Sinhala | ||||
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Sinhalese සිංහල Siṁhala | ||||
Pronunciation | IPA: [ˈsiŋɦələ] | |||
Native to | Sri Lanka and Singapore | |||
Ethnicity | Sinhalese people | |||
Native speakers | 17.00 million (2012) 3 million L2 speakers (2012) | |||
Language family | ||||
Early forms: | Elu
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Dialects | Vedda (perhaps a creole) | |||
Writing system | ||||
Official status | ||||
Official language in | Sri Lanka | |||
Language codes | ||||
ISO 639-1 | si | |||
ISO 639-2 | sin | |||
ISO 639-3 | sin | |||
Linguasphere | 59-ABB-a | |||
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Sinhala or Sinhalese, earlier referred to as Singhalese, is the language of the Sinhalese. They are largest ethnic group of Sri Lanka. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan language family.
Sinhala has two varieties/forms - Spoken and Written, the former being the most popular form. Spoken Sinhala is easier to learn and use because it is so much relaxed in grammatical formality and rigidity.
Sinhala is spoken by about 19 million people in Sri Lanka, about 16 million of them are native speakers. It is one of the constitutionally-recognised official languages of Sri Lanka, with Tamil. Sinhala has its own writing system (see Sinhala script) which is an offspring of the Indian Brahmi script.