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The main languages spoken in Sri Lanka are Sinhala and Tamil. Several languages are spoken in Sri Lanka within the Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, and Austronesian families. Sri Lanka accords official status to Sinhala and Tamil, with English as a recognised language.
Main page; Contents; Current events; Random article; About Wikipedia; ... Pages in category "Languages of Sri Lanka" The following 17 pages are in this category, out ...
Sinhala and Tamil are the official languages of Sri Lanka, with English as the link language. Tamil is a South-Dravidian language, and Sinhala belongs to the Insular Indic family (along with Dhivehi of the Maldives). Vedda is said to be the indigenous language of Sri Lanka before the arrival of the Indo-Aryans and Dravidians.
The language has two main varieties, written and spoken, and is a notable example of the linguistic phenomenon known as diglossia. [7] 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. [1]
The Dravidian languages are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in South India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan, with pockets elsewhere in South Asia. [1] [2] Dravidian is first attested in the 2nd century BCE, as inscriptions in Tamil-Brahmi script on cave walls in the Madurai and Tirunelveli districts of ...
Main menu. Main menu. move to sidebar hide. ... This is a list of countries by number of languages according to the 22nd edition of Ethnologue ... Sri Lanka: 7 5 12
Kandy is the second-largest urban area and also the capital of the last native kingdom of Sri Lanka. The most spoken language Sinhala, is spoken by the majority of the population (approximately 17 million). Tamil is also spoken by approximately five million people, making it the second most-spoken language in Sri Lanka.
In spite of the continual contact with India by sea, Sri Lankan Tamils have over the centuries become a distinct people developing dialects that differ in several aspects from the Indian Tamil dialects. [5] The Jaffna Tamil dialect is also distinct to a lesser extent from that of the Eastern, Western and Upcountry Tamil dialects of Sri Lanka. [6]