Sinhalese

Sinhalese, known natively as Sinhala, is the native language of the Sinhalese people, who make up the largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka, numbering about 16 millions. Sinhalese is also spoken as a second language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, totaling about four millions. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. Sinhalese is written using the Sinhalese script, which is one of the Brahmic scripts, a descendant of the ancient Indian Brahmi script closely related to the Kadamba alphabet. Sinhalese is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka. Sinhalese, along with Pali, played a major role in the development of Theravada Buddhist literature. The oldest Sinhalese Prakrit inscriptions found are from the third to second century BCE following the arrival of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, the oldest extant literary works date from the ninth century. The closest relative of Sinhalese is the Maldivian language.

Sinhalese spoken in the Southern Province (Galle, Matara and Hambantota Districts) uses several words that are not found elsewhere in the country; this is also the case for the Central and North-Central Provinces and south-eastern region (Uva Province and the surrounding area). For native speakers all dialects are mutually intelligible, and they might not even realize that the differences are significant. The language of the Vedda people resembles Sinhalese to a great extent, although it has a large number of words which cannot be traced to another language. The Rodiya use another dialect of Sinhalese. Rodiya used to be a caste in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka no longer recognizes castes.