Talk:Loanwords in Sri Lankan Tamil/Archive 4

message: I don't know how well you know Sinhala and if you have ever been to Sri Lanka, but that is the name of the city as I have heard it said many times and as given in the following sources:
*Gunasena-Philips Atlas of the World (in Sinhala), Colombo 1987
*Somapala Jayawardhana, Sinhala-English Dictionary, Colombo 1997 (in the section "Towns in Sri Lanka", Sinhala śrī laṃkāvē nagara)
The standard dictionaries (Carter, Clough), by the way, refer the reader from "anurādha" to anura as the relevant Sinhala word.
: Dislike me away as you please. I'm not here on Wikipedia to make best friends of everyone I come across. Anuradhapura is Anuradhapura. Anuradhapuraya is rarely used. People do not say "mama Anuradhapuraye yanavaa" but "mama Anuradhapure yanavaa." People say "Anuradhapura aitihaasika nagarayak" not "Anuradhapuraya aitihaasika nagarayak." Clozapine 02:29, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Anuradhapuraya

message: "Nuwara" (nuvara) isn't called "Nuwara pura" at all. nuvara is pure Sinhala and means "city" (historically developed from Old Indian "nagara"). And here we can see what I mean by the -ya (and -va) in the end of a word generally designating loanwords: The Sinhalized version of "nagara" is of course nagaraya. That leads us to ...
: What is "pure Sinhala"? Let me ask, what is the "pure English" word for "International"? Afterall, with your logic it is a French word right? Nuvara Pura = Kandy, "Nuvara" for short. Ya and Va do not indicate "loan words." If what you mean by "pure Sinhala" is Elu then there are plenty of Elu words that end in ya and va. Here are a few examples: diviya (life), pava (sin), geeya (song), saviya (strength), viniya (word). The so-called "impure Sinhala" equivalents (going by what seem to be your definitions) to these words would be jeevitaya, paapaya, geetaya, shaktiya and vacanaya respectively. So I disagree with you, I think you are plainly wrong about the "ya" and the "va." Clozapine 02:38, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Nuwara and Nagara

message: Every inanimate word (a word designating a non-living thing) has to end in -a (due to the inflexibility of Sinhala inflectional patterns). Almost all historically derived Sinhala inanimate words end in -a (e.g. pota "book", yatura "key", raṭa "country"). [The few exceptions are words ending in -ä due to phonetic reasons (e.g. ähä "eye" insted of *äha) and very short words (e.g. dā "relic").]
: Wrong, every inanimate word (a word designating a non-living thing) DOES NOT have to end in -a although this is the case in the vast majority of cases. For example, suralo (heaven), dinisuru (sun), sisi (moon), viyat (sky), siki (fire) Clozapine 02:47, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wrong. I have already provided you with Elu words that end in ya and va. Clozapine 02:49, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Wrong. As above. Clozapine 02:49, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Ways of incorporating foreign words into Sinhala

message: "Pure Sinhala" are words that have developed from ancient Prakrit words (similar to those we can find in Sanskrit and Pali) through the millenia by changing due to sound changes in the Sinhala language (compare Sinhala#Phonetic_Development). This pure Sinhala language is also called Elu, or "helu"/"hela" ((h)eḷu/(h)eḷa) which is a good example for the point I am making: heḷa is the Sinhala derived form of Sanskrit siṃhala, attested in Pali as sīhaḷa, through the stages siṃhala > sīhala > sīhaḷa > sīḷa > siḷa > seḷa > heḷa.
:Elu is basic, almost 'primitive' Sinhalese. The Sinhalese language inherits the vocabulary found in Sanskrit (which is really nothing more than polished up Prakrit courtesy of Panini). Sinhala does not borrow words from the Prakrits unlike the Dravidian languages because it is a Prakritic language itself. Any notion of words derived from Sanskrit or Pali as being "foreign" is pretty ridiculous. They are part and parcel of the Sinhala language and have undergone modification. Remove them and you will be left with a rudimentary language in its infantile stages. Clozapine 03:02, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Let me highlight something of importance in this paragraph: "...not a single word identical to a Sanskrit term has stayed the same through the ages" - yes just like how Graama Sevakayaa has been modified for the Sinhalese language. Ditto for premaya (love), dharmaya (dharma), krodaya (hate), iirshyaava (jealousy). Clozapine 03:02, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: What is pure Sinhala?

message: Sinhala inherited its words from a North-Western Indo-Aryan dialect that the first group of settlers (Vijaya) brought with them to the island. That dialect was neither Sanskrit nor any other language known to us today. By analysing Sinhala we can deduct information about that ancient dialect (e.g. that it must have been North-Western), but that's it.
:So the mythological story of a certain Vijaya coming to Sri Lanka is fact now? And what happened to the idea that the migration was from Bengal? At best, this story represents the idea of North Indian migrants arriving in the island. According to Gunasekara the language was "undoubtedly" Prakrit. He goes onto say "Hence in deriving Elu words, the endeavour should be to find out the correspoding words in the modern Indian vernaculars and, if possible, in original Prakrit, and derive from those which present the closest affinity to Elu." He adds "Hindi (including Hindustani) seems to possess a closer affinity to Elu than the other vernaculars." Clozapine 03:08, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Sinhala inheritance

message: Later there were immigrants from the North-East of India who brought their dialects with them which in turn exerted some influence on the language that was to become Sinhala one day. Aboriginal people ("Veddas") and South Indian immigrants also contributed some vocabulary, and there may also at an early point in time have been use of Sanskrit words by Sinhala speaking people. These different words (from other sources than the original Sinhala word stock) however underwent the same changes as did the Sinhala words so that today they are (at times) indiscernable from "old" Sinhala words. These words can be called "naturalized words".
:Once again, the history regarding migration to Sri Lanka is not definite. They are theories. Certain Tamil scholars would argue that there was no North Indian migration at all and that the Sinhalese were actually originally Tamils. Elu was a Dravidian language spoken in Sri Lanka and it was enriched with North Indian Pali after the conversion to Buddhism and the development of the Sinhalese identity. They will also claim that Sinhala is actually a Dravidian language and has been missclassified as an Indo-Aryan one. Are they correct? Clozapine 03:14, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Words that entered from various other sources

message: In accordance with the sound changes, there are certain sounds that "true" Sinhala words do not contain. The most explicit example is the loss of "sh" (ṣ, ś), which can still be felt today when speakers of Sinhala pronounce "sh" as /s/ in Sanskrit as well as English words.
:There is no such thing as "true" Sinhala words. This is a very ambiguous term. So shaalava is not a "true" Sinhala word but if it is pronounced as "saalaava" it suddenly becomes "true"? Clozapine 03:17, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Sound changes in Sinhala and modern evidence

message: There are many instances where we find in Sinhala one actual Sinhala word derived from an ancient source and its "re-imported" Sanskrit counterpart (with different meanings or connotations). Take e.g.
*Sinhala hala "hall, room", derived from Old Indian śālā (via sālā and sala) and its counterpart śālāva, a more recent borrowing from Sanskrit
*Sinhala kiya(navā) "to say", derived from Old Indian kathā- (via kata- and kaya-) and its counterpart kathā (karanavā), a recent borrowing from Sanskrit
:How in the world do you know which way it was derived? Seems like a lot of so-called "true Sinhala" words have their roots in Sanskrit:
:kruura - kuriru
:devaalaya - dewola
:sinhaasanaya - sihasuna
:durnajayaa - dujanaa
:durbala - dubala
:Clozapine 03:22, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Mixed vocabulary

message: The Sinhala alphabet has letters for all the sounds present in Sanskrit not because the spoken language contained them but because over the millennia, Buddhist literature made ample use of Sanskrit and Pali terms as those languages were always known to the educated (who were mostly monks and who are also responsible for the presence of the borrowings from those languages).
Using the Elu alphabet to determine what are "pure" Sinhala terms is not "not very helpful" but a certain way of determining which words belong to the historically developed Sinhala vocabulary.
:The "historically developed Sinhala vocabulary", if we are to remove all traces of so-called "Sanskritisms" would be quite simply piddly. And unless you were living 1000 or so years ago in Sri Lanka I'm afraid you would not be able to say that "The Sinhala alphabet has letters for all the sounds present in Sanskrit not because the spoken language contained them." Here is a challenge: Please list all the Buddhist terms in so-called "Pure Sinhala." Clozapine 03:26, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Sinhala alphabet

message: Yes, loanwords are extremely important in Sinhala and an integral part of the language. The examples cited by Ben clearly show how the sound changes (mostly phonetic simplifications) Sinhala underwent resulted in several ambiguous terms like Elu niya(1), niya(2), niya(3), niya(4) and niya(5): these correspond to Sanskrit nakha "nail", nadī "river", naya "understanding", nidhi "hidden treasure" and nīti "law". This development was countered by using different words for the different meanings, in this example niya continues to mean "fingernail" (niyapotta), there are several words for kinds of rivers and streams, "understanding" is expressed with a derived word (däna-, corresponding to Sanskrit jñā "to know"), meaning (4) I don't know and "law" is a new Sanskrit borrowing, nītiya.
:In other words, a heck of a lot of the Sinhala language is composed of so-called "Sanskritisms." Clozapine 03:29, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Importance of loanwords in Sinhala