discourse i.e. third person pronouns and other devices such as nouns, zero anaphora, honorific and kinship terms. It is important to note that sociolinguistic factors play a significant role in identifying referents in Sinhala (see Chandrasena Premawardhena 2001:23-24, 15-159). Social norms are as important as formal grammatical rules in this process. Thus this study will also provide a sociolinguistic interpretation of reference devices employed in Spoken Sinhala. There are a number of personal pronouns used in Spoken Sinhala as illustrated in Table 2. However, due to social norms and customs such as respecting the elders by not addressing or referring to them with proper names or pronouns, the Sinhalese use nominal reference devices such as kinship terms or honorific terms instead. Hence this study gives an insight into both pronominal and nominal reference devices. Reference devices in Spoken Sinhala have not been the subject of attention in many extensive studies apart from Chandrasena Premawardhena (2001). In Gair (1998); Gair/Karunatillake (2000), the focus has been mainly on the so called "neutral" pronouns, i.e. the third person pronouns used by the educated urbanites, while categorising the rest of the third person pronouns used in everyday speech by the not-so-educated rural folk as derogatory. This paper will give an insight into pronominal and nominal reference devices in Spoken Sinhala and sociolinguistic factors which determine the use of above mentioned reference devices in day to day conversation. Further, various problems arising in decoding the referents such as ambiguity and how various reference devices used in Sinhala give an insight into the social status, age and sex of the referent in question and how the speaker's attitude towards the referent is expressed through the choice of particular reference devices will be discussed. The neutral and derogatory use of the third person pronouns in Spoken Sinhala will be discussed in detail here and argued that this is mainly determined by the social status, age, sex of the speaker/addressee and referent in question as well as the context of the situation and not solely by the pronouns used in discourse

Pjacobi 21:50, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)

Needs Major Fixing

I have made some small improvements. There still needs to be a lot more changes to make this article more acceptable. Imperial78

I have made many more improvements. There are more needed. Perhaps some of the previous edits, were made by non first language English speakers? Imperial78

Sinhala Phonetic Transcription

I disagree with the phonetic transcription of Sinhala to [ˈsiŋɦələ] and would suggest [ˈsiŋɦɐlə]. I just noticed that I disagree with how Gair transcript Sinhala in general. Gair btw transcribed Sinhala as [ˈsinhələ]. -- Chartinael (talk) 08:51, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

You are correct that it is odd. As far as I know, unlike most Sinhala letters, හ is always stressed and pronounced [ha] and never [hə], regardless of where it occurs in a word. The pronunciation (based on the phonology table within the article) should be [siŋˈhalə]. Danielklein (talk) 05:29, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Older Stuff

Some old stuff that are not really notable but took a big space were moved here on Thursday, November 03, 2005. - Greenleaf 00:46, 3 November 2005 (UTC).

Move result

There was a request to move the page on WP:RM, however the proper procedure did not appear to followed. Please refile and use the proper procedure outlined at WP:RM#Instructions please :). Take care! Ryan Norton T | @ | C 07:40, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

I wonder what the reason for request was: I cannot find such an entry in recent days' entries. There doesn't seem to be any reason to move this page???? Greenleaf 09:27, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
We don't need a bureaucratic decision for such a self-evident move. If the language and the people use the adjective form (EB does) then it's really nothing to discuss. It's standard practice to disambiguate by using "XXX language" and "XXX people".
Peter Isotalo 12:09, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
I did not ask for beurocracy. I asked for a reason, which you provided, and could do with a lot less words if you did not assume things. I did not even know that the proposed move was to (as now I assume from your "reason") Sinhalese. Greenleaf 12:32, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, Greenleaf. I misunderstood your question.
Peter Isotalo 17:19, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
Move request was to Hottentot Ryan Norton T | @ | C 12:41, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
heh! No, the request was made by Hottentot. :-D
Peter Isotalo 17:19, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
Hottentot's move request was on 24 September 2005 from Sinhala to Sinhala language. Greenleaf's assumption that it was to Sinhalese was incorrect. Peter's point was that a move from "Sinhala" to "Sinhala language" was self-evident and didn't need to be discussed. Apparently at that time, Wikipedia also called the people "Sinhala", and that was subsequently changed to "Sinhalese". Danielklein (talk) 09:11, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi Peter,

Actually I wonder if we really have the same basis here: When adjectival style is used, it looks like it's almost always used in a context of a country; such as people from China were chinsese, so the language the Chinese talk is Chinese. Same for Japanese, Swedish its. There is no Sinhala country. If people are called Sinhalese because they speak sinhala - then the language must be called Sinhala - OR - if the language is called Sinhalese because it's sopken by Sinhala people, then people must be called Sinhala. If both are adjectival, what exactly is the root?

On the other hand, newer standards such as unicode use the term Sinhala not Sinhalese [1](warning: PDF File). Even EB says, "the mother tongue of the Sinhalese is Sinhala—an Indo-Aryan language"[2] and Encarta calls the language Sinhala. [3] I propose we keep the language name as it was and change the name of people to Sinhalese. Greenleaf 05:10, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

That was kinda unexpected, considering that EB kept it under "Sinhaelse language". But if you feel you've really checked it out and that "Sinhala" really is the most common name for it, I suggest you ask bishonen to move it back. Don't go through WP:RM. That'll just mean that there will be a very unnecessary vote about an issue that seems to be very obvious. My experience with RM votes is that a lot of people who participate them more about their own opinions than listening to reasoned arguments.
Peter Isotalo 09:36, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
I've moved it back to Sinhala, because that's what the issue is about, right? --Hottentot
Thanks, both of you. Just to make myself clear, I do agree with Peter's opinion that RMs for this kind of stuff is just a waste of time, disk space, and bandwidth. However I was baffeled because one could easily use the move page option directly as per WP:RM#Instructions, which specifically says,
"note that many page moves may be accomplished by any logged in user by using the move button ... Requested moves is intended only for moves that either may be disputed, so that consensus should be obtained before the move"
so I thought the reason would have been a one which the requesting person himself thought to be controversial, and I was naturally curious to know what it was. Greenleaf 10:19, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


Um, as far as I know the Sinhalese people speak the Sinhalese language. All British books refer to the Sinhalese people or (Cinghalese) who speak Sinhalese.

"As far as you know" doesn't answer the question I raised above. What does the root word (as China for chinese and Japan for Japanese) refer to in case of Sinhala then?
I gave Enough reference from current and reputed sources, incluing Encyclopedia Britannica, which is supposedly British. Could you please explain with citations your "all British Books" claim? Greenleaf 05:49, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
The book is Ceylon and the Sinhalese by Henry Charles Sirr. The Sinhalese speak Sinhalese just as the Tamils speak Tamil and the Marathis speak Marathi and the Telugus speak Telugu and the Kashmiris speak Kashmiri and the Bengalis speak Bengali and the Nepalis speak Nepali and the Bhutanese speak Bhutanese and the Japanese speak Japanese and the Chinese speak Chinese. The old name for Sri Lanka is "Sinhale" or "Sihala" or "Thun-Sinhala" (when it was divided into three divisions - Maya, Ruhunu and Pihiti).
if this is a valid point, then by the time the English invented the word Sinhalese, they should have used the word Sinhala to denote the country (as the case with Japan and China - japan for that matter was not even a Japanese word, the English called the country Japan and called it's people Japanese). That was not the case. They called it Ceylon, and conforming to that, called the people Ceylanese once in a while. But this rule is not how SINHALESE formed, because British never used "Sinhala" to mention the country with the same prominense they used Sinhalese to mention about the people. Greenleaf 04:03, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
If you are interested in the subject you will see that the island was refered to as Sinhala, Sihala, Sihaladvipa etc. in a lot of old texts and Singalam, Singala desha (in Tamil). The British used Ceylon, which came from Seylon <- Seylaõ <-Sihaladvipa or Sinhalayo. SriSuren (talk) 23:50, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Why should the british have used the word "Sinhala" to denote the country? Especially when they realised that it was inhabited by a variety of people and not only by the Sinhalese? The British used to refer to the Tamils as Malabars and the Sinhalese as either Sinhalese or Cinghalese or Singhalese and differentitated between Chetties and Muslims and Afghans and Malays and Moors who were living on the island at the time. Did you think the Brits just saw a huge load of brown faces and throught they were all the same? Do you honestly think they were that dumb? I have not yet come across the British ever calling the Sinhalese "Sinhalas." They referred to the language spoken by the Sinhalese as Sinhalese.
Then what was your point in pointing out that SL was called Sinhale? "Just to look smart" according to your own way of reasoning? I addressed that point, and showed that it was not relevent to how "sinhalese" came up (in the Japan-Japanese style). Greenleaf 05:09, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Got that Greenleaf? Even though I speak Sinhalese and all, I'm sure you know *much* more than everybody else including Sri Lankans themselves.
No, I say, "Sinhala people or Sinhalas speak Sinhala, just as Tamils use Tamil. This (yours) is not an argument in inself because it can be used to justify ANY spelling, like "let's call it Shingalese - Shingalese speak Shingalese just as Tamils speak Tamil". It does not address whether the correct root is Sinhala or Sinhalese. It merely says that both language name and people's name must be the same. And in any case you don't say "Tamilese speak Tamilese" - "Marathees speak marathees" and Thelugeese speak thlugeese" Tamil, Thligu, Marati were derived by their respective native words, and were used as such except for pronunciation. And if you really want to follow that rule, follow it in full and Sinhala must be called Sinhala just because that's what original sinhala people called it (and there was no need to translate a name). THERE ARE NO COUNTRIES (how many times do i have to stress this) called Tamil, Telugu, Hindi or SINHALA. China is a country, Japan is a country. PEOPLE FROM CHINA ARE CHINESE. Greenleaf 03:45, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
The book you mentioned was an old-style one (it called Sri Lanka ceylon as well), and all references i cited were both new, and authoriative. Greenleaf 03:51, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Since when have the Sinhalese been called "Sinhalas" in English? The only person I know who uses that term is Balachandran of the Hindustan Times (an Indian newspaper).
Answer is here and if that is not enough, here are some BRITISH links. But I was not arguing for Sinhala's per se - i was just showing that ANYTHING can be said in the style Tamils speak Tamil so IT WAS NOT a concluding argument. The English speak English, The Sinhala speak Sinhala. :-) Greenleaf 05:09, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

It has been the norm to refer to the people as the Sinhalese in English. In Sinhalese it's sinhalaya (singular) and sinhalayo or sinhalayan (plural) The British called much of the people of Ceylon either Sinhalese or Cinghalese who spoke the Sinhalese language. This has been the norm for centuries since the Brits arrived in Sri Lanka and added to the English vocabulary, way before you decided to come along and change it all simply because you thought it was "more correct." The Sinhalese have never been called "Shingalese" so I really do not see where your argument is going. Tamil is really the anglicised term because it's THAMIZH not Tamil in actual Tamil pronunciation. You do realize in Indian English that Tamils are called Tamilians as well?

what you point out about Tamil is a transliteration issue, not a naming issue of தமிழ், but Sinhalese is not a transliteration of සිංහල. 'nuff said.
Unicode, EB, ISO 639-2, SIL, and several other stuff I mentioned also "came along" and contributed to the change, it's not myself alone. Google gives 2,040,000 hits for Sinhala and 1,520,000 for Sinhalese, showing the declining trend in CURRENT work. If there was a wikipedia around 1972, were you gonna argue that Sri Lanka must still be called Ceylon in English just because that's what it has been called for centuries and was the 'norm'? English could equally say, "we don't care what natives call it, we don't wanna change what WE CALL IT". Greenleaf 05:26, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
And what exactly is this argument you have with names of countries? It sounds rather childish to me; is this your "academic" position? I mean really?
It was an argument about root forms. If you don't get it once, you won't get it how many times i repeat it. if you think you are right, please go for an RfM and i'll argue there, hoping OTHER PEOPLE to understand. And yes, i mean really. Did i here "childish"? Greenleaf 05:59, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Neither China nor Japan are as heterogenous as Sri Lanka. The vast majority of Chinese are Han Chinese and in Japan - are there any minorities besides the insignificantly small Ainu? Thus a non-racial name was and is more apt for Sri Lanka which has large Tamil and Muslim minorities, but Sri Lanka was indeed called Sinhale or Sihala (Pali Chronicles) in the past.
It does not matter as long as English didn't call it Sinhala, because Sinhalese is coined by the English. if you don't get this point, i can't do anything much. You may want to take this argument for a RfM and argue there. Greenleaf 05:26, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Since when is Encyclopaedia Britannica "authoritative"? Why don't I just pull out any of the other hundreds of encyclopedias put out by other publishers?
Because I don't have access to them. You cite, you give evidence, then i'll see. Greenleaf 05:26, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Sinhalese are the people, they speak the language called Sinhala. --Hottentot


Let's redefine the argumenmt so people do not get confused. Should this topic name take a spelling that reflects the native pronunciation of the word (ie Sinhala), or should the topic name take a spelling that reflects the Anglicized pronunciation of the word (ie Sinhalese) ? --AE

Veddah Language

I removed the part that suggested Veddahs originally spoke some other language just from the fact they have a lot of words that are not found in any other languages. That claim is unsubstantiated, and is like saying that the English originally spoke some other language other than Common Germanic just because English has a lot of words not found originally in any other language. Languages evolve and would definitly have more words added during 2000 years - if we just let 500 early years go. So having new words after seperation is not a good argument for a different origin, unless you give better reasons. Right now, there is no claim whether it was/was not derived by Sinhala, and let people decide with better facts, when someone provides them some day. Greenleaf 02:25, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

It's not "veddaH" it's either "veddha" or "vedda." In Sinhalese the word is written either with an aspirated dh or a soft d - there is no aspirated "ah" at the end of the word. But of course, you should know better because you don't even speak the language right? Silly me.
what is the name of your prime minister and how is it written in English? MahinDHA? How about your president? ChanDHRika? DH is usually used for stuff like DHAthusena, to emphasise the difference between 'ද' and 'ධ'. What do you want? වැද්දා or වැධ්ධා? This would be enough, hopefully, to clarify things. Whether the lash soft h is needed or not is a different story, as some English writers prefer it, although i agree it's not really necessary. Greenleaf 02:19, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Mahinda is written with the soft d and Chandrika is written with DRIYANNA and not DHAYANNA. Vedda is not spelt with an aspirated H at the end. This is relegated for animal sounds like TING TAH for squirrels or for special Sanskrit words like BRAH as in BRAHMAN.

Sinhalese

Also, whoever, please DO stop changing Sinhala to Sinhalese without giving your reasons for doing so. Give User:Hottentot a break. Greenleaf 02:25, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

No I won't. Tell Hottentot to stop deleting all the additions other people put up, including the word list of Sinhalese words in English. If he doesn't respect other people and their contributions, I don't see why others should respect him.
If you don't stop that, you'll have to fight with me, not with Hottentot, because it's for my argument he changed the page, and keeps protecting it. Respecting your contribution does not necessarily mean every other editor letting you have your own arbitrary way. I gave my reasons why it should be Sinhala and NOT Sinhalese, and there was a consensus, please refute them before changing it back. Greenleaf 03:16, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Bring it on. I have given you my reasons why it should be Sinhalese and NOT Sinhala. If he keeps on deleting the list of Sinhalese words in English I shall continue to place it back AND change the spelling in the article to Sinhalese. Ask him to desist first because the list of Sinhalese words in English was there long before - he started deleting it once he found out that someone had dared to touch his precious little article. You call that "protecting" the page do you? Hilarious. Perhaps both you and Hottentot ought to familiarise yourselves with the idea behind Wikipedia. As far as I know it's not up to two people (you and Hottentot) to rule as if you were emperors. It's time to get off the silver pedestal and mingle with the plebians.
best answer to this is to point out that this same argument can be brought up by a vandal, to say VANDALISM must also be allowed just because this is a wiki. NO, it's not the case, and as long as your edits are not justified (i did NOT say that you vandalized), "this is a wiki, everyones edits are same" is not an argument for having your own way. I'm answering the argument you brought up here, the "idea behind wikepedia" one, and you may want to familiarise yourself with the idea that WP:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_an_anarchy Greenleaf 03:23, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Have you ever given thought to the fact that maybe - just maybe - that YOUR edits are not justified? Who died and made you king? You think you and Hottentot have the absolute right to run around Wikipedia deleting and editing to your hearts content, without caring at all about what other people wish to contribute? Your little buddy Hottentot gave no JUSTIFICATION for his deleting spree. Do you think that is good manners?
then go for an RfA, talk, or argue here, that's a different story. None of us said we are right - I just addressed your "wiki" argument, (i said in plain engligh that i'm addressing THAT argument) to show that it is too ambiguous to resolve stuff, because even a vandal can say "this is wikipedia, anyone can edit - so let me edit George Bush page and write "annie suck cock" there. Greenleaf 05:31, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

kukavi vaada

To the idiot Hottentot who keeps changing "kukavi vaada" to "kukavi vada" do you actually know that doing so completely changes the meaning? In Sinhalese "vaada" means "debates" and "vada" means "turmoil/trouble" so quit changing it. You're acting like a complete moron. Let people who actually speak the language correct the mistakes.

vaada also means theory (sapekshathavaada), belief (niyathivaada), attitude (avasthavaada), and speech (musaavaada) and vada also means a name of a flower, punishment (in pali meaning), and toture. Coming back to problem, again, good examples would be 'ChanrikAA' and RAAjapakse'. (or, for the lack of good example in Mr Wickramasinhe's name, GAAminEE DisAAnAAyake'). Even in Enlglish itself there are instances where pronunciation is affected by the context, i don't see why you must make a big fuss of it. There are so many foreign words which has aa sound, i don't see everyone insist that they must be written in a way that unmistakenly represents the sound. Also think, for instance, 'read' (present) and 'read' (past) in English itself, which are propunced in totally different ways according to context. Having a little ambiguity doesn't kill anyone. Why not worry about bigger mistakes, for instance, just have a look at the picture on vedda(h) page - it's a blatant misrepresentation of facts, showing a village community picture as a vedda picture. The guy in whites is most probably a school teacher or a local doctor, who were among the most educated in local socity in those times. :-/
and ah, let's not use charged words. most editors are good-faith, Hottentot sure is, and let's talk and work together than calling names. Greenleaf 02:56, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
on a second thought, i feel that it'd better be 'vaada', but let's not take this to extreme that every sinhala 'ආ' must be represented with 'aa'. Greenleaf 03:11, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
I'll be changing it to vaada every time it gets changed to vada. You have only given names of people as examples and we're not talking about names of people here. Unless of course you happen to know/see Sri Lankans calling their daughters or sons "vada" or "vaada"? Please. And in anycase all Sri Lankan English papers spell it as vaadaya and vaada (eg Panadura Vaadaya NOT Panadura Vadaya - the latter would make people burst out into laughter upon reading it) so I'm going to stick to that. And Hottentot? The less said the better.
PS vaada only means those things when it is compounded with other words. On its own it means "debates" or "conflicts". Are you trying to say that light = lighthouse = lightning and so forth because they all have the word "light" in them?
This straw man argument is, borrowing your own words, hilarious. This would apply in case I said that vada = sapekshathavada = niyathiwada = musawada. I did not say anything near that, but you might want to read a bit more about what is meant by etymological roots. If you don't want to go that far, can you please think a little how lighthouse got its name and how lightening got its? BECAUSE, there was an English word, LIGHT, which means, uh, light. I don't want to go far on this because this is a peripheral matter. Greenleaf 03:17, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
If it's a "peripheral matter" why did you lug it into this conversation? So you would seem "smart"? Let me spell it out for you incase you're going blind. You said: "vaada also means theory (sapekshathavaada), belief (niyathivaada), attitude (avasthavaada), and speech (musaavaada)." Note the "also means."
To show that spelling for those stuff can be such that "Vaada" is spelt as 'vada' in english - like here and here Greenleaf 05:26, 2 November 2005 (UTC).
Uh NO, vaada does NOT also mean those things. Just as "light" doesn't also mean "lighthouse" or "lightning." DUHHHH.
:-) I suggest that you read what i wrote above to address this very argument. Or, have a look at etymology of Vibhajyavada. Anyway, I'll stop at this on vaada thing, because that time can better be spent on anything people would actually care. Have whatever spelling you want for vaada. You win. Greenleaf 05:26, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Meta: please sign your posts with four tildes (~~~~), this will automatically insert an ID and timestamp.
Romanization of Sinhalese. If you can't agree about "a" and "aa", we can go with ISO 15919[4] and use a scientific transliteration.
Pjacobi 10:02, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
GREAT ! thanks a lot for suggesting this. :-) Greenleaf 03:17, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Choice of lemma

O.K. I'm tired of this revert warring about "Sinhala" versus "Sinhalese". For now the lemma is "Sinhala" and in line with our policy I will enforce the use of "Sinhala" in the article. If this is considered wrong, please follow the WP:RM process. --Pjacobi 16:03, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I've protected the page, until the resolution of the naming conflict. --Pjacobi 17:00, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Why the anon should stop changing the page

First off, language articles are not supposed to have long list of words. There's really no point it that. Also, since the title of the page is at Sinhala, why do you keep changing it to Sinhalese? Your choice of "Veddha" over "Veddah" is may be "correct" to you, or to others, but on Wikipedia, we don't use what people believe to be correct", but what is most commonly used. "Veddah" recieves 9,280 Google hits, while "Veddha" recives 753. --Hottentot

I am in favour of keeping the long list of words but putting them on a separate page linked to this one. There are many such articles for English and other languages: List of English words of Irish origin, Words of Russian derivation, List of replaced loan words in Turkish, etc. — Hippietrail 01:37, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
agreed on this. Greenleaf 04:06, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

It is not a long list Hottentot. Why don't you hop on over to the Bengali language page and check out the lists there? They must be gigantically, utterly humongous for you if 20 words is a "long list." Why don't you go on your little deleting spree there as well? I'm sure the people who add to that page will be delighted with your charming behaviour.

Removed final few new paragraphs

A few badly written paragraphs were added which add nothing to an Encyclopedic article on the Sinhala. They are full of bad grammar and do not make sense. I have removed them. We need to keep this article to known facts and keep it linguistic in framework. Imperial78

Contradiction

The article and infobox contradict each other. One says there are 15 million people speak Sinhala while the other says 13 million. These figures need to be verified. GizzaChat © 09:33, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Ethnologue gives 13 million, so I've changed it as such. —Khoikhoi 05:56, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


According to the official census of 2001, 81.9% of the population in the 18 districts which the census was carried out (minus the North and East) were Sinhalese, and therefore almost certainly speak Sinhalese. Since the census found the population in those districts to be 16,864,687, 81.9% is approx. 13.8 million. Plus the Sinhalese in the other districts, plus the Muslims, Tamils and other races that speak Sinhalese, plus the expatriates, plus the growth in population it should easily surpass the 15 million mark. Therefore I'm changing the figure to 15 mil.

Also, the figure given in the above link (Ethnologue) is a 1993 estimate and doesn't look too credible.Snowolfd4 19:54, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


Just realied the text says 16 mil and the factbox 15 mil. Not right. So according to the reasons I gave above I'm making the Factbox 16 mil too. --snowolfd4 06:49, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

My edits

Hi. A few words concerning my edits:

  • The Sinhala alphabet definitely does not consist of 56 characters. The exact count seems to be 59 (including syllabic l, the ligature for jna, anusvara and visarga), but I think you could dispute even that. And what is the signifiance of the number of characters anyway?
  • What is a "high vowel content"? "High" compared to what? I know what the author meant to say (namely that consonant clusters are rare in Sinhala), but this way of putting it is inaccurate.
  • I removed the image of the word "sinhala" in Sinhala writing because on the one hand I don't see the significance when there is a separate article on the Sinhala alphabet and on the other hand the writing in the picture is not according to Sinhala writing practice (as an be seen when you compare [[5]] to සිංහල).

The article needs to be extended. I will do that when I have the time. Krankman 12:10, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Well done, 172.128.165.94, while reverting you broke the formatting of the first word and you failed to insert the space between "... Lanka.Sinhala ..." I am not going to change this now in the hope that somebody else will see what is going on here and assist in keeping the article good.
By the way, it is outrageous and impertinent to call my edits "POV". I don't see how anyone could agree with you on that.
Hear my argument:
  • Calling Sinhala "unique" is unnecessary because any language is unique.
  • Calling Sinhala a "classical" language is misleading because a classical language is a language primarily used in literature and which is not in use as a mother tongue anymore, like Sanskrit, Pali etc. We should create a separate article on Sinhala literature. There is a great difference between language and literature. This is supposed to be the linguistic article.
  • Sinhala is not spoken "only" in Sri Lanka. There are thousands of Sinhalese living abroad.
  • Why is it spoken "vastly" among the Sinhalese? It is the mother tongue of 99% of the Sinhalese people, I would say that qualifies for simply calling it the mother tongue of the Sinhalese. I don't understand your problem with that.
  • Sure Sinhala is spoken by the other ethnic groups as well, but mostly only those living among the Sinhalese in the South of the island and almost exclusively as a second language. When we state here who are the speakers of a language, we firstly mean the native speakers. That's why I took up your idea of mentioning others speaking Sinhala and added the sentence about second language speakers.
This seems to be a question of how to write an encyclopedic article on a language. When you look at the articles on Dhivehi, Hindi, French or Bengali, you will see that superfluous adjectives are avoided and only the most basic facts are stated. If this article here is supposed to be a serious article, we have to keep with that policy. Krankman 17:21, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Fully agree with Krankman on the point mentioned. The only sensible use of unique would be isolated as in isolated language, but this obvioiusly doesn't apply here. --Pjacobi 17:41, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
O.K. I have missed a space, you could have done a minor edit there, no big deal!
I appologise if I offended you in anyway by using POV. SORRY.
Your argument:
  • I called Sinhala a unique language to state that it is exclusively and "solely" used in Sri Lanak!It is not an international languages nor its used in any other country as a common language. State one country that uses sinhala language as a common language for communication? Therefore its quite allright to use "unique" here. Obviously Sinhalese people can talk Sinhala where ever they go. I dont think language is recalled by geograghy.What does that have to do with Sinhala being used 'ONLY' in Sri lanka.
It is unnecessary to call any language "unique". And it is not appropriate, whatever reasons you may give. Check other articles on languages spoken only in one country (for example on Icelandic language, Burmese language and Romansh language) - no mention of them being "unique" there.
  • I checked about the classicality of the Sinhala language and yes your correcct.You cant call it a classical language it was ultimately derived from Indo-Aryan speech which is in turn divided into two phases of evolution: an old Indo-Aryan speech (C.2000-800 B.C.) represented by Sanskrit language used in central India and a middle Indo-Aryan speech (C.800 B.C-400 A.D.) represented by Pali, the language of Buddhist scripture.But let me do more research on that one.
There is no necessity to do any research. The history of the Sinhala language is well-documented. (See the writings of Wilhelm Geiger for example.) There was/is a classical language ("Elu"), and a modern language divided up into written and spoken Sinhala. It's as simple as that.
  • The reason for speaking sinhala "vastly" anoung Sinhalese is because they are more comfortable in speaking their own language. Just like any other speaker.A french will speak the french language, a German will speak german language, a british will talk english.Thats because they are more fluent in their own language just as you discribe it - its their mother tongue. Another good example is Hindi primary tongue of 30% of people in India.I dont disagree with that.
Sinhalese people speak Sinhala as their mother tongue. Not "vastly", but just like that. That's how being a "Sinhalayaa" is defined by most. Enough said.
  • You are factually wrong here!! Sinhala is spoken among all ethnic groups in Sri Lanka is because Sinhala is the "National" language of Sri Lanka and "not" because its the mother tonge of the Sinhala!(WorldFact). It doesnt happen always that all people in a country speak their national language.Like in India National language is Hindi but not all states speak Hindi. Since this is a artical about Sinhala I think "Sinhala is the National and Official language of Sri lanka" should be hilighted, cos thats a "fact".(WorldFact).
Yes, Sinhala is spoken by a certain amount of members of all ethnic groups. But your way of phrasing it implies that everyone in Sri Lanka knows Sinhala. That is wrong, and it was wrong before 1983. And the government does not force anyone to speak Sinhala. It is one of the national languages of Sri Lanka and the mother tongue of the Sinhalese who comprise the majority of the population. Just like in India, Hindi is one of the national languages, but there is a high percentage of people who don't speak it.
What is so important about Sinhala being the national language? You people have to realize that the Sinhala language is an important, rich, beautiful language with a millenia-old tradition, and that that makes it great, not its status as some "national", "classical" or "unique" language!

-- Ruvi 172.133.252.133 05:47, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Comments added by Krankman 19:02, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Sinhala comes from Sanskrit

Sinhala comes from sanskrit!Therefor both these languages have similar words!Thus this statement need to be clarified before reinsertion. TCWales 18:18, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

"The periodic invasion of Sri Lanka by Tamils from south India led to many Tamil words being added to the Sinhala language."

List of Tamil words in Sinhala.

Make-over

Hi.

I have replaced the former version with a translation of the German version of the article. It is for sure not as exhaustive as it should be, but it is a linguistic article as it should be. Just the most necessary of information along with links to pages relating to linguistic concepts touched.

Before, there was a lot of info relating to literature which doesn't belong here. For that, there should be a separate article on Sinhala literature. (That's gonna be even more of a POV fight I suppose ... :-( )

Please don't make any changes to this new article unless you have a linguistics background and you are sure that there are factual errors. Please! Krankman 21:16, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I see no problem with having a "literature" section as part of a "language" article, as long as that doen't render the article unwieldy in terms of length. See for example Geez#History_and_literature. dab (ᛏ) 21:36, 7 July 2006 (UTC)


The artical that was before your "Total Make-over" was much better! Why did you have to change the entire thing??TCWales 01:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
What was better? There was less info on the language and more irrelevant stuff. Compare this article to some "serious" language articles with respect to information given and style used. Some points:
  • The Vijaya legend should have no place in a language article.
  • "going back to Lord Buddha's time" - irrelevant.
  • "attest to the long history of Sinhala spoken in S.L." - irrelevant; dates of inscriptions are given; language was completely different then.
  • Information on literature does not belong in a language article. Compare English language and English literature. Sinhala literature is so rich and extensive that it needs its own article.
  • Loanwords, especially those not pertaining to the fields of commerce, construction and the like, are not witnesses to "invasions" but to close peaceful interaction between two peoples/languages.
  • Helabasa, newspaper culture, Martin Wickramasinghe all have nothing to do with the Sinhala language but with literature.
  • "A first-class exponent of Sinhala was (...) Karunaratne Abeysekera." That's the kind of sentence you don't want to have to read in an encyclopedia!
  • "Brahmi script introduced in 6th century BC" - we don't know that at all. The "Vijaya" people may not have had the knowledge of an alphabet. All we can say is that the first inscriptions date from the 3rd century BCE. By then, the alphabet was there.
Cheers, Krankman 08:06, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Loan words lists

The current article reads just like a linguistic article, I am all for it. Some of the contributers who are concerned about loan words should start

Cat Sinhala and make it balanced RaveenS

"Elu Prakrit"

Clozapine,

please be patient, I am in the process of preparing a section on the very subject of different Sinhala language styles (which you are trying to put in here in a completely wrong place). Elu has nothing to do with Prakrit. Stop your ignorant vandalism! Krankman 00:42, 19 July 2006 (UTC) Crossed out insult. Sorry, it was a late night. Krankman 09:57, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Stop screaming like a baby. This is not your "pet project" in which only you get to add and remove things which you see fit. The addition is "which some scholars believe to be Elu." That does not mean Elu = Prakrit, it means that some scholars believe it to be so. So please get of your high horse 'kay?
Don't get personal, please. There should not be a place in the main section for an opinion that far off off any established facts; if you find we need to discuss this "theory", please at least give your exact source(s). Krankman 09:27, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
"Derivation of Elu words has as yet received but little attention at the hands of scholars. It is a study of much importance and requires great labour and research. The general practice is to derive nearly all the words in the language from Sanskrit, too often over looking the claims of Pali, which flourished almost on the frontiers of the original home of Elu, and consequently has a striking affinity to it. Modern Elu [vs ancient] is a development of the language brought over by Vijaya... who made it the vernacular of the land...From time to time persons from the mother-country visited the Island and many settled here...They acquired the Elu language with the utmost facility, it being then almost identical with their own....The language spoken by Vijaya and his men was undoubtedly Prakrit, of which many dialects were in existence in India at the time they took posession of the Island.... Hence in deriving Elu words, the endeavour should be to find out the corresponding words in the modern Indian vernaculars and, if possible, in original Prakrit and derive from those which present the closest affinity to Elu. - Abraham Mendis Gunsekara, A Comprehensive Grammar of the Sinhalese Language."
Now what was that you said Krankman?
"Elu has nothing to do with Prakrit."
Are you sure?
Do you think it was justified for you to throw a tantrum simply because I added in "which some scholars believe to be Elu" into the article? I don't think so.
Clozapine 10:13, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Discussion continued at Talk:Elu. Krankman 11:04, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

"Western" s>h

Please cite a source. Can't find any info on that. Krankman 11:37, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Not in any particular order:

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamboja_Colonists_of_Sri_Lanka

(2) http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~sala23/abstracts/A2.txt

(3) http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Prakrit

(4) http://www.lankalibrary.com/books/sinhala.htm

(5) http://indoeuro.bizland.com/archive/article17.html

(6) http://www.lankalibrary.com/books/sinhala6.htm

(7) Phonology of the Sinhalese Inscriptions up to the End of the Tenth Century, A. D. P. B. F. Wijeratne

s > h is also an Iranian feature. Clozapine 12:45, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any relevant information on the pages you have cited. As far as I know, optional alternation of s and h is a common feature in many Indian languages and not the Western ones in particular; concerning Sinhala, it is not a sound shift but an "optional change" (Geiger, Jayatilaka: Sinhalese Language and Literature, xxv). Iranian has no relevance for this question; if you doubt that, we should get an opinion from a qualified comparatist. I will however leave the article as it is because I'm growing tired. Krankman 14:41, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Not my problem if you can't read. Clozapine

"Western" features

Wijeratne makes a good case against the "initial /v/ which developed into /b/" hence added disputed tag. Also disputed is "settlers from North-western India." Clozapine 05:49, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

"Eastern" features

Regarding "An example for an Eastern feature is the ending -e for masculine nominative singular (instead of Western -o) in Sinhala Prakrit" -- What are the examples? Clozapine 05:54, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Removing disputed tag

As far as I know there is no dispute to the fact that

"About the 5th century BCE, settlers from North-Western India reached the island of Lanka"

I couldn't find anything this talk page anyway. So unless anyone can clarify why it's disputed, I'm removing the tags. --snowolfD4 14:57, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I have removed the disputed tags and brought the article back in accordance with the generally accepted statements of Wilhelm Geiger and others (see the References section). Cheers, Krankman 09:05, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Sinhalese Scouting

Can someone help render Sudhanamva, "Be Prepared", the Scout Motto, into Sinhalese script? Thanks! Chris 03:47, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Sinhala Slang

I added a link to the article Sinhala Slang which actually hosted to my user-space. However, it was removed immmediately stateting that 'should not link to the userspace'. Is there a rigid rule in WP which says that Wiki articles should never link to user space, even as an external link? Ritigala Jayasena 06:57, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

phonetic or phonemic rendering of Sinhala, esp schwa

Hello, we have to come to an agreement as to how we represent Spoken Sinhala. Gair and other American scholars use <ə> at all places where phonetically there is a [ə], thus <kərənəva> and <malə>, regardless of whether the phonetic [ə] is a realization of /a/ or of /ə/ (FYI, /kəranavaa/ and /mala/ with all open non-initial /a/s reduced to <ə>[ə])
I myself am more in favor of using <a> at all places where [ə] is a realization of /a/, and to only use <ə> in places where it is a realization of /ə/, which basically means only the stem of kər "to make".
Now if someone says we should stick to the published sources, that's right of course, but in that case we would have to use a delta-like sign, actually some mathematical symbol of differential operator, because that is what Gair uses, presumably for want of a better font.
I will leave the article as it is, but it would be nice to find a consensus here. Jasy jatere 18:23, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

The issue with representing sinhala from a phonetic point of view is, that sinhala varies from region to region. So one could of course choose to adhere to spoken standard, however, the issue with phonetic/phonemic representation could be avoided if we adhered to the NLAC transcription standard for indian languages using alphasyllabaries. We could mention pronounciation rules - such as you did and leave it at representing the syllables according to romanization. However, if you want to also do a phonetic representation, I would stick to phonemic and than the phonemes short and long a would be distinct from short and long e. However, all aspirated phonemes are no longer, so there is another issue on the phonetic/phonemic level. So if phonemic at all, I reckon IPA should be stuck to. Maybe time for a revolutionizing pronounciation dictionary of the sinhala language ;-) telling everyone what the standard ought to be. -- Chartinael (talk) 13:41, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

redirects

Hello, an IP has redirected Sinhalese language to Sinhala language. Before, the redirect was the other way round. I think this should be discussed first, so I have reverted it to the original state. If we decide that the change should be done, then a proper move (including talk page) should be requested. Jasy jatere (talk) 09:40, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Text example

Hello. Is somewhere any image showing this language written? In my browser (Firefox 3.0) it's rendering like 2x2 matrix with hexadecimal numbers. --DJ Jeri (talk) 12:56, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

For a start, perhaps Sinhala alphabet may be helpful. --Tenmei (talk) 16:48, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Is Sinhalese a Dravidian Language ?

Sinhalese script looks similar to Telugu and Kannada Script. If Telugu and Kannada are Dravidian Languages then how does Sinhalese become an Indo-Aryan language ?

Not to mention Indo-Aryan language scripts which look similar to each other are nowhere near look similar to Sinhalese.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telugu_script

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannada_script

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhala_script

Iross1000 (talk) 13:20, 31 December 2008 (UTC).

During the 19th century, researchers were unsure whether Sinhala was Dravidian or Indo-Aryan. I think Gunasekara then proved that it was systematically related to the Northern Indo-Aryan languages. People are still unsure, whether it is closer to the Western branch (Gujarati) or the Eastern branch (Bengali). However, it is clear that the Sinhalese language is not a Dravidian language. This only refers to the language. As for the script, the Sinhala script is an offshoot of Brahmi and Grantha, and its closest relatives are indeed Tamil and Malayalam. Devanagari and other Northern scripts are more distantly related.
Note that the history of the language and the history of the script need not coincide. For instance, Polish and Russian are closely related as languages, but their scripts are different. Greek on the other hand uses a script similar to Russian, but is linguistically more distant from Russian than Polish Jasy jatere (talk) 19:12, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
The someone-proved-something-somewhere arguments are of no use in wikipedia. Comparing sinhala script [6] with that of any Dravidian language, say Malayalam script [7] anyone can understand both belong to the same family of languages. Again the last letters of sinhala namely la, ra, zha are not there in any Aryan language but in Malayalam and Tamil. The reason why some call sinhala an Aryan language can only be the communal politics in Srilanka.Aravind V R (talk) 09:14, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

OK -- After a lot of search, Sinhalese is not an Indo-Aryan Language. Malayalam has more words from Sanskrit than Sinhala. But it is still Dravidian language. I have asked for citation, someone post the citation if you have any from a trusted source. (or) it'll be removed and will be made that the origin of the language is not sure or something similar to that. Ben (talk) 10:28, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, you are wrong, Sinhala is an indo-aryan language. Please read up on sub- and superstratum theories. --Chartinael (talk) 11:11, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

The classification is incorrect in my opinion. We can't call it Indo-Aryan or Dravidian because Sinhala has characteristics of both. We must also know that there were people other than Indo-Aryans and Dravidians in Sri Lanka. There has to be some connection with them too. It is beleived their language belongs to none of the aforementioned languages.202.129.233.234 (talk) 14:16, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

No, we can clearly call it an indo-aryan language. That is the status of scientific evaluation. It has nothing to do with any ethnicity. The influences you mention are called super/substrata. As I have btw said before. Your opinion btw does not matter. Science matters and what science says about something. Opinion is nice to have but irrelevant nonetheless. Chartinael (talk) 15:18, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was moved to Sinhala language. From our naming conventions: "Wikipedia determines the recognizability of a name by seeing what verifiable reliable sources in English call the subject." Sources have been provided that the name is "Sinhala". Aervanath (talk) 18:14, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Sinhalese language → Sinhala language — The sections 'move results' and 'Sinhalese' in the talk page discuss enough details why the language must be Sinhala, not Sinhalese. This conforms to the standard usage, such as unicode consortium [8] and Sri Lankan government portal for local Languages [9]. Once the concensus on the name had been reached for the name Sinhala, User:Tobias_Conradi (who has not made any contributions to the page or discussion, and who is now banned indefinitely for some reason, so no discussion is possible) has changed the name from Sinhala back to Sinhalese, without providing any valid reason. Greenleaf (talk) 04:53, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
support Most common name in academia (Gair, Paolillo, Karunatillake). Jasy jatere (talk) 07:21, 10 June 2009 (UTC) I think you must use the past perfect once the consensus had been reached, otherwise the sentence makes no sense
  • Oppose Re: {{wp:commonname]]. Wikipedia is a general-purpose encyclopedia, not an academic reference work. Ed Fitzgerald t / c 06:18, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

'Sinhala' Vs 'Sinhalese'

'Sinhala' is the preferred word for the language as per the Sri Lankan constitution and ISO 639: 

18. 3[(1)] The Official Language of Sri Lanka shall be Sinhala. (Constitution of Sri Lanka)

sin si Sinhala; Sinhalese (ISO 639)

Harshula (talk) 06:38, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

pre-historic elu speakers vs. indo-aryan

How can pre-historic indigenous inhabitants of Sri Lanka, such as the Yakka and Naga the article mentions, have spoken an earlier form of Sinhala if Sinhala is an Indo-European language? Either those peoples weren't really all that indigenous, or their language was not Indo-European at all, it would seem. Or is anybody positing that Indo-Europeans originated from Sri Lanka in the first place? -- 85.179.164.111 (talk) 17:42, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

The Aryan invasion theory is a myth and it has been proven false. SriSuren (talk) 21:31, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
I've taken this material out. It's utter nonsense and the "reference" was to a website. I understand why nationalists may want to provide a deeper past for Sinhala speakers but if there was anyone in Sri Lanka before the Sinhala speakers arrived, they spoke a Dravidian language. Grace Note (talk) 08:56, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Not so. The substrate language for Sinhalese is not Dravidian. There are many languages in the world and all languages can't be classified as either Indo-aryan or Dravidian. Sinhala is one of them, and has been unfortunately classified as an Indo-aryan language, making a big problem for the Sinhalese people. Although linguists say it is of mainly indo-aryan character, it is a very special language, which developed in the island. The Dravidian infulence on Sinhala can't also be ignored, though Dravidian has nothing to do with the origin of the language. Sinhala has many words which are not found in any other language. See Studies in South Asian linguistics: Sinhala and other South Asian languages, by By James W. Gair, Barbara Lust
The arrival of Prince Vijaya, is just a myth, and all Sinhalese know that it is a myth, like all other genesis myths. Also it is a myth that Dravidians are the oldest in the Indian subcontinent. Anyway if the substratum for the Sinhala language is Dravidian, then the Sinhala nationalists claims are even more justified, because Sinhala is quite differenciated from Dravidian, while Tamil is still Tamil, in both Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. SriSuren (talk) 21:31, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
I am sorry, that you disagree with linguistics. However, WP:No original research - we base articles on state of science. Sinhala has been clearly classified as an indo-european language. There is no question about its linguistic classification. It does have a singular developement due to its geographic location - which however is parallelled by other languages that have branched off like that. Please re-read Gair. Chartinael (talk) 21:39, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
Whatever the classification is, classifying Sinhala with Indo-aryan has created political and other problems for the Sinhalese, because Tamils, specially the religious kind who were political leaders earlier, tend to act up on this issue, infact quite rightfully, since this sets the Tamils apart from the Sinhalese more than anything else. Look at the discussions, just here. If Sinhalese was classified as Dravidian, or close to Dravidian, it would not have made such a problem. Or the linguists should have categorized Sinhala as something else all by itself, because infact, Sinhala has a lot of other influences, than just Indo-Aryan. This would have saved the Sinhala people from being troubled and harrassed by the Tamils. I am not going to argue about the classifications and calling languages as Aryan and non-Aryan and Dravidian etc etc, since it is a socalled scientific fact. But this categorisation suddenly gave us an Aryan and Dravidian race too, which is utter nonsense based on more nonsense. Well, there's nothing much I can do about that, since original research is not allowed LOL. Anyway, all languages have a common origin way back. Talking of original research - most of your edits are misleading. Whatever the Tamils say and do, what the island is for the Sinhala language, can never be the same for the Tamil language. Tamil originated and evolved into Tamil in Tamil Nadu, while Sinhala evovled into Sinhala, in Sri Lanka. So, good luck with trying to distort this scientific fact, and make it suit your Tamil fundametalist agenda. SriSuren (talk) 08:05, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
You are wrong again. Linguistic classification has got nothing to do with "race". That is what people like you make out of it. It is funny that you call me (my last name btw once upon a time was Jayawardena) a tamil fundamentalist. It just shows how little you are able to distance yourself from academic discourses. Chartinael (talk) 16:23, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
addendum: BTW, not the linguistic classification has "created ... problems for the Sinhalese". The problems resulted from post-colonization policies based on religious(!!!!) and segregationalist sinhalese protectionism rejecting federalism and tamil-sinhalese equality. As it stands, don't mix politics with religion. This has far too often lead to a human disaster. Chartinael (talk) 20:23, 24 May 2010 (UTC)


Regarding "See Studies in South Asian linguistics: Sinhala and other South Asian languages, by By James W. Gair, Barbara Lust", I would like to point out that James Gair, just like every other academic outside of Sri Lanka, holds the opinion that Sinhala is an Indo-Aryan language. See "Review of Elizarenkova" in the book you mention for a very specific discussion of this. Jasy jatere (talk) 14:08, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Request

Could somebody translate නිරිපොල. It is a short article that has been nominated for deletion as 'nonsense' as some people do not recognise it as a different language. Catfish Jim and the soapdish (talk) 18:29, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Edit request (done)

Under "Writing system" we see "Sinhala also knows hal kirama and uses two differing virama symbols depending on the basic grapheme to explicitly indicate the lack of a vowel." Could one of the knowledgable editors please clarify this? I get the impression that virama symbols are sound-killers, but I could find nothing on "hal kirama". (I assume "knows" in this sentence should be "recognizes" or "uses".) Thanks -- Jo3sampl (talk) 19:32, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! -- Jo3sampl (talk) 03:11, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Slight error in comparison to Hindi

Should this be fixed? In one section it states that kanavā corresponds to the Hindi khānā. It actually doesn't, the corresponding Hindi word would be khātā (masculine) or khāti (feminine). The Hindi word khānā could be translated to Sinhales as kanna, as in they should both be in the infinitive form. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.3.133.3 (talk) 04:33, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Ok I believe the error is in the actual Sinhala and not so much the comparison, kanavā is not the same as "to eat", kanavā is "I eat". Kanna is equivalent to "to eat" I will change it accordingly. For comparison here are the infinitive form of the verb in all three languages; English: to eat, Sinhala: kanna, Hindi: khānā. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sdgan1 (talk • contribs) 00:18, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
කනවා kanawā is indeed the infinitive of "to eat". It is the lemma form found in dictionaries. It is also used the way we would use the present indicative in English, but without conjugation, i.e. "we eat", "he eats", etc. are all translated using කනවා invariably. කන්න kanna is the imperative form. Fortunately, someone discovered the error in 2012 and fixed it. Danielklein (talk) 10:19, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Why is telugu among the Indo-Aryan languages in the number comparison table?

I believe this is a mistake and it should be removed from there.

By the way, not relative, but add your signature when you posting again. ʂaɳɖaƙɘɭʉɱ ʈaɭƙ 06:11, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

About the Sinhala vs. Singlish

At the table, I think "hatara" should be "hathara" and "hata" should be "hatha". Because if we pronounce it as "hatara" it becomes "හටර" and "hata" becomes "හට". That "h" even needed when we convert Singlish to Unicodes, not just pronouncing. Maybe I'm wrong or this already been discussed before. Sorry for any inconvenience. ʂaɳɖaƙɘɭʉɱ ʈaɭƙ 21:52, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

No one replied since. So I fixed it. You are free to undo if you can verify that it pronounce like it was before. ʂaɳɖaƙɘɭʉɱ ʈaɭƙ 03:58, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Those words were written with th all the time, but someone changed them recently. (By the way, what u have corrected is just pronounciation or transliteration, I do not think it is called Singlish. Singlish is Sinhala-English mix or broken English, I think.... ). --SriSuren (talk) 06:10, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
I know. But no one pronounce (not talking about writing language, even if it does, it's almost the same) it as "හටර" or "හට". So I guess "h" needs along with "t". Let's see what others say. ʂaɳɖaƙɘɭʉɱ ʈaɭƙ 06:15, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
You are correct. "ta" and "tha" are different sounds and it is "hathara" and not "hatara". The problem with trying to correct this kind of thing is, somebody will always have a different opinion and start a huge discussion about it.... so it is upto each editor what they want to correct and use their time on. You'll learn when you have been here for sometime :) --SriSuren (talk) 06:25, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Yes, exactly. Thank you. Appreciate your time. ʂaɳɖaƙɘɭʉɱ ʈaɭƙ 06:47, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Sinhala language materials

https://archive.org/details/sin00wickhaleseselftaurich

https://archive.org/details/englishsinhalese00cartrich

https://archive.org/details/sinhaleseenglish00clourich

https://archive.org/details/singhalesegramma00lambrich

https://archive.org/details/colloquialsinhal00pererich

https://archive.org/details/athethawakyadeep00mend

https://archive.org/details/LitteraturUndSpracheDerSinghalesen

https://archive.org/details/singhalesetransl00brow

A Vocabulary of the English, Sinhalese, and Tamil Languages

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZIP_nn4Y3PgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Rajmaan (talk) 04:49, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Article move request - Sinhala language, not "sinhalese" language

The language is Sinhala, not Sinhalese. As same with Tamil and say, Hindi. They are not Tamilese or Hindian are they? We call Chinese or Japanese to those languages because they are the native languages of those respective countries. Same goes for French and German. I think you get my point. 112.134.40.211 (talk) 03:58, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Your point is moot. The only question is what is the most common name in English. What do the reliable sources call this language in English? A brief perusal of my books on world languages, Indo-European, and Indo-Aryan show a 12-3 preference for Sinhalese over Sinhala. That's fairly determinative. --Taivo (talk) 05:10, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
It is kind of funny how people measure the "most common name in English". --Lee (talk) 16:34, 25 December 2016 (UTC)
This is *English* Wikipedia.--obi2canibetalk contr 17:20, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Numerals

I removed the following table from the main body as out of place - this is an article on Sinhalese language, not on comparative linguistics. The table even contained... Japanese numerals. Anyone willing to explain why?


Sinhalese Maldivian Sanskrit Hindi Persian Nepali Greek Latin Portuguese Romanian Bengali English French Spanish Russian Polish Italian Latvian Lithuanian Japanese
1 eka (එක) ekeh éka ek yek (یک) yek (h)éna (ἕνα) unus um unu æk (এক) one un uno odin jeden uno viens vienas ichi (ー)
2 deka (දෙක) dey dvá do do (دو) dui dío (δύο) duo dois doi dui (দুই) two deux dos dva dwa due divi du ni (二)
3 thuna (තුන) thineh trí teen se (سه) tin tría (τρία) tria três trei tin (তিন) three trois tres tri trzy tre trīs trys san (三)
4 hathara (හතර) hathareh catúr chaar chahār (چهار) char téssera (τέσσερα) quattuor quatro patru char (চার) four quatre cuatro chetyre cztery quattro četri keturi shi/yon (四)
5 paha (පහ) faheh páñca paanch panj (پنج) pach pénte (πέντε) quinque cinco cinci pañch (পাঁচ) five cinq cinco pyat' pięć cinque pieci penki go (五)
6 haya (හය) hayeh ṣáṣ chheh shesh (شش) chha (h)éxi (ἕξι) sex seis șase chhoy (ছয়) six six seis shest' sześć sei seši šeši roku (六)
7 hatha (හත) hatheh sápta saat haft (هفت) saat (h)eptá (ἑπτά) septem sete șapte shat (সাত) seven sept siete sem' siedem sette septiņi septyni nana/shichi (七)
8 aṭa (අට) asheh áṣṭa aath hasht (هشت) aath októ (ὀκτώ) octo oito opt aat (আট) eight huit ocho vosem' osiem otto astoņi aštuoni hachi (八)
9 nawaya (නවය)[note 1] nuvayeh náva naun noh (نه) nau ennéa (ἐννέα) novem nove nouă noy (নয়) nine neuf nueve devyat' dziewięć nove deviņi devyni kyuu (九)
10 dahaya (දහය) dehayeh dáśa das dah (ده) dash déka (δέκα) decem dez zece dosh (দশ) ten dix diez desyat' dziesięć dieci desmit dešimt jyu (十)

— kashmiri TALK 18:11, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

@Kashmiri: lol I don't know XD (probably somebody on drugs who believed that Japanese was Indo-European) — AWESOME meeos ！ * ([nʲɪ‿bʲɪ.spɐˈko.ɪtʲ]) 12:17, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
Looks cool, but we should move such lists to Wiktionary and focus only comparing it with other Indo-Aryan languages. — Stevey7788 (talk) 22:41, 13 March 2019 (UTC)


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