Sinhalese Diglossia by J.W. Gair

The Watercooler
1

This is a good introduction to the concept of diglossia in the Sinhala language.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/30029181

Here is the definition of a diglossia he cites and feels it applies for the most part to Sinhala:

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I share it here because I think some of our language learning members would find it interesting, especially in regards to Sanskrit and Pali loan words. One new interesting tidbit I picked up is that Sinhala tends to not borrow verbs from Sanskrit, despite heavy use of Sanskrit nouns. Curious!

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Interesting. Ottoman is much like that - it’s built on standard Turkish grammar for the most part; however, it has added Persian grammar and Arabic word constructions, borrowing vocabulary heavily from both (and some Greek), and from French in the late-Ottoman era.

As with the description above, it was mostly the “language” of the government, official bureaucracy, high literature, so on.

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