Sinhala

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{{Infobox Language |name=Sinhala |nativename=සිංහල Template:IAST |region=Sri Lanka |speakers=15 million |familycolor=Indo-European |fam2=Indo-Iranian |fam3=Indo-Aryan |fam4=Southern zone |fam5=Sinhalese-Maldivian |script=Sinhala abugida (developed from the Brahmi) |nation=Sri Lanka |iso1=si|iso2=sin|iso3=sin |map= |notice=Indic}}

Sinhala (also Sinhalese, formerly Singhalese) is the language spoken by the Sinhalese, the largest ethnic group of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon). It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The language of the Maldives, Dhivehi, is closely related to Sinhala. There are about 13 million native speakers of Sinhala.

In legend, Prince Vijaya and his party of several hundred people brought the Sinhala language to Sri Lanka from India around 500 BC. Stone inscriptions as well as written texts (the Mahavansha, a history of the kings of Sri Lanka going back to almost the Lord Buddha's time) attest to the long history of Sinhala spoken in Sri Lanka.

Many literary works in Sinhala are strongly influenced by Buddhism, and most follow the literary trends of India—e.g. the sandesha poetry of India, the literary modes used by Kalidasa and similar Indian dramatic poets are all echoed in Sinhalese literature, as shown in the literary debates known as Kukavi Vada. The periodic invasion of Sri Lanka by Tamils from south India led to many Tamil words being added to the Sinhala language. Although Sri Lanka came under Portuguese, Dutch and British colonial rule in turn, it regained its independence in 1948; consequentially, contemporary Sinhalese contains many loanwords from Portuguese, Dutch and English.

Nationalist movements in the first half of the 20th century saw the establishment of the helabasa movement, led by the grammarian Munidasa Kumaratunga, which lent new vigour to the language. A more important influence was the rise of an important newspaper culture, led by Dinamina, a newspaper established by the Wijaywardena group. A celebrated writer, Martin Wickremasinghe, was one of the well-known and influential editors of the Dinamina. A first-class exponent of Sinhala was Radio Ceylon broadcaster, writer and lyricist Karunaratne Abeysekera.

The Sinhala script evolved from the ancient Brahmi script, which was introduced to the island in the 6th century BC. At present the Sinhala alphabet has 56 characters, with four additional characters added recently to deal with non-Sinhala sounds like f in English loanwords. The Sinhala language is characterized by a high vowel content.

The most divergent dialect of Sinhala is spoken by the Rodiya (Rodi) Caste. The language of the Veddah is closely related to Sinhala, although it has a large number of words which cannot be traced to any other language.

Sinhala is one of the constitutionally-recognised official languages of Sri Lanka, along with English and Tamil.

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