Time of Borrowing
In many cases, the appearance of a loanword in a language indicates whether the borrowing is old or more recent: The more a word deviates from the "original" one, the longer it must have been a part of the respective lexicon, because while being used, a word can undergo changes (sometimes regular sound changes along with the native words). The inversion of this argument is not possible since loanwords already matching the linguistic requirements of the target language may remain unchanged. Thus, the word täpäl (Tamil tapāl) gives away its old age because the respective umlaut processes took place before the 8th century; iḍama (Tamil iṭam) however needn't be a recent borrowing, because no sound changes that could have affected this word have taken place in Sinhala since at least the 13th century.
Read more about this topic: Tamil Loanwords In Sinhala
Famous quotes containing the words time of, time and/or borrowing:
“My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one,
and come away.
For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;”
—Bible: Hebrew The Song of Solomon (l. II, 10–12)
“Away went the messenger’s bicycle,
His serpent’s track went up the hill forever.
And all the time she stood there hot as fever
And cold as any icicle.”
—John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)
“Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day and cost us nothing.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)