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Reading and Writing Sinhala

2019; Springer Nature; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-030-05977-4_11

2214-0018

Marasinghe A. D. K. Wijaythilake, Rauno Parrila,

Second Language Acquisition and Learning

Sinhala is one of the two official languages in Sri Lanka spoken by about 74% of the population. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan family of languages and is written with a distinct, highly cursive akshara script. The extensive Sinhala akshara set (600 plus) is mostly consistent from akshara to sounds, and the basic literacy rates in Sri Lanka are high. Advanced literacy skills, however, require extended study due to strong diglossia: Spoken Sinhala has been open to influences from Dravidian (mainly Tamil) and European (Portuguese, Dutch, and English) languages, but Literary Sinhala has mostly maintained the classic vocabulary, spelling, and grammar. As a result, spelling and writing are complicated by significant differences between the two forms. In this chapter, we will first describe both forms of Sinhala and then review the limited existing research on Sinhala literacy.