Sinhala words of

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, na ...

origin came about as part of the more than 2000 years of language interactions between Sinhala and

in the island of

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

, as well as through Dravidian substratum effect on the Sinhala language. According to linguists, there are about 900 Tamil words in Sinhala usage. Sinhala is classified as an Indo-Aryan language and Tamil is classified as a Dravidian language. Separated from its sister Indo-Aryan languages such as

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

and

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

by a large belt of Dravidian languages, Sinhala along with

Dhivehi Dhivehi, also spelled Divehi, may refer to: *Dhivehi people, an ethnic group native to the historic region of the Maldive Islands. *Dhivehi language, an Indo-Aryan language predominantly spoken by about 350,000 people in the Republic of Maldives ...

of the Maldives evolved somewhat separately. Close interaction with the Tamil language and the assimilation of Tamils into Sinhalese society contributed to the adoption of several Tamil origin words into the Sinhalese language. The range of borrowings goes beyond the scope to be expected for a situation where two neighbouring peoples exchange material goods: Firstly, there are many Tamil loanwords pertaining to everyday and social life (kinship terms, body parts, ordinary activities). Secondly, several lexical words (

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...

adjective In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ...

s and

verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

s) along with interjections (''ayiyō''), (''aḍō'') have also been borrowed. This - along with the impact Tamil has had on Sinhala

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituenc ...

(e.g. the use of a verbal adjective of "to say" as a

subordinating conjunction In grammar, a conjunction (abbreviated or ) is a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses that are called the conjuncts of the conjunctions. That definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech and so what constitute ...

meaning "whether" and "that") - is suggestive of not only close coexistence but the existence of large numbers of

bilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all ...

s and a high degree of mixing and intermarriage.

Kinds of loanwords

;Borrowings The words pertaining to the fields of

commerce Commerce is the large-scale organized system of activities, functions, procedures and institutions directly and indirectly related to the exchange (buying and selling) of goods and services among two or more parties within local, regional, natio ...

administration Administration may refer to: Management of organizations * Management, the act of directing people towards accomplishing a goal ** Administrative Assistant, traditionally known as a Secretary, or also known as an administrative officer, admini ...

botany Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek w ...

food Food is any substance consumed by an organism for nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or fungal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is in ...

and

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...

are the most numerous; this is to be expected because *new innovations and goods usually reached the Sinhalese via the Tamils whose area of settlement separates them from the rest of

South Asia South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The region consists of the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.;;;;; ...

and *Tamil speaking traders conducted most of the island's

foreign trade International trade is the exchange of capital, goods, and services across international borders or territories because there is a need or want of goods or services. (see: World economy) In most countries, such trade represents a significant ...

since the 10th century AD. This is attested by multiple Tamil inscriptions in Sri Lanka left by medieval trade guilds.

The borrowing process

Tamil loanwords in Sinhala can appear in the same form as the original word (e.g. ''akkā''), but this is quite rare. Usually, a word has undergone some kind of modification to fit into the Sinhala

phonological Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

(e.g. ''paḻi'' becomes ''paḷi(ya)'' because the sound of /ḻ/, , does not exist in the Sinhala

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

inventory) or morphological system (e.g. ''ilakkam'' becomes ''ilakkama'' because Sinhala inanimate nouns (see

grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...

) need to end with /a/, , in order to be declineable). These are the main ways Tamil words are incorporated into the Sinhala lexicon with different endings: *With an /a/ added to Tamil words ending in /m/ and other

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...

s (e.g. ''pālam'' > ''pālama''). *With a /ya/ or /va/ added to words ending in

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (len ...

s (e.g. ''araḷi'' > ''araliya''). *With the Tamil ending /ai/ represented as /ē/, commonly spelt /aya/. *With the animate ending /yā/ added to Tamil words signifying living beings or /yā/ replacing the Tamil endings /aṉ/, /ar/, etc. (e.g. ''caṇṭiyar'' > ''caṇḍiyā''). It can be observed that the Tamil phonemes /ḷ/ and /ḻ/ do not coherently appear as /ḷ/ in Sinhala but sometimes as /l/ as well. This is because in Sinhala

pronunciation Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particular ...

there is no distinction between /ḷ/ and /l/; the letter /ḷ/ is merely maintained as an

etymological Etymology () The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words a ...

spelling Spelling is a set of conventions that regulate the way of using graphemes (writing system) to represent a language in its written form. In other words, spelling is the rendering of speech sound (phoneme) into writing (grapheme). Spelling is on ...

Time of borrowing

In many cases, the appearance of a loanword in a language indicates whether the borrowing is old or more recent: The more a word deviates from the "original" one, the longer it must have been a part of the respective lexicon, because while being used, a word can undergo changes (sometimes regular sound changes along with the native words). The inversion of this argument is not possible since loanwords already matching the linguistic requirements of the target language may remain unchanged. Thus, the word ''täpäl'' (Tamil ''tapāl'') gives away its old age because the respective umlaut processes took place before the 8th century; ''iḍama'' (Tamil ''iṭam'') however needn't be a recent borrowing, because no sound changes that could have affected this word have taken place in Sinhala since at least the 13th century.

List of words

In the following list, Tamil words are romanized in accordance with Tamil spelling. This results in seeming discrepancies in voicing between Sinhala words and their Tamil counterparts. Sinhala borrowing however has taken place on the basis of the sound of the Tamil words; thus, the word ''ampalam'', , logically results in the Sinhala spelling '' ambalama'', and so forth. However, the Tamil language used here for comparison is Tamil as spoken in Sri Lanka. ''Note: For information on the transcription used, see

National Library at Calcutta romanization The National Library at Kolkata romanisationSee p 24-26 for table comparing Indic languages, and p 33-34 for Devanagari alphabet listing. is a widely used transliteration scheme in dictionaries and grammars of Indic languages. This translitera ...

and

Tamil script The Tamil script ( , ) is an abugida script that is used by Tamils and Tamil speakers in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and elsewhere to write the Tamil language. Certain minority languages such as Saurashtra, Badaga, ...

. Exceptions from the standard are the

romanization Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, a ...

of Sinhala long "ä" () as "ää", and the non-marking of

prenasalized stop Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant such as ) that behave phonologically like single consonants. The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rather ...

s.''

Verbs

Several verbs have been adopted into Sinhala from the Tamil language. The vast majority of these are

compound verb In linguistics, a compound verb or complex predicate is a multi- word compound that functions as a single verb. One component of the compound is a '' light verb'' or ''vector'', which carries any inflections, indicating tense, mood, or aspec ...

s consisting of a Tamil origin primary verb and a Sinhala origin light verb.

References

* Coperahewa, Sandagomi and Arunachalam,Sarojini Devi ''Sinhala Bhashave Demala Vacana Akaradiya'' ictionary of Tamil Words in Sinhala(Colombo: S.Godage, 2002). * * Geiger, Wilhelm: Linguistic Character of Sinhalese, in: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Ceylon), Vol. XXXIV *Gunasekara, A.M.: ''A Comprehensive Grammar of the Sinhalese Language'', Colombo 1891 (reprint New Delhi 1986), (§234: Naturalised and derived words from Tamil)

External links

Sinhala Tamil online dictionaryTamil Sinhala online dictionary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tamil loanwords in Sinhala Sinhala Sri Lanka-related lists Lists of Sinhala words of foreign origin