Sri Lankan language
The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country in Southeast Asia, whose capital is Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte (although the largest city is Colombo). It has a population of about 22 million inhabitants (57º) and an area of 65,610 km 2 (120º). Its human development index is high (76th) and its official currency is the Sri Lanka Rupee. And what language is spoken in Sri Lanka?
What language do they speak in Sri Lanka?
Sri Lanka has two official languages:
- Sinhala, spoken by 75.4% of its inhabitants.
- Tamil, spoken by 16.2% of the population.
Likewise, the Sri Lankan constitution assigns English as the lingua franca, which is spoken by 9.3% of the population.
The main immigrant languages are Malayalam (645,000 speakers), Telugu (182,000), Gujarati (80,700), Hindi (36,300), and Bengali (18,100).
In education, the second most popular foreign language (behind English) is French, which experienced a large increase in students in the five years 2010-2014, of 30% specifically.
Sinhala language
Sinhalese (සිංහල, English: Sinhala) is the native language of the largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese (meaning “lion people”). Apart from the Sinhalese, other minority ethnic groups dominate the language as a second language. The language is written in the Sinhala alphabet, from left to right. Although the language had its own numeral system, today the Arabic numerals that we use in the West are used.
The tamil language
Tamil (தமிழ்) is a Dravidian language spoken by the Tamil ethnic group (from India and Sri Lanka). It is one of the classical languages that have survived the longest (there are records of literature over 2000 years old). They have their own numeral system, which is as follows (in the third row is the pronunciation):
| zero | one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine | ten | one hundred | one thousand |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ௦ | ௧ | ௨ | ௩ | ௪ | ௫ | ௬ | ௭ | ௮ | ௯ | ௰ | ௱ | ௲ |
| sūḻiyam | oṉṟu | iraṇṭu | mūṉṟu | nāṉku | aintu | aru | the U | eṭṭu | oṉpatu | pattu | nūṟu | Ayiram |
The English language
English (English) is designated by the constitution as a ” bonding language” between people with different native languages. English is widely used in education, science and business. Although it is spoken by more than 2 million people, only 0.5% of these are native speakers.
Share which languages are spoken in Sri Lanka.
