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The Tamil language is spoken by native Sri Lankan Tamils and is also spoken by Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka and by most Sri Lankan Moors. Tamil speakers number around 4.8 million (29% of the population), making it the second largest language in Sri Lanka. There are more than 40,000 speakers of the Sri Lankan Malay language.
Sinhala and Tamil are the official languages of Sri Lanka, with English as the link language. Tamil is a South-Dravidian language, and Sinhala belongs to the Insular Indic family (along with Dhivehi of Maldives). Vedda is said to be the indigenous language of Sri Lanka before the arrival of the Indo-Aryans and Dravidians.
The language has two main varieties, written and spoken, and is a notable example of the linguistic phenomenon known as diglossia. [7] Sinhala is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, Along with Pali, it played a major role in the development of Theravada Buddhist literature. [1]
Official language A language designated as having a unique legal status in the state: typically, the language used in a nation's legislative bodies, and often, official government business. Regional language A language designated as having official status limited to a specific area, administrative division, or territory of the state.
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.
The Dravidian languages are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in South India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan, with pockets elsewhere in South Asia. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Dravidian is first attested in the 2nd century BCE, as inscriptions in Tamil-Brahmi script on cave walls in the Madurai and Tirunelveli districts ...
The following chart lists countries and dependencies along with their capital cities, in English and non-English official language(s). In bold: internationally recognized sovereign states. The 193 member states of the United Nations (UN) Vatican City (administered by the Holy See, a UN observer state), which is generally recognized as a ...
Topographic map of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka, an island in South Asia shaped as a teardrop or a pear/mango, [168] lies on the Indian Plate, a major tectonic plate that was formerly part of the Indo-Australian Plate. [169] It is in the Indian Ocean southwest of the Bay of Bengal, between latitudes 5° and 10° N, and longitudes 79° and 82° E. [170]