Interesting facts about the language

Sinhalese, also known as Sinhala, belongs to the Indo-Iranian language group and is one of the two official languages of Sri Lanka. Sinhalese is spoken predominantly in Sri Lanka and is most closely related to Dhivehi, a language spoken in the Maldives. Around 16 million people worldwide speak Sinhalese as their first language.

The second official language in Sri Lanka is Tamil, which is spoken by around four million people in Sri Lanka. English is understood by most people in Sri Lanka, but is not as important as in other former British colonies. The two languages, Sinhalese and Tamil, are so different from one another that there are hardly any people in Sri Lanka who speak both. The writing systems of the two languages are also so different that it is difficult to learn to read and write the other. For this reason, English has become established as the lingua franca, especially among the more highly educated in Sri Lanka. For this reason, learning English is compulsory in Sri Lankan schools.

The Sinhalese script, like many scripts of modern Indian languages, is descended from the ancient Indian Brahmi script. Apart from Sinhalese, no other language is written using the Sinhalese script, and it is not readily legible even for speakers of other Indian languages.

The alphabet consists of a total of 58 letters, with 42 representing consonants and 16 representing vowels. A characteristic feature of the script is that consonants generally already contain a vowel: In its basic form, every consonant carries the vowel "a," although this vowel itself is not written. If the consonant is to carry a different vowel (or no vowel at all), the consonant receives a vowel symbol, which is added to the consonant. Thus, the vowels are not independent letters (except, for example, at the beginning of words), but are "attached" to the consonants and thus part of them. The round shape of the Sinhalese letters is historical: For centuries, dried palm leaves were primarily used to record the language, into which the characters were carved with metal styluses. Since there was a greater risk of leaves breaking along the veins with straight or angular characters and round characters were also easier to scratch, the originally angular letters of the Brahmi script were further developed into the round forms that are still used today.