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I moved the following contribution of 198.61.20.7 out of the arucle. It is not in encyclopedic style and the copyright is unclear:
Reference Devices in Sinhala
Neelakshi Chandrasena Premawardhena, University of Siegen, Germany
Abstract
This study examines various reference devices employed by Sinhala native speakers in order to keep track of participants in the discourse. Sinhala is the majority language spoken in Sri Lanka. Besides Divehi, the language of the Maldives, Sinhala is the only Indo-Aryan language geographically separated from the other members of its family, such as Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati spoken in India. Disanayaka (1998:118/19) argues that "Sinhala occupies a unique position among the languages of South Asia because of its close affinities with two of the major linguistic families of the Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Aryan and Dravidian". Tamil, the oldest of the Dravidian languages and Sinhala have coexisted for generations interacting with each other, thus bearing an impact on the phonology, morphology and syntax of Sinhala (Karunatillake, 1984; Disanayaka, 1991) There exists a vast difference between the spoken and the written variety of modern Sinhala. The Sinhala diglossia situation has made many linguists refer to the two forms of written and spoken language as 'Literary Sinhala' and 'Spoken Sinhala'. The latter makes a further distinction between Formal and Colloquial varieties (see Karunatillake 1992; Disanayaka 1998; Gair 1998). The Formal Spoken Sinhala is usually used in speeches, lectures or in the media and the Colloquial Sinhala is the language of ordinary conversation. In this study I will refer to Spoken Sinhala, where in fact the language of normal day to day conversation is meant. Due to the vast differences between the two varieties of Sinhala, this study concentrates on data available from Spoken Sinhala only. The aim of the study is to discuss reference devices employed by Sinhala native speakers in discourse cohesion. The identity of the speaker (first person) and the addressee (second person) is generally evident in discourse and does not cause much difficulty to decode who it is being referred to. Hence the focus will be mainly on devices employed to identify third persons referred to in discourse i.e. third person pronouns and other devices such as nouns, zero anaphora, honorific and kinship terms. It is important to note that sociolinguistic factors play a significant role in identifying referents in Sinhala (see Chandrasena Premawardhena 2001:23-24, 15-159). Social norms are as important as formal grammatical rules in this process. Thus this study will also provide a sociolinguistic interpretation of reference devices employed in Spoken Sinhala. There are a number of personal pronouns used in Spoken Sinhala as illustrated in Table 2. However, due to social norms and customs such as respecting the elders by not addressing or referring to them with proper names or pronouns, the Sinhalese use nominal reference devices such as kinship terms or honorific terms instead. Hence this study gives an insight into both pronominal and nominal reference devices. Reference devices in Spoken Sinhala have not been the subject of attention in many extensive studies apart from Chandrasena Premawardhena (2001). In Gair (1998); Gair/Karunatillake (2000), the focus has been mainly on the so called "neutral" pronouns, i.e. the third person pronouns used by the educated urbanites, while categorising the rest of the third person pronouns used in everyday speech by the not-so-educated rural folk as derogatory. This paper will give an insight into pronominal and nominal reference devices in Spoken Sinhala and sociolinguistic factors which determine the use of above mentioned reference devices in day to day conversation. Further, various problems arising in decoding the referents such as ambiguity and how various reference devices used in Sinhala give an insight into the social status, age and sex of the referent in question and how the speaker's attitude towards the referent is expressed through the choice of particular reference devices will be discussed. The neutral and derogatory use of the third person pronouns in Spoken Sinhala will be discussed in detail here and argued that this is mainly determined by the social status, age, sex of the speaker/addressee and referent in question as well as the context of the situation and not solely by the pronouns used in discourse
Pjacobi 21:50, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)
I have made some small improvements. There still needs to be a lot more changes to make this article more acceptable. Imperial78
I disagree with the phonetic transcription of Sinhala to [ˈsiŋɦələ] and would suggest [ˈsiŋɦɐlə]. I just noticed that I disagree with how Gair transcript Sinhala in general. Gair btw transcribed Sinhala as [ˈsinhələ]. -- Chartinael ( talk) 08:51, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Some old stuff that are not really notable but took a big space were moved here on Thursday, November 03, 2005. - Greenleaf 00:46, 3 November 2005 (UTC).
There was a request to move the page on WP:RM, however the proper procedure did not appear to followed. Please refile and use the proper procedure outlined at WP:RM#Instructions please :). Take care! Ryan Norton T | @ | C 07:40, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
Hi Peter,
Actually I wonder if we really have the same basis here: When adjectival style is used, it looks like it's almost always used in a context of a country; such as people from China were chinsese, so the language the Chinese talk is Chinese. Same for Japanese, Swedish its. There is no Sinhala country. If people are called Sinhalese because they speak sinhala - then the language must be called Sinhala - OR - if the language is called Sinhalese because it's sopken by Sinhala people, then people must be called Sinhala. If both are adjectival, what exactly is the root?
On the other hand, newer standards such as unicode use the term Sinhala not Sinhalese [1](warning: PDF File). Even EB says, "the mother tongue of the Sinhalese is Sinhala—an Indo-Aryan language" [2] and Encarta calls the language Sinhala. [3] I propose we keep the language name as it was and change the name of people to Sinhalese. Greenleaf 05:10, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Um, as far as I know the Sinhalese people speak the Sinhalese language. All British books refer to the Sinhalese people or (Cinghalese) who speak Sinhalese.
It has been the norm to refer to the people as the Sinhalese in English. In Sinhalese it's sinhalaya (singular) and sinhalayo or sinhalayan (plural) The British called much of the people of Ceylon either Sinhalese or Cinghalese who spoke the Sinhalese language. This has been the norm for centuries since the Brits arrived in Sri Lanka and added to the English vocabulary, way before you decided to come along and change it all simply because you thought it was "more correct." The Sinhalese have never been called "Shingalese" so I really do not see where your argument is going. Tamil is really the anglicised term because it's THAMIZH not Tamil in actual Tamil pronunciation. You do realize in Indian English that Tamils are called Tamilians as well?
Let's redefine the argumenmt so people do not get confused. Should this topic name take a spelling that reflects the native pronunciation of the word (ie Sinhala), or should the topic name take a spelling that reflects the Anglicized pronunciation of the word (ie Sinhalese) ? --AE
I removed the part that suggested Veddahs originally spoke some other language just from the fact they have a lot of words that are not found in any other languages. That claim is unsubstantiated, and is like saying that the English originally spoke some other language other than Common Germanic just because English has a lot of words not found originally in any other language. Languages evolve and would definitly have more words added during 2000 years - if we just let 500 early years go. So having new words after seperation is not a good argument for a different origin, unless you give better reasons. Right now, there is no claim whether it was/was not derived by Sinhala, and let people decide with better facts, when someone provides them some day. Greenleaf 02:25, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Also, whoever, please DO stop changing Sinhala to Sinhalese without giving your reasons for doing so. Give User:Hottentot a break. Greenleaf 02:25, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
To the idiot Hottentot who keeps changing "kukavi vaada" to "kukavi vada" do you actually know that doing so completely changes the meaning? In Sinhalese "vaada" means "debates" and "vada" means "turmoil/trouble" so quit changing it. You're acting like a complete moron. Let people who actually speak the language correct the mistakes.
O.K. I'm tired of this revert warring about "Sinhala" versus "Sinhalese". For now the lemma is "Sinhala" and in line with our policy I will enforce the use of "Sinhala" in the article. If this is considered wrong, please follow the WP:RM process. -- Pjacobi 16:03, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
First off, language articles are not supposed to have long list of words. There's really no point it that. Also, since the title of the page is at Sinhala, why do you keep changing it to Sinhalese? Your choice of "Veddha" over "Veddah" is may be "correct" to you, or to others, but on Wikipedia, we don't use what people believe to be correct", but what is most commonly used. "Veddah" recieves 9,280 Google hits, while "Veddha" recives 753. -- Hottentot
It is not a long list Hottentot. Why don't you hop on over to the Bengali language page and check out the lists there? They must be gigantically, utterly humongous for you if 20 words is a "long list." Why don't you go on your little deleting spree there as well? I'm sure the people who add to that page will be delighted with your charming behaviour.
A few badly written paragraphs were added which add nothing to an Encyclopedic article on the Sinhala. They are full of bad grammar and do not make sense. I have removed them. We need to keep this article to known facts and keep it linguistic in framework. Imperial78
The article and infobox contradict each other. One says there are 15 million people speak Sinhala while the other says 13 million. These figures need to be verified. Gizza Chat © 09:33, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
According to the official census of 2001,
81.9% of the population in the 18 districts which the census was carried out (minus the North and East) were Sinhalese, and therefore almost certainly speak Sinhalese. Since the census found the population in those districts to be
16,864,687, 81.9% is approx. 13.8 million. Plus the Sinhalese in the other districts, plus the Muslims, Tamils and other races that speak Sinhalese, plus the expatriates, plus the growth in population it should easily surpass the 15 million mark. Therefore I'm changing the figure to 15 mil.
Also, the figure given in the above link ( Ethnologue) is a 1993 estimate and doesn't look too credible. Snowolfd4 19:54, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi. A few words concerning my edits:
The article needs to be extended. I will do that when I have the time. Krankman 12:10, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
-- Ruvi 172.133.252.133 05:47, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Sinhala comes from sanskrit!Therefor both these languages have similar words!Thus this statement need to be clarified before reinsertion. TCWales 18:18, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
"The periodic invasion of Sri Lanka by Tamils from south India led to many Tamil words being added to the Sinhala language."
Hi.
I have replaced the former version with a translation of the German version of the article. It is for sure not as exhaustive as it should be, but it is a linguistic article as it should be. Just the most necessary of information along with links to pages relating to linguistic concepts touched.
Before, there was a lot of info relating to literature which doesn't belong here. For that, there should be a separate article on Sinhala literature. (That's gonna be even more of a POV fight I suppose ... :-( )
Please don't make any changes to this new article unless you have a linguistics background and you are sure that there are factual errors. Please! Krankman 21:16, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
The current article reads just like a linguistic article, I am all for it. Some of the contributers who are concerned about loan words should start
Cat Sinhala and make it balanced RaveenS
Clozapine,
please be patient, I am in the process of preparing a section on the very subject of different Sinhala language styles (which you are trying to put in here in a completely wrong place). Elu has nothing to do with Prakrit. Stop your ignorant vandalism!
Krankman 00:42, 19 July 2006 (UTC) Crossed out insult. Sorry, it was a late night.
Krankman 09:57, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Please cite a source. Can't find any info on that. Krankman 11:37, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamboja_Colonists_of_Sri_Lanka
(2) http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~sala23/abstracts/A2.txt
(3) http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Prakrit
(4) http://www.lankalibrary.com/books/sinhala.htm
(5) http://indoeuro.bizland.com/archive/article17.html
(6) http://www.lankalibrary.com/books/sinhala6.htm
(7) Phonology of the Sinhalese Inscriptions up to the End of the Tenth Century, A. D. P. B. F. Wijeratne
s > h is also an Iranian feature. Clozapine 12:45, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Wijeratne makes a good case against the "initial /v/ which developed into /b/" hence added disputed tag. Also disputed is "settlers from North-western India." Clozapine 05:49, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Regarding "An example for an Eastern feature is the ending -e for masculine nominative singular (instead of Western -o) in Sinhala Prakrit" -- What are the examples? Clozapine 05:54, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
As far as I know there is no dispute to the fact that
I couldn't find anything this talk page anyway. So unless anyone can clarify why it's disputed, I'm removing the tags. -- snowolfD4 14:57, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Can someone help render Sudhanamva, "Be Prepared", the Scout Motto, into Sinhalese script? Thanks! Chris 03:47, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
I added a link to the article Sinhala Slang which actually hosted to my user-space. However, it was removed immmediately stateting that 'should not link to the userspace'. Is there a rigid rule in WP which says that Wiki articles should never link to user space, even as an external link? Ritigala Jayasena 06:57, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Hello,
we have to come to an agreement as to how we represent Spoken Sinhala. Gair and other American scholars use <ə> at all places where phonetically there is a [ə], thus <kərənəva> and <malə>, regardless of whether the phonetic [ə] is a realization of /a/ or of /ə/ (FYI, /kəranavaa/ and /mala/ with all open non-initial /a/s reduced to <ə>[ə])
I myself am more in favor of using <a> at all places where [ə] is a realization of /a/, and to only use <ə> in places where it is a realization of /ə/, which basically means only the stem of kər "to make".
Now if someone says we should stick to the published sources, that's right of course, but in that case we would have to use a delta-like sign, actually some mathematical symbol of
differential operator, because that is what Gair uses, presumably for want of a better font.
I will leave the article as it is, but it would be nice to find a consensus here.
Jasy jatere 18:23, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello, an IP has redirected Sinhalese language to Sinhala language. Before, the redirect was the other way round. I think this should be discussed first, so I have reverted it to the original state. If we decide that the change should be done, then a proper move (including talk page) should be requested. Jasy jatere ( talk) 09:40, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Hello. Is somewhere any image showing this language written? In my browser (Firefox 3.0) it's rendering like 2x2 matrix with hexadecimal numbers. -- DJ Jeri ( talk) 12:56, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
Sinhalese script looks similar to Telugu and Kannada Script. If Telugu and Kannada are Dravidian Languages then how does Sinhalese become an Indo-Aryan language ?
Not to mention Indo-Aryan language scripts which look similar to each other are nowhere near look similar to Sinhalese.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telugu_script
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannada_script
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhala_script
Iross1000 ( talk) 13:20, 31 December 2008 (UTC).
OK -- After a lot of search, Sinhalese is not an Indo-Aryan Language. Malayalam has more words from Sanskrit than Sinhala. But it is still Dravidian language. I have asked for citation, someone post the citation if you have any from a trusted source. (or) it'll be removed and will be made that the origin of the language is not sure or something similar to that. Ben ( talk) 10:28, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
The classification is incorrect in my opinion. We can't call it Indo-Aryan or Dravidian because Sinhala has characteristics of both. We must also know that there were people other than Indo-Aryans and Dravidians in Sri Lanka. There has to be some connection with them too. It is beleived their language belongs to none of the aforementioned languages. 202.129.233.234 ( talk) 14:16, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
The result of the move request was moved to Sinhala language. From our naming conventions: "Wikipedia determines the recognizability of a name by seeing what verifiable reliable sources in English call the subject." Sources have been provided that the name is "Sinhala". Aervanath ( talk) 18:14, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
'Sinhala' is the preferred word for the language as per the Sri Lankan constitution and ISO 639:
18. 3[(1)] The Official Language of Sri Lanka shall be Sinhala. ( Constitution of Sri Lanka)
sin si Sinhala; Sinhalese ( ISO 639)
Harshula ( talk) 06:38, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
How can pre-historic indigenous inhabitants of Sri Lanka, such as the Yakka and Naga the article mentions, have spoken an earlier form of Sinhala if Sinhala is an Indo-European language? Either those peoples weren't really all that indigenous, or their language was not Indo-European at all, it would seem. Or is anybody positing that Indo-Europeans originated from Sri Lanka in the first place? -- 85.179.164.111 ( talk) 17:42, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
Regarding "See Studies in South Asian linguistics: Sinhala and other South Asian languages, by By James W. Gair, Barbara Lust", I would like to point out that James Gair, just like every other academic outside of Sri Lanka, holds the opinion that Sinhala is an Indo-Aryan language. See "Review of Elizarenkova" in the book you mention for a very specific discussion of this.
Jasy jatere (
talk) 14:08, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
Could somebody translate නිරිපොල. It is a short article that has been nominated for deletion as 'nonsense' as some people do not recognise it as a different language. Catfish Jim and the soapdish ( talk) 18:29, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Under "Writing system" we see "Sinhala also knows hal kirama and uses two differing virama symbols depending on the basic grapheme to explicitly indicate the lack of a vowel." Could one of the knowledgable editors please clarify this? I get the impression that virama symbols are sound-killers, but I could find nothing on "hal kirama". (I assume "knows" in this sentence should be "recognizes" or "uses".) Thanks -- Jo3sampl ( talk) 19:32, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
Should this be fixed? In one section it states that kanavā corresponds to the Hindi khānā. It actually doesn't, the corresponding Hindi word would be khātā (masculine) or khāti (feminine). The Hindi word khānā could be translated to Sinhales as kanna, as in they should both be in the infinitive form. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.3.133.3 ( talk) 04:33, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
I believe this is a mistake and it should be removed from there.
At the table, I think "hatara" should be "hathara" and "hata" should be "hatha". Because if we pronounce it as "hatara" it becomes "හටර" and "hata" becomes "හට". That "h" even needed when we convert Singlish to Unicodes, not just pronouncing. Maybe I'm wrong or this already been discussed before. Sorry for any inconvenience. ʂaɳɖaƙɘɭʉɱ ʈaɭƙ 21:52, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
https://archive.org/details/sin00wickhaleseselftaurich
https://archive.org/details/englishsinhalese00cartrich
https://archive.org/details/sinhaleseenglish00clourich
https://archive.org/details/singhalesegramma00lambrich
https://archive.org/details/colloquialsinhal00pererich
https://archive.org/details/athethawakyadeep00mend
https://archive.org/details/LitteraturUndSpracheDerSinghalesen
https://archive.org/details/singhalesetransl00brow
A Vocabulary of the English, Sinhalese, and Tamil Languages
Rajmaan ( talk) 04:49, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
The language is Sinhala, not Sinhalese. As same with Tamil and say, Hindi. They are not Tamilese or Hindian are they? We call Chinese or Japanese to those languages because they are the native languages of those respective countries. Same goes for French and German. I think you get my point. 112.134.40.211 ( talk) 03:58, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
I removed the following table from the main body as out of place - this is an article on Sinhalese language, not on comparative linguistics. The table even contained... Japanese numerals. Anyone willing to explain why?
Sinhalese | Maldivian | Sanskrit | Hindi | Persian | Nepali | Greek | Latin | Portuguese | Romanian | Bengali | English | French | Spanish | Russian | Polish | Italian | Latvian | Lithuanian | Japanese | |
1 | eka (එක) | ekeh | éka | ek | yek (یک) | yek | (h)éna (ἕνα) | unus | um | unu | æk (এক) | one | un | uno | odin | jeden | uno | viens | vienas | ichi (ー) |
2 | deka (දෙක) | dey | dvá | do | do (دو) | dui | dío (δύο) | duo | dois | doi | dui (দুই) | two | deux | dos | dva | dwa | due | divi | du | ni (二) |
3 | thuna (තුන) | thineh | trí | teen | se (سه) | tin | tría (τρία) | tria | três | trei | tin (তিন) | three | trois | tres | tri | trzy | tre | trīs | trys | san (三) |
4 | hathara (හතර) | hathareh | catúr | chaar | chahār (چهار) | char | téssera (τέσσερα) | quattuor | quatro | patru | char (চার) | four | quatre | cuatro | chetyre | cztery | quattro | četri | keturi | shi/yon (四) |
5 | paha (පහ) | faheh | páñca | paanch | panj (پنج) | pach | pénte (πέντε) | quinque | cinco | cinci | pañch (পাঁচ) | five | cinq | cinco | pyat' | pięć | cinque | pieci | penki | go (五) |
6 | haya (හය) | hayeh | ṣáṣ | chheh | shesh (شش) | chha | (h)éxi (ἕξι) | sex | seis | șase | chhoy (ছয়) | six | six | seis | shest' | sześć | sei | seši | šeši | roku (六) |
7 | hatha (හත) | hatheh | sápta | saat | haft (هفت) | saat | (h)eptá (ἑπτά) | septem | sete | șapte | shat (সাত) | seven | sept | siete | sem' | siedem | sette | septiņi | septyni | nana/shichi (七) |
8 | aṭa (අට) | asheh | áṣṭa | aath | hasht (هشت) | aath | októ (ὀκτώ) | octo | oito | opt | aat (আট) | eight | huit | ocho | vosem' | osiem | otto | astoņi | aštuoni | hachi (八) |
9 | nawaya (නවය) [note 1] | nuvayeh | náva | naun | noh (نه) | nau | ennéa (ἐννέα) | novem | nove | nouă | noy (নয়) | nine | neuf | nueve | devyat' | dziewięć | nove | deviņi | devyni | kyuu (九) |
10 | dahaya (දහය) | dehayeh | dáśa | das | dah (ده) | dash | déka (δέκα) | decem | dez | zece | dosh (দশ) | ten | dix | diez | desyat' | dziesięć | dieci | desmit | dešimt | jyu (十) |
— kashmiri TALK 18:11, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
Cite error: There are <ref group=note>
tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}}
template (see the
help page).
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
I moved the following contribution of 198.61.20.7 out of the arucle. It is not in encyclopedic style and the copyright is unclear:
Reference Devices in Sinhala
Neelakshi Chandrasena Premawardhena, University of Siegen, Germany
Abstract
This study examines various reference devices employed by Sinhala native speakers in order to keep track of participants in the discourse. Sinhala is the majority language spoken in Sri Lanka. Besides Divehi, the language of the Maldives, Sinhala is the only Indo-Aryan language geographically separated from the other members of its family, such as Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati spoken in India. Disanayaka (1998:118/19) argues that "Sinhala occupies a unique position among the languages of South Asia because of its close affinities with two of the major linguistic families of the Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Aryan and Dravidian". Tamil, the oldest of the Dravidian languages and Sinhala have coexisted for generations interacting with each other, thus bearing an impact on the phonology, morphology and syntax of Sinhala (Karunatillake, 1984; Disanayaka, 1991) There exists a vast difference between the spoken and the written variety of modern Sinhala. The Sinhala diglossia situation has made many linguists refer to the two forms of written and spoken language as 'Literary Sinhala' and 'Spoken Sinhala'. The latter makes a further distinction between Formal and Colloquial varieties (see Karunatillake 1992; Disanayaka 1998; Gair 1998). The Formal Spoken Sinhala is usually used in speeches, lectures or in the media and the Colloquial Sinhala is the language of ordinary conversation. In this study I will refer to Spoken Sinhala, where in fact the language of normal day to day conversation is meant. Due to the vast differences between the two varieties of Sinhala, this study concentrates on data available from Spoken Sinhala only. The aim of the study is to discuss reference devices employed by Sinhala native speakers in discourse cohesion. The identity of the speaker (first person) and the addressee (second person) is generally evident in discourse and does not cause much difficulty to decode who it is being referred to. Hence the focus will be mainly on devices employed to identify third persons referred to in discourse i.e. third person pronouns and other devices such as nouns, zero anaphora, honorific and kinship terms. It is important to note that sociolinguistic factors play a significant role in identifying referents in Sinhala (see Chandrasena Premawardhena 2001:23-24, 15-159). Social norms are as important as formal grammatical rules in this process. Thus this study will also provide a sociolinguistic interpretation of reference devices employed in Spoken Sinhala. There are a number of personal pronouns used in Spoken Sinhala as illustrated in Table 2. However, due to social norms and customs such as respecting the elders by not addressing or referring to them with proper names or pronouns, the Sinhalese use nominal reference devices such as kinship terms or honorific terms instead. Hence this study gives an insight into both pronominal and nominal reference devices. Reference devices in Spoken Sinhala have not been the subject of attention in many extensive studies apart from Chandrasena Premawardhena (2001). In Gair (1998); Gair/Karunatillake (2000), the focus has been mainly on the so called "neutral" pronouns, i.e. the third person pronouns used by the educated urbanites, while categorising the rest of the third person pronouns used in everyday speech by the not-so-educated rural folk as derogatory. This paper will give an insight into pronominal and nominal reference devices in Spoken Sinhala and sociolinguistic factors which determine the use of above mentioned reference devices in day to day conversation. Further, various problems arising in decoding the referents such as ambiguity and how various reference devices used in Sinhala give an insight into the social status, age and sex of the referent in question and how the speaker's attitude towards the referent is expressed through the choice of particular reference devices will be discussed. The neutral and derogatory use of the third person pronouns in Spoken Sinhala will be discussed in detail here and argued that this is mainly determined by the social status, age, sex of the speaker/addressee and referent in question as well as the context of the situation and not solely by the pronouns used in discourse
Pjacobi 21:50, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)
I have made some small improvements. There still needs to be a lot more changes to make this article more acceptable. Imperial78
I disagree with the phonetic transcription of Sinhala to [ˈsiŋɦələ] and would suggest [ˈsiŋɦɐlə]. I just noticed that I disagree with how Gair transcript Sinhala in general. Gair btw transcribed Sinhala as [ˈsinhələ]. -- Chartinael ( talk) 08:51, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Some old stuff that are not really notable but took a big space were moved here on Thursday, November 03, 2005. - Greenleaf 00:46, 3 November 2005 (UTC).
There was a request to move the page on WP:RM, however the proper procedure did not appear to followed. Please refile and use the proper procedure outlined at WP:RM#Instructions please :). Take care! Ryan Norton T | @ | C 07:40, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
Hi Peter,
Actually I wonder if we really have the same basis here: When adjectival style is used, it looks like it's almost always used in a context of a country; such as people from China were chinsese, so the language the Chinese talk is Chinese. Same for Japanese, Swedish its. There is no Sinhala country. If people are called Sinhalese because they speak sinhala - then the language must be called Sinhala - OR - if the language is called Sinhalese because it's sopken by Sinhala people, then people must be called Sinhala. If both are adjectival, what exactly is the root?
On the other hand, newer standards such as unicode use the term Sinhala not Sinhalese [1](warning: PDF File). Even EB says, "the mother tongue of the Sinhalese is Sinhala—an Indo-Aryan language" [2] and Encarta calls the language Sinhala. [3] I propose we keep the language name as it was and change the name of people to Sinhalese. Greenleaf 05:10, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Um, as far as I know the Sinhalese people speak the Sinhalese language. All British books refer to the Sinhalese people or (Cinghalese) who speak Sinhalese.
It has been the norm to refer to the people as the Sinhalese in English. In Sinhalese it's sinhalaya (singular) and sinhalayo or sinhalayan (plural) The British called much of the people of Ceylon either Sinhalese or Cinghalese who spoke the Sinhalese language. This has been the norm for centuries since the Brits arrived in Sri Lanka and added to the English vocabulary, way before you decided to come along and change it all simply because you thought it was "more correct." The Sinhalese have never been called "Shingalese" so I really do not see where your argument is going. Tamil is really the anglicised term because it's THAMIZH not Tamil in actual Tamil pronunciation. You do realize in Indian English that Tamils are called Tamilians as well?
Let's redefine the argumenmt so people do not get confused. Should this topic name take a spelling that reflects the native pronunciation of the word (ie Sinhala), or should the topic name take a spelling that reflects the Anglicized pronunciation of the word (ie Sinhalese) ? --AE
I removed the part that suggested Veddahs originally spoke some other language just from the fact they have a lot of words that are not found in any other languages. That claim is unsubstantiated, and is like saying that the English originally spoke some other language other than Common Germanic just because English has a lot of words not found originally in any other language. Languages evolve and would definitly have more words added during 2000 years - if we just let 500 early years go. So having new words after seperation is not a good argument for a different origin, unless you give better reasons. Right now, there is no claim whether it was/was not derived by Sinhala, and let people decide with better facts, when someone provides them some day. Greenleaf 02:25, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Also, whoever, please DO stop changing Sinhala to Sinhalese without giving your reasons for doing so. Give User:Hottentot a break. Greenleaf 02:25, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
To the idiot Hottentot who keeps changing "kukavi vaada" to "kukavi vada" do you actually know that doing so completely changes the meaning? In Sinhalese "vaada" means "debates" and "vada" means "turmoil/trouble" so quit changing it. You're acting like a complete moron. Let people who actually speak the language correct the mistakes.
O.K. I'm tired of this revert warring about "Sinhala" versus "Sinhalese". For now the lemma is "Sinhala" and in line with our policy I will enforce the use of "Sinhala" in the article. If this is considered wrong, please follow the WP:RM process. -- Pjacobi 16:03, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
First off, language articles are not supposed to have long list of words. There's really no point it that. Also, since the title of the page is at Sinhala, why do you keep changing it to Sinhalese? Your choice of "Veddha" over "Veddah" is may be "correct" to you, or to others, but on Wikipedia, we don't use what people believe to be correct", but what is most commonly used. "Veddah" recieves 9,280 Google hits, while "Veddha" recives 753. -- Hottentot
It is not a long list Hottentot. Why don't you hop on over to the Bengali language page and check out the lists there? They must be gigantically, utterly humongous for you if 20 words is a "long list." Why don't you go on your little deleting spree there as well? I'm sure the people who add to that page will be delighted with your charming behaviour.
A few badly written paragraphs were added which add nothing to an Encyclopedic article on the Sinhala. They are full of bad grammar and do not make sense. I have removed them. We need to keep this article to known facts and keep it linguistic in framework. Imperial78
The article and infobox contradict each other. One says there are 15 million people speak Sinhala while the other says 13 million. These figures need to be verified. Gizza Chat © 09:33, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
According to the official census of 2001,
81.9% of the population in the 18 districts which the census was carried out (minus the North and East) were Sinhalese, and therefore almost certainly speak Sinhalese. Since the census found the population in those districts to be
16,864,687, 81.9% is approx. 13.8 million. Plus the Sinhalese in the other districts, plus the Muslims, Tamils and other races that speak Sinhalese, plus the expatriates, plus the growth in population it should easily surpass the 15 million mark. Therefore I'm changing the figure to 15 mil.
Also, the figure given in the above link ( Ethnologue) is a 1993 estimate and doesn't look too credible. Snowolfd4 19:54, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi. A few words concerning my edits:
The article needs to be extended. I will do that when I have the time. Krankman 12:10, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
-- Ruvi 172.133.252.133 05:47, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Sinhala comes from sanskrit!Therefor both these languages have similar words!Thus this statement need to be clarified before reinsertion. TCWales 18:18, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
"The periodic invasion of Sri Lanka by Tamils from south India led to many Tamil words being added to the Sinhala language."
Hi.
I have replaced the former version with a translation of the German version of the article. It is for sure not as exhaustive as it should be, but it is a linguistic article as it should be. Just the most necessary of information along with links to pages relating to linguistic concepts touched.
Before, there was a lot of info relating to literature which doesn't belong here. For that, there should be a separate article on Sinhala literature. (That's gonna be even more of a POV fight I suppose ... :-( )
Please don't make any changes to this new article unless you have a linguistics background and you are sure that there are factual errors. Please! Krankman 21:16, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
The current article reads just like a linguistic article, I am all for it. Some of the contributers who are concerned about loan words should start
Cat Sinhala and make it balanced RaveenS
Clozapine,
please be patient, I am in the process of preparing a section on the very subject of different Sinhala language styles (which you are trying to put in here in a completely wrong place). Elu has nothing to do with Prakrit. Stop your ignorant vandalism!
Krankman 00:42, 19 July 2006 (UTC) Crossed out insult. Sorry, it was a late night.
Krankman 09:57, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Please cite a source. Can't find any info on that. Krankman 11:37, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamboja_Colonists_of_Sri_Lanka
(2) http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~sala23/abstracts/A2.txt
(3) http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Prakrit
(4) http://www.lankalibrary.com/books/sinhala.htm
(5) http://indoeuro.bizland.com/archive/article17.html
(6) http://www.lankalibrary.com/books/sinhala6.htm
(7) Phonology of the Sinhalese Inscriptions up to the End of the Tenth Century, A. D. P. B. F. Wijeratne
s > h is also an Iranian feature. Clozapine 12:45, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Wijeratne makes a good case against the "initial /v/ which developed into /b/" hence added disputed tag. Also disputed is "settlers from North-western India." Clozapine 05:49, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Regarding "An example for an Eastern feature is the ending -e for masculine nominative singular (instead of Western -o) in Sinhala Prakrit" -- What are the examples? Clozapine 05:54, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
As far as I know there is no dispute to the fact that
I couldn't find anything this talk page anyway. So unless anyone can clarify why it's disputed, I'm removing the tags. -- snowolfD4 14:57, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Can someone help render Sudhanamva, "Be Prepared", the Scout Motto, into Sinhalese script? Thanks! Chris 03:47, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
I added a link to the article Sinhala Slang which actually hosted to my user-space. However, it was removed immmediately stateting that 'should not link to the userspace'. Is there a rigid rule in WP which says that Wiki articles should never link to user space, even as an external link? Ritigala Jayasena 06:57, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Hello,
we have to come to an agreement as to how we represent Spoken Sinhala. Gair and other American scholars use <ə> at all places where phonetically there is a [ə], thus <kərənəva> and <malə>, regardless of whether the phonetic [ə] is a realization of /a/ or of /ə/ (FYI, /kəranavaa/ and /mala/ with all open non-initial /a/s reduced to <ə>[ə])
I myself am more in favor of using <a> at all places where [ə] is a realization of /a/, and to only use <ə> in places where it is a realization of /ə/, which basically means only the stem of kər "to make".
Now if someone says we should stick to the published sources, that's right of course, but in that case we would have to use a delta-like sign, actually some mathematical symbol of
differential operator, because that is what Gair uses, presumably for want of a better font.
I will leave the article as it is, but it would be nice to find a consensus here.
Jasy jatere 18:23, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello, an IP has redirected Sinhalese language to Sinhala language. Before, the redirect was the other way round. I think this should be discussed first, so I have reverted it to the original state. If we decide that the change should be done, then a proper move (including talk page) should be requested. Jasy jatere ( talk) 09:40, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Hello. Is somewhere any image showing this language written? In my browser (Firefox 3.0) it's rendering like 2x2 matrix with hexadecimal numbers. -- DJ Jeri ( talk) 12:56, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
Sinhalese script looks similar to Telugu and Kannada Script. If Telugu and Kannada are Dravidian Languages then how does Sinhalese become an Indo-Aryan language ?
Not to mention Indo-Aryan language scripts which look similar to each other are nowhere near look similar to Sinhalese.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telugu_script
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannada_script
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhala_script
Iross1000 ( talk) 13:20, 31 December 2008 (UTC).
OK -- After a lot of search, Sinhalese is not an Indo-Aryan Language. Malayalam has more words from Sanskrit than Sinhala. But it is still Dravidian language. I have asked for citation, someone post the citation if you have any from a trusted source. (or) it'll be removed and will be made that the origin of the language is not sure or something similar to that. Ben ( talk) 10:28, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
The classification is incorrect in my opinion. We can't call it Indo-Aryan or Dravidian because Sinhala has characteristics of both. We must also know that there were people other than Indo-Aryans and Dravidians in Sri Lanka. There has to be some connection with them too. It is beleived their language belongs to none of the aforementioned languages. 202.129.233.234 ( talk) 14:16, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
The result of the move request was moved to Sinhala language. From our naming conventions: "Wikipedia determines the recognizability of a name by seeing what verifiable reliable sources in English call the subject." Sources have been provided that the name is "Sinhala". Aervanath ( talk) 18:14, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
'Sinhala' is the preferred word for the language as per the Sri Lankan constitution and ISO 639:
18. 3[(1)] The Official Language of Sri Lanka shall be Sinhala. ( Constitution of Sri Lanka)
sin si Sinhala; Sinhalese ( ISO 639)
Harshula ( talk) 06:38, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
How can pre-historic indigenous inhabitants of Sri Lanka, such as the Yakka and Naga the article mentions, have spoken an earlier form of Sinhala if Sinhala is an Indo-European language? Either those peoples weren't really all that indigenous, or their language was not Indo-European at all, it would seem. Or is anybody positing that Indo-Europeans originated from Sri Lanka in the first place? -- 85.179.164.111 ( talk) 17:42, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
Regarding "See Studies in South Asian linguistics: Sinhala and other South Asian languages, by By James W. Gair, Barbara Lust", I would like to point out that James Gair, just like every other academic outside of Sri Lanka, holds the opinion that Sinhala is an Indo-Aryan language. See "Review of Elizarenkova" in the book you mention for a very specific discussion of this.
Jasy jatere (
talk) 14:08, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
Could somebody translate නිරිපොල. It is a short article that has been nominated for deletion as 'nonsense' as some people do not recognise it as a different language. Catfish Jim and the soapdish ( talk) 18:29, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Under "Writing system" we see "Sinhala also knows hal kirama and uses two differing virama symbols depending on the basic grapheme to explicitly indicate the lack of a vowel." Could one of the knowledgable editors please clarify this? I get the impression that virama symbols are sound-killers, but I could find nothing on "hal kirama". (I assume "knows" in this sentence should be "recognizes" or "uses".) Thanks -- Jo3sampl ( talk) 19:32, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
Should this be fixed? In one section it states that kanavā corresponds to the Hindi khānā. It actually doesn't, the corresponding Hindi word would be khātā (masculine) or khāti (feminine). The Hindi word khānā could be translated to Sinhales as kanna, as in they should both be in the infinitive form. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.3.133.3 ( talk) 04:33, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
I believe this is a mistake and it should be removed from there.
At the table, I think "hatara" should be "hathara" and "hata" should be "hatha". Because if we pronounce it as "hatara" it becomes "හටර" and "hata" becomes "හට". That "h" even needed when we convert Singlish to Unicodes, not just pronouncing. Maybe I'm wrong or this already been discussed before. Sorry for any inconvenience. ʂaɳɖaƙɘɭʉɱ ʈaɭƙ 21:52, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
https://archive.org/details/sin00wickhaleseselftaurich
https://archive.org/details/englishsinhalese00cartrich
https://archive.org/details/sinhaleseenglish00clourich
https://archive.org/details/singhalesegramma00lambrich
https://archive.org/details/colloquialsinhal00pererich
https://archive.org/details/athethawakyadeep00mend
https://archive.org/details/LitteraturUndSpracheDerSinghalesen
https://archive.org/details/singhalesetransl00brow
A Vocabulary of the English, Sinhalese, and Tamil Languages
Rajmaan ( talk) 04:49, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
The language is Sinhala, not Sinhalese. As same with Tamil and say, Hindi. They are not Tamilese or Hindian are they? We call Chinese or Japanese to those languages because they are the native languages of those respective countries. Same goes for French and German. I think you get my point. 112.134.40.211 ( talk) 03:58, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
I removed the following table from the main body as out of place - this is an article on Sinhalese language, not on comparative linguistics. The table even contained... Japanese numerals. Anyone willing to explain why?
Sinhalese | Maldivian | Sanskrit | Hindi | Persian | Nepali | Greek | Latin | Portuguese | Romanian | Bengali | English | French | Spanish | Russian | Polish | Italian | Latvian | Lithuanian | Japanese | |
1 | eka (එක) | ekeh | éka | ek | yek (یک) | yek | (h)éna (ἕνα) | unus | um | unu | æk (এক) | one | un | uno | odin | jeden | uno | viens | vienas | ichi (ー) |
2 | deka (දෙක) | dey | dvá | do | do (دو) | dui | dío (δύο) | duo | dois | doi | dui (দুই) | two | deux | dos | dva | dwa | due | divi | du | ni (二) |
3 | thuna (තුන) | thineh | trí | teen | se (سه) | tin | tría (τρία) | tria | três | trei | tin (তিন) | three | trois | tres | tri | trzy | tre | trīs | trys | san (三) |
4 | hathara (හතර) | hathareh | catúr | chaar | chahār (چهار) | char | téssera (τέσσερα) | quattuor | quatro | patru | char (চার) | four | quatre | cuatro | chetyre | cztery | quattro | četri | keturi | shi/yon (四) |
5 | paha (පහ) | faheh | páñca | paanch | panj (پنج) | pach | pénte (πέντε) | quinque | cinco | cinci | pañch (পাঁচ) | five | cinq | cinco | pyat' | pięć | cinque | pieci | penki | go (五) |
6 | haya (හය) | hayeh | ṣáṣ | chheh | shesh (شش) | chha | (h)éxi (ἕξι) | sex | seis | șase | chhoy (ছয়) | six | six | seis | shest' | sześć | sei | seši | šeši | roku (六) |
7 | hatha (හත) | hatheh | sápta | saat | haft (هفت) | saat | (h)eptá (ἑπτά) | septem | sete | șapte | shat (সাত) | seven | sept | siete | sem' | siedem | sette | septiņi | septyni | nana/shichi (七) |
8 | aṭa (අට) | asheh | áṣṭa | aath | hasht (هشت) | aath | októ (ὀκτώ) | octo | oito | opt | aat (আট) | eight | huit | ocho | vosem' | osiem | otto | astoņi | aštuoni | hachi (八) |
9 | nawaya (නවය) [note 1] | nuvayeh | náva | naun | noh (نه) | nau | ennéa (ἐννέα) | novem | nove | nouă | noy (নয়) | nine | neuf | nueve | devyat' | dziewięć | nove | deviņi | devyni | kyuu (九) |
10 | dahaya (දහය) | dehayeh | dáśa | das | dah (ده) | dash | déka (δέκα) | decem | dez | zece | dosh (দশ) | ten | dix | diez | desyat' | dziesięć | dieci | desmit | dešimt | jyu (十) |
— kashmiri TALK 18:11, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
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