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Sri Lanka accords official status to Sinhala and Tamil, with English as a recognised language. The languages spoken on the island nation are deeply influenced by the various languages in India, Europe and Southeast Asia. Arab settlers and the colonial powers of Portugal, the Netherlands and Britain have also influenced the development of modern ...
Topographic map of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka, an island in South Asia shaped as a teardrop or a pear/mango, [167] lies on the Indian Plate, a major tectonic plate that was formerly part of the Indo-Australian Plate. [168] It is in the Indian Ocean southwest of the Bay of Bengal, between latitudes 5° and 10° N, and longitudes 79° and 82° E. [169]
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 ] The most commonly spoken Dravidian languages are (in descending order) Telugu , Tamil , Kannada , and Malayalam , all of which have long literary ...
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 Tamil language is native to Tamil Nadu , Puducherry (India) and Sri Lanka, where most of the native Tamil speaking population is highly concentrated. Tamil is also recognized as a classical language by the Government of India in 2004 and was the first language to achieve such status. [1] Tamil is one of the 22 official languages of India. [2]
During British rule, Madras (now Chennai) became the center of the region, and a stability was created that benefitted Tamils throughout the region; Tamils were also favoured by the British in Sri Lanka over the Sinhalese people of the island. This laid the foundation for resentment and later ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka which lasted for ...
The island was governed by British Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) from 1921. [3] Though the Indian government never controlled it, the island remained disputed until 1974 between India and Sri Lanka when India recognised Sri Lanka's sovereignty over the island. [4] [5] The island is located between Neduntheevu, Sri Lanka and Rameswaram, India and has ...
It is written in the Sinhala script, a Brahmic script closely related to the Grantha script of South India. [6] 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.