The Borrowing Process
Tamil loanwords in Sinhala can appear in the same form as the original word (e.g. akkā), but this is quite rare. Usually, a word has undergone some kind of modification to fit into the Sinhala phonological (e.g. paḻi becomes paḷi(ya) because the sound of /ḻ/, does not exist in the Sinhala phoneme inventory) or morphological system (e.g. ilakkam becomes ilakkama because Sinhala inanimate nouns (see grammatical gender) need to end with /a/, in order to be declineable).
These are the main ways Tamil words are incorporated into the Sinhala lexicon with different endings:
- With an /a/ added to Tamil words ending in /m/ and other consonants (e.g. pālam > pālama).
- With a /ya/ or /va/ added to words ending in vowels (e.g. araḷi > araliya).
- With the Tamil ending /ai/ represented as /ē/, commonly spelt /aya/.
- With the animate ending /yā/ added to Tamil words signifying living beings or /yā/ replacing the Tamil endings /aṉ/, /ar/, etc. (e.g. caṇṭiyar > caṇḍiyā).
It can be observed that the Tamil phonemes /ḷ/ and /ḻ/ do not coherently appear as /ḷ/ in Sinhala but sometimes as /l/ as well. This is because in Sinhala pronunciation there is no distinction between /ḷ/ and /l/; the letter /ḷ/ is merely maintained as an etymological spelling.
Read more about this topic: Tamil Loanwords In Sinhala
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