🌏 From Sri Lanka 🧑 A Sri Lankan 🗣️ A language

Sinhalese

1 9.3

The language spoken by Sri Lanka's largest group, called Sinhala

noun
/sɪnəˈliːz/

: sinhala

She is fluent in Sinhalese, allowing her to engage deeply with the local culture during her travels in Sri Lanka.

Examples

Many people in Sri Lanka communicate in Sinhalese, which is a rich and expressive language.
About 70 percent of Sri Lanka's people are Buddhist and speak Sinhalese; all of Walangama's residents belong to this ethnic majority.

Academic text (1992)
The novel was originally written in Sinhalese before it was translated into English for a wider audience.

Synonyms

Sinhala

vsSinhalese

1 7.9

Main language spoken by most people in Sri Lanka

is the shared national language term rather than a technical family name

Sinhala language

vsSinhalese

1 7.3

The official language of Sri Lanka spoken by most people

is the common name for the language without stressing official status

Singhalese

vsSinhalese

1 9.8

A language spoken by the Sinhalese people in Sri Lanka

is the same language term but with a different spelling or variant form

Sinhalese language

vsSinhalese

1 6.7

The main language spoken by the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka

is the same meaning but emphasizes the people's traditional name for it

Singhalese language

vsSinhalese

8.4

A language most people in Sri Lanka speak

is the term tied more to ethnic identity than general population usage

Compounds

Sinhalese language

1 6.7

The main language spoken by the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka

Surface Forms

Sinhalese singular

Sinhalese plural

Morphology

Sinhalese = Sinhala (transparent) = Sinhala + ese

Formation from 'Sinhala' with '-ese' to denote the language is regular and directly inferable.

Etymology

Sinhalese comes from Sinhala, which comes from an old Indian word siṃha meaning 'lion'. So Sinhalese is the name of the language spoken by those people, the speech of the 'lion people' of Sri Lanka.