sinhala

Every Tamil word was mapped to a Sinhala or English equivalent, so inside my head Tamil became a kind of second-hand language.

Sri Lanka was a colony and Sinhala does not have a standard as far as I know.

In Systems H and C 90% of the settlers were Sinhala and 10% Muslim – there were no Tamils although the land was in the Eastern Province, a majority Tamil province.

Instead, I learnt it via Sinhala and English.

I have even managed to forget a language I was fluent in (I was bilingual and I spoke Sinhala as well as I did English, and could read and write it to the level expected by schools at my age until I was six) as a child.

But for people whose native languages use completely different scripts (Chinese, Arabic, Sinhala, etc.), the challenge is much greater.

Probably because the language is only spoken by 20 million people (Sinhala).

They are essentially making a lot of noise along the lines of how the great Sinhala-Budhist ethnicity is being eroded by minority influences.

I also speak 4 languages (English, Sinhala, Mandarin Chinese, and Thai).

I also speak 3 languages fluently (English, Sinhala, and Mandarin Chinese).

But for people whose native languages use completely different scripts (Chinese, Arabic, Sinhala, etc.), the challenge is much greater.

Probably because the language is only spoken by 20 million people (Sinhala).

They are essentially making a lot of noise along the lines of how the great Sinhala-Budhist ethnicity is being eroded by minority influences.