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A legion of honorifics are in use in the present Sinhala language to accentuate the social and ethical importance of the people the speaker or writer is addressing. . Generally, elders, teachers, strangers, political/spiritual leaders, renowned people and customers in the Sinhala society are referred to with honorifics, while the younger people and students
Exception from the standard are the romanization of Sinhala long "ä" ([æː]) as "ää", and the non-marking of prenasalized stops. Sinhala words of English origin mainly came about during the period of British colonial rule in Sri Lanka. This period saw absorption of several English words into the local language brought about by the ...
The oldest Sinhala grammar, Sidatsan̆garavā, written in the 13th century CE, recognised a category of words that exclusively belonged to early Sinhala. The grammar lists naram̆ba (to see) and koḷom̆ba (fort or harbour) as belonging to an indigenous source. Koḷom̆ba is the source of the name of the commercial capital Colombo. [31] [32]
Having taken root in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in 1796, Sri Lankan English has gone through over two centuries of development.In terms of its socio-cultural setting, Sri Lankan English can be explored largely in terms of different stages of the country's class and racial tension, economy, social disparity, and postwar rehabilitation and reconciliation. [10]
There are many Tamil loanwords in other languages.The Tamil language, primarily spoken in southern India and Sri Lanka, has produced loanwords in many different languages, including Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, English, Malay, native languages of Indonesia, Mauritian Creole, Tagalog, Russian, and Sinhala and Dhivehi.
By the beginning of the 1960s, the Hela Hawula was the strongest force in the country in terms of the Sinhala language and literature. [11] At that time the 'Hela Havula' had branches not only in Ahangama, Unawatuna, Rathgama, Galle, Kalutara and Kandy but also in schools such as Mahinda College in Galle and S. Thomas' College, Mount Lavinia .
Sinhala actively uses case marking as well as verb morphology to distinguish between volitional and non-volitional verbs. It has been argued that volition meanings are encoded in the lexicon, hence semantically. Sinhala verbs are classified semantically depending on whether they convey a controlled action or an uncontrolled action meaning.
Sinhala idioms (Sinhala: රූඩි, rūḍi) and colloquial expressions that are widely used to communicate figuratively, as with any other developed language. This page also contains a list of old and popular Sinhala proverbs , which are known as prastā piruḷu ( ප්රස්තා පිරුළු ) in Sinhala.