Sinhala · සිංහල

About Sinhala

Language family

Indo-European, Indo-Aryan (an island outlier)

Where it's spoken

Sri Lanka

Speakers

roughly 17 million speakers

Sinhala is geographically isolated from the mainland Indo-Aryan languages it's related to, separated by the Tamil-speaking Dravidian region of southern India for over two thousand years — contact that shaped its vocabulary and even some grammar through sustained borrowing from Tamil. Its closest relative is Dhivehi, spoken in the Maldives, descended from an early form of Sinhala carried there by settlers. Sri Lanka's Buddhist chronicle tradition, including the ancient Mahavamsa, makes Sinhala's written history unusually well documented for the region.