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[4] [1] Sinhala is also spoken as the first language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, totalling about 2 million speakers as of 2001. [5] It is written using the Sinhala script, which is a Brahmic script closely related to the Grantha script of South India. [6] Sinhala is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, alongside Tamil.
The form of Buddhism in Sri Lanka is known as Theravada (school of elders). The Pali chronicles (e.g., the Mahavansa) claim that the Sinhalese as an ethnic group are destined to preserve and protect Buddhism. In 1988 almost 93% of the Sinhala-speaking population in Sri Lanka were Buddhist. [60]
English, Sinhala and Tamil languages on a war grave memorial plate in Kandy. (click to see full view of memorial plate)English in Sri Lanka is fluently spoken by approximately 23.8% [4] of the population, and widely used for official and commercial purposes.
The Sinhala script (Sinhala: සිංහල අක්ෂර මාලාව, romanized: Siṁhala Akṣara Mālāva), also known as Sinhalese script, 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. [3]
The Sinhala kingdom ceased to exist by 1815, following the British takeover.While the Sinhala kingdom is claimed to have existed from 543 BCE to 1815 CE, other political entities claimed to have co-existed in Sri Lanka spanning certain partial periods, including the Jaffna kingdom (which existed 1215–1624 CE), [5] Vanni chieftaincies (which existed from the 12th century to 1803 CE) and the ...
During the British colonial era, English was the official language in Ceylon (known as Sri Lanka since 1972). Until the passage of the Free Education Bill in 1944, education in the English language was the preserve of the Sri Lankan elite and the ordinary people had little knowledge of it.
Sinhala script, the writing system of the Sinhala language Sinhala (Unicode block), a block of Sinhala characters in Unicode; Sinhala cinema, cinema in the Sinhala language; Sinhala Kingdom, the successive historical Sinhalese kingdoms of Sri Lanka between 543 BCE and 1815 CE "Sinhala", a song from the 1999 album The Magical Sounds of Banco de Gaia
Sinhala idioms (Sinhala: රූඩි, rūḍi) and colloquial expressions that are widely used to communicate figuratively, as with any other developed language.This page also contains a list of old and popular Sinhala proverbs, which are known as prastā piruḷu (ප්රස්තා පිරුළු) in Sinhala.