Portuguese Loanwords in Sinhala - The Borrowing Process

The Borrowing Process

Portuguese loanwords in Sinhala rarely appear in the same form as the original word, the vast majority of them having undergone naturalization. Usually, a word has undergone some kind of modification to fit into the Sinhala phonological (e.g. bandeja becomes bandesiya because the sound of the Portuguese /j/, does not exist in the Sinhala phoneme inventory) or morphological system (e.g. lenço becomes lensuva because Sinhala inanimate nouns (see grammatical gender) need to end with /a/, in order to be declineable).

These are the main ways Portuguese words are incorporated into the Sinhala lexicon with different endings:

• With an /ma/ or /na/ or /va/ added to Portuguese words ending in /o/ (e.g. gancho > gāncuva).
• With an /aya/ or /uva/ added to Portuguese words ending in consonants (e.g. lençol > lensōluva).
• With a /ya/ added to words ending in /a/ or /e/ or /i/ (e.g. diamante > diyamantiya).
• With the animate ending /yā/ or /vā/ added to Portuguese words signifying living beings or (e.g. burro > būruvā).

Adjectives that end in vowels are generally preserved in the original form.

There are over 100 words in the following list.