48-689: Katunayake ( Sinhala : කටුනායක , Tamil : கட்டுநாயகம் ), is a suburb of Negombo in Western Province, Sri Lanka . It is the site of Bandaranaike International Airport , the primary international air gateway to Sri Lanka. With the change of government in 1977 and the introduction of the open economy policy a large area was allocated to create a free trade zone (currently known as the Export Promotion Zone). Civil Aviation Authority of Sri Lanka has its head office in Katunayake. SriLankan Airlines
96-645: A ⟨ර⟩ ra following a consonant represented by and inverted arch ⟨◌්ර⟩ (rakāransaya), a ⟨ර⟩ r preceding a consonant by a loop above ⟨ර්◌⟩ (rēpaya), and a ⟨ය⟩ , ya following a consonant as a half of a ya ⟨්ය⟩ on the right (yansaya. Some very frequent combinations can be written in one stroke, like ⟨ද්ධ⟩ , ddha , ⟨ක්ව⟩ , kva or ⟨ක්ෂ⟩ , kś . Touching letters were used in ancient scriptures but are not used in modern Sinhala. Vowels may be attached to any of
144-783: A supposed former abundance of lions on the island. According to the chronicle Mahāvaṃsa , written in Pali, Prince Vijaya of the Vanga Kingdom and his entourage merged in Sri Lanka with later settlers from the Pandya kingdom . In the following centuries, there was substantial immigration from Eastern India, including additional migration from the Vanga Kingdom (Bengal), as well as Kalinga and Magadha . This influx led to an admixture of features of Eastern Prakrits. The development of Sinhala
192-552: A śuddha letter or by a miśra letter, normally only one of them is considered correct. Additionally, the śuddha set itself contains both ⟨ḷ⟩ and ⟨l⟩ , as well as ⟨ṇ⟩ and ⟨n⟩ , and neither pair is distinctive in Modern sinhala. This one-to-many mapping of phonemes onto graphemes is a frequent source of misspellings. While a phoneme can be represented by more than one grapheme, each grapheme can be pronounced in only one way, with
240-653: A Dravidian origin for this word. ), dola for pig in Vedda and offering in Sinhala. Other common words are rera for wild duck, and gala for stones (in toponyms used throughout the island, although others have also suggested a Dravidian origin). There are also high frequency words denoting body parts in Sinhala, such as olluva for head, kakula for leg, bella for neck and kalava for thighs, that are derived from pre-Sinhalese languages of Sri Lanka. The oldest Sinhala grammar, Sidatsan̆garavā , written in
288-528: A letter can be removed by a hal kirīma (◌්), which has two shapes depending on which consonant it attaches to. Combinations of ර(r) or ළ(ḷ) with ⟨u⟩ have idiosyncratic shapes, viz රු (ru), රූ (rū), ළු (ḷu) and ළූ (ḷū). The diacritic used for රු (ru) and රූ (rū) is what is normally used for the ⟨æ⟩ , and therefore there are idiosyncratic forms for ræ and rǣ , viz රැ and රෑ. There are six long and six short śuddha vowels. There are six additional vowel and syllabic consonants in
336-722: A period of prior bilingualism: "The earliest type of contact in Sri Lanka, not considering the aboriginal Vedda languages, was that which occurred between South Dravidian and Sinhala. It seems plausible to assume prolonged contact between these two populations as well as a high degree of bilingualism. This explains why Sinhala looks deeply South Dravidian for an Indo-Aryan language. There is corroboration in genetic findings." In addition to many Tamil loanwords , several phonetic and grammatical features also present in neighbouring Dravidian languages set modern spoken Sinhala apart from its Northern Indo-Aryan relatives. These features are evidence of close interactions with Dravidian speakers. Some of
384-417: A variety of spellings for a number of phonemes. /iː/ for instance can be ⟨ee⟩ , ⟨e⟩ , ⟨ea⟩ , ⟨i⟩ , etc. A transliteration pattern peculiar to Sinhala, and facilitated by the absence of phonemic aspirates, is the use of ⟨th⟩ for the voiceless dental plosive , and the use of ⟨t⟩ for the voiceless retroflex plosive . This
432-489: A vowel occurs at the beginning of a word. The diacritic is used when a vowel follows a consonant. While most diacritics are regular, ⟨ ු⟩ , u and ⟨ ූ⟩ ū take on a different shape when attached to a ⟨ක⟩ , ka , ⟨ග⟩ , ga , ⟨ඟ⟩ , n̆ga , ⟨ත⟩ , ta , ⟨භ⟩ , bha , or ⟨ශ⟩ , śa . E.g.: ⟨කු⟩ , ku , ⟨කූ⟩ , kū . The inherent vowel of
480-537: A zero, but did have signs for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 1000. This system has been replaced by the Hindu–Arabic numeral system . Prior to the fall of Kandyan Kingdom all calculations were carried out using Sinhala lith illakkam . After that event, Sinhala lith illakkam became known as or Sinhala astrological number and were primarily used for writing horoscopes. The tradition of writing degrees and minutes of zodiac signs in lith numbers continued into
528-520: Is /a/ . The prenasalized consonants resemble their plain counterparts. ⟨ඹ⟩ , m̆ba is made up of the left half of ⟨ම⟩ ma and the right half of ⟨බ⟩ ba , while the other three are just like the grapheme for the plosive with a little stroke added. Vowel diacritics attach to a prenasalised consonant in the same way as they would to the corresponding plain plosives. Certain combinations of letters are written with ligatures . Some graphical conventions include
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#1732855734887576-719: Is a writing system used by the Sinhalese people and most Sri Lankans in Sri Lanka and elsewhere to write the Sinhala language as well as the liturgical languages Pali and Sanskrit . The Sinhalese Akṣara Mālāva, one of the Brahmic scripts , is a descendant of the Ancient Indian Brahmi script . It is also related to the Grantha script . The Sinhala script is a Brahmi derivate and
624-473: Is a conspicuous example of the linguistic phenomenon known as diglossia . Sinhala ( Siṁhala ) is a Sanskrit term; the corresponding Middle Indo-Aryan ( Eḷu ) word is Sīhala . The name is a derivative of [[[:wikt:सिंह|siṁha]]] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script ( help ) , the Sanskrit word for 'lion'. The name is sometimes glossed as 'abode of lions', and attributed to
672-475: Is a subset of the mixed Sinhala Sinhala : මිශ්ර සිංහල , romanized: miśra siṃhala alphabet . The definition of the two sets is thus a historic one. The śuddha alphabet, also called the Eḷu alphabet ( Sinhala : එළු හෝඩිය , romanized: Eḷu hōdiya ), contains everything necessary to write Eḷu , or classical Sinhala, as described in the classical grammar Sidatsan̆garā (1300 AD). The śuddha alphabet
720-761: Is also a good representation of the phoneme inventory of present-day colloquial Sinhala; all native sounds of the Modern Sinhala can be represented by śuddha . The śuddha also includes the letters and diacritics for the retroflex consonants ⟨ḷ⟩ and ⟨ṇ⟩ , which are not phonemic in modern Sinhala but are needed for the representation of Eḷu. However, words which historically contained these two phonemes are still often written with these letters, despite changes in pronunciation. The miśra siṃhala alphabet includes letters for Middle Indic aspirate , retroflex and sibilant consonants which are not found in modern Sinhala, but are used in
768-435: Is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka , who make up the largest ethnic group on the island, numbering about 16 million. Sinhala is also spoken as the first language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, totalling about 2 million speakers as of 2001. It is written using the Sinhala script , which is a Brahmic script closely related to the Grantha script of South India. Sinhala
816-575: Is currently served by the A3 highway from Colombo to Negombo . This Western Province, Sri Lanka location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Sinhala language Sinhala ( / ˈ s ɪ n h ə l ə , ˈ s ɪ ŋ ə l ə / SIN -hə-lə, SING -ə-lə ; Sinhala: සිංහල , siṁhala , [ˈsiŋɦələ] ), sometimes called Sinhalese ( / ˌ s ɪ n ( h ) ə ˈ l iː z , ˌ s ɪ ŋ ( ɡ ) ə ˈ l iː z / SIN -(h)ə- LEEZ , SING -(g)ə- LEEZ ),
864-479: Is divided into four epochs: The most important phonetic developments of Sinhala include: According to Wilhelm Geiger , an example of a possible Western feature in Sinhala is the retention of initial /v/ which developed into /b/ in the Eastern languages (e.g. Sanskrit viṁśati "twenty", Sinhala visi- , Hindi bīs ). This is disputed by Muhammad Shahidullah who says that Sinhala Prakrit branched off from
912-496: Is headquartered on the grounds of the airport in Katunayake. In 1977 the country's United National Party government introduced an open-economy policy, which led to the creation in 1978 of the country's first Free-trade zone (FTZ), currently known as an Export Processing Zone, in Katunayake. Located approximately 29 km (18 mi) northeast of Colombo, adjacent to the Bandaranaike International Airport ,
960-412: Is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, alongside Tamil . Along with Pali , it played a major role in the development of Theravada Buddhist literature. Early forms of the Sinhala language are attested as early as the 3rd century BCE. The language of these inscriptions, still retaining long vowels and aspirated consonants, is a Prakrit similar to Magadhi , a regional associate of
1008-473: Is presumably because the retroflex plosive /ʈ/ is perceived the same as the English alveolar plosive /t/ , and the Sinhala dental plosive /t̪/ is equated with the English voiceless dental fricative /θ/ . Dental and retroflex voiced plosives are always rendered as ⟨d⟩ , though, presumably because ⟨dh⟩ is not found as a representation of / ð / in English orthography. Many of
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#17328557348871056-411: Is rendered as śuddha ⟨awu⟩ , miśra ⟨ai⟩ as śuddha ⟨ayi⟩ . The anusvara (often called binduva 'zero') is represented by one small circle ⟨◌ං⟩ , and the visarga (technically part of the miśra alphabet) by two ⟨◌ඃ⟩ . The Sinhala śuddha graphemes are named in a uniform way adding -yanna to the sound produced by
1104-445: The miśra consonants are used to represent Pali phonemes that have no Sinhala counterpart, particularly the aspirated consonants. On the other hand, not all śuddha set consonants are used; the prenasalised consonants have no counterpart in Pali phonology, and so are not used. Consonant sequences may be combined in ligatures the same way as in Sinhala. The vowels are a subset of those for writing Sinhala, comprising long and short
1152-574: The Inspector General of Police , Mahinda Balasuriya , resigning his position. Katunayake is the site of the primary airport in the country, Bandaranaike International Airport . It is served by Sri Lanka Railways ' Puttalam Line , with stations at Katunayake, Katunayake South, and the airport. Negombo is the northern end of the Colombo-Katunayake Expressway which connects Colombo and A1 highway at Peliyagoda . Katunayake
1200-700: The Middle Indian Prakrits that had been used during the time of the Buddha . The most closely related languages are the Vedda language (an endangered, indigenous creole still spoken by a minority of Sri Lankans, mixing Sinhala with an isolate of unknown origin and from which Old Sinhala borrowed various aspects into its main Indo-Aryan substrate), and the Maldivian language . It has two main varieties, written and spoken, and
1248-576: The UNESCO National Commission of Ceylon According to Wilhelm Geiger , Sinhala has features that set it apart from other Indo-Aryan languages. Some of the differences can be explained by the substrate influence of the parent stock of the Vedda language . Sinhala has many words that are only found in Sinhala, or shared between Sinhala and Vedda and not etymologically derivable from Middle or Old Indo-Aryan. Possible examples include kola for leaf in Sinhala and Vedda (although others suggest
1296-515: The miśra alphabet. The two diphthongs are quite common, while the vocalic ṛ is much rarer, and ḷ is all but obsolete. The latter two are almost exclusively found in loanwords from Sanskrit. The miśra ⟨ṛ⟩ can also be written with śuddha ⟨r⟩ + ⟨u⟩ or ⟨u⟩ + ⟨r⟩ , which corresponds to the actual pronunciation . The miśra syllabic ḷ can be replaced by śuddha ⟨l⟩ + ⟨i⟩ . Miśra ⟨au⟩
1344-464: 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 . The consistent left branching syntax and the loss of aspirated stops in Sinhala is attributed to a probable South Dravidian substratum effect. This has been explained by
1392-454: The 13th century and is marked by the composition of the grammar book Sidat Sangara . In 1736, the Dutch were the first to print with Sinhala type on the island. The resulting type followed the features of the native Sinhala script used on palm leaves. The type created by the Dutch was monolinear and geometric in fashion, with no separation between words in early documents. During the second half of
1440-456: The 19th century, during the colonial period , a new style of Sinhala letterforms emerged in opposition to the monolinear and geometric form that used high contrast and had varied thicknesses. This high contrast type gradually replaced the monolinear type as the preferred style and continues to be used in the present day. The high contrast style is still preferred for text typesetting in printed newspapers, books, and magazines in Sri Lanka. Today,
1488-629: The 20th century. Unlike the Sinhala illakkam, Sinhala lith illakkam included a 0. Neither the Sinhala numerals nor the Sinhala punctuation mark kunddaliya is in general use today, but some use it in social media, Internet messaging and blogs. The kunddaliya was formerly used as a full stop. Sinhala transliteration (Sinhala: රෝම අකුරින් ලිවීම rōma akurin livīma , literally "Roman letter writing") can be done in analogy to Devanāgarī transliteration . Layman's transliterations in Sri Lanka normally follow neither of these. Vowels are transliterated according to English spelling equivalences, which can yield
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1536-700: The Eastern Prakrits prior to this change. He cites the edicts of Ashoka , no copy of which shows this sound change. An example of an Eastern feature is the ending -e for masculine nominative singular (instead of Western -o ) in Sinhalese Prakrit. There are several cases of vocabulary doublets , one example being the words mæssā ("fly") and mækkā ("flea"), which both correspond to Sanskrit makṣikā but stem from two regionally different Prakrit words macchiā (Western Prakrits) and makkhikā (as in Eastern Prakrits like Pali ). In 1815,
1584-752: The Indian mainland. Medieval Sinhalese, which emerged around 750 AD, is marked by very strong influence from the Grantha script . Subsequently, Medieval (and modern) Sinhalese resemble the South Indian scripts. By the 9th century CE, literature written in the Sinhala script had emerged and the script began to be used in other contexts. For instance, the Buddhist literature of the Theravada - Buddhists of Sri Lanka, written in Pali , used Sinhala script. Modern Sinhalese emerged in
1632-559: The Katunayake KTZ covers 190 ha (470 acres) and is the largest of the country's eight FTZs. It is governed by the Sri Lankan Board of Investment . In order to attract foreign investment the government provides a number of incentives, including duty-free import and exports, preferential tax, double taxation relief and up to 100% foreign ownership. The Katunayake FTZ houses over one hundred multinational industries, predominantly in
1680-413: The alphabet is used by over 16 million people to write Sinhala in very diverse contexts, such as newspapers , TV commercials , government announcements, graffiti , and schoolbooks . Sinhala is the main language written in this script, but rare instances of its use for writing Sri Lanka Malay have been recorded. Sinhala script is an abugida written from left to right. It uses consonants as
1728-475: The alphabet, and it does not have joining characters. This is because Sinhala used to be written on dried palm leaves , which would split along the veins on writing straight lines. This was undesirable, and therefore, the round shapes were preferred. Upper and lower cases do not exist in Sinhala. Sinhala letters are ordered into two sets. The core set of letters forms the pure Sinhala ( Sinhala : ශුද්ධ සිංහල , romanized: śuddha siṃhala alphabet, which
1776-406: The basic unit for word construction as each consonant has an inherent vowel ( /a/ ), which can be changed with a different vowel stroke. To represent different sounds it is necessary to add vowel strokes, or diacritics called පිලි (Pili), that can be used before, after, above, or below the base-consonant. Most of the Sinhala letters are curlicues ; straight lines are almost completely absent from
1824-665: The exceptions of the inherent vowel sound, which can be either [a] (stressed) or [ə] (unstressed), and "ව" where the consonant is either [v] or [w] depending on the word. This means that the actual pronunciation of a word is almost always clear from its spelling. Stress is almost always predictable; only words with [v] or [w] (which are both allophones of "ව"), and a very few other words need to be learnt individually. The śuddha alphabet includes eight plosives , two fricatives , two affricates , two nasals , two liquids and two glides . As in other Brahmic scripts , each consonant carries an inherent vowel , which in Sinhala
1872-429: The extra miśra letters are phonetically not distinguishable from the śuddha letters, proceeding in the same way would lead to confusion. Names of miśra letters are normally made up of the names of two śuddha letters pronounced as one word. The first one indicates the sound, the second one the shape. For example, the aspirated ඛ (kh) is called bayanu kayanna . kayanna indicates the sound, while bayanu indicates
1920-588: The features that may be traced to Dravidian influence are: ඒක ēka it අලුත් aḷut new කියලා kiyalā having-said මම mama I දන්නවා dannavā know ඒක අලුත් කියලා මම දන්නවා ēka aḷut kiyalā mama dannavā it new having-said I know "I know that it is new." ඒක ēka it අලුත් aḷut new ද da Q කියලා kiyalā having-said මම mama I දන්නේ Sinhala script The Sinhala script ( Sinhala : සිංහල අක්ෂර මාලාව , romanized: Siṁhala Akṣara Mālāva ), also known as Sinhalese script ,
1968-513: The garment and clothing industry. From its inception the FTZ the workforce was predominantly young female migrants from rural villages, mainly from economically and socially marginalised groups. On 30 May 2011 the police attacked workers at the Katunayake FTZ, protesting against a proposed new pension plan, resulting in the death of one of the protesters and over 200 injuries. The police actions led to
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2016-590: The island of Ceylon came under British rule . During the career of Christopher Reynolds as a Sinhalese lecturer at the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London , he extensively researched the Sinhalese language and its pre-1815 literature. The Sri Lankan government awarded him the Sri Lanka Ranjana medal for his work. He wrote the 377-page An anthology of Sinhalese literature up to 1815 , selected by
2064-448: The letter, including vocalic diacritics. The name for the letter අ is thus ayanna , for the letter ආ āyanna , for the letter ක kayanna , for the letter කා kāyanna , for the letter කෙ keyanna and so forth. For letters with hal kirīma , an epenthetic a is added for easier pronunciation: the name for the letter ක් is akyanna . Another naming convention is to use al- before a letter with suppressed vowel, thus alkayanna . Since
2112-408: The ligatures formed, attaching to the rightmost part of the glyph except for vowels that use the kombuva , where the kombuva is written before the ligature or cluster and the remainder of the vowel, if any, is attached to the rightmost part. Each vowel has two forms, an independent and a diacritic or vowel stroke ( Sinhala : පිලි , romanized: pili ). The independent form is used when
2160-470: The oldest Pali manuscript are written in the Sinhala script. The first instance of the Pali Tripitaka being written down sometime from 29 to 17 BCE occurred in Sri Lanka. At the time, these would have been written in what was still Brahmi script but adapted to palm leaves. Successive copies of Buddhist texts follow the evolution of that version of Brahmi on the island, leading to modern Sinhala. Many of
2208-494: The shape: ඛ (kh) is similar in shape to බ (b) ( bayunu = like bayanna ). Another method is to qualify the miśra aspirates by mahāprāna (ඛ: mahāprāna kayanna ) and the miśra retroflexes by mūrdhaja (ළ: mūrdhaja layanna ). Sinhala had its numerals ( Sinhala illakkam ), which were used from prior to the fall of Kandyan Kingdom in 1815. They can be seen primarily in Royal documents and artefacts. Sinhala Illakkam did not have
2256-503: The transcription of are used for transcribing loanwords from Sanskrit ( tatsama ), Pali or English . Although modern Sinhala sounds are not aspirated, aspiration is marked in the sound where it was historically present, to highlight the differences in modern spelling. The use of miśra siṃhala letters is mainly a question of prestige. From a purely phonemic point of view, their sounds can all be represented by śuddha letters. Although most phonemes of Sinhala can be represented by
2304-579: Was thought to have been imported from Northern India around the 3rd century BCE. It developed in a complex manner, partly independently but also strongly influenced by South Indian scripts at various stages, manifestly influenced by the early Grantha script . Pottery from the 6th century BCE has been found in Anuradhapura with lithic Brahmi inscriptions written in Prakrit or Sinhala Prakrit. It has caused debate as to whether Ceylonese Brahmi influenced Brahmi in
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