Sinhala
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	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Southern Zone Insular Indic Sinhala
Early forms:	Elu Sinhala
Dialects	Vedda (perhaps a creole)
Writing system	Sinhala script Sinhala Braille (Bharati Braille)
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.