NO. 47. — 1896.] MALAY, SINHALESE, AND TAMIL. 



227 



III. — Of the Singalese Language. 



Of the Asiatic islands of which I shall treat, the one nearest 

 to us is that which is called " Selan " by its inhabitants and 

 by its neighbours, and generally " Ceylon " by us. The 

 language itself is called " Singalese," because the people 

 name themselves " Singalae," i.e., lions. The writing which 

 they use is widely different from the others which I have 

 been describing, and imitates the manner of the Europeans, 

 and of their nearest neighbours, the Malabars, the lines run- 

 ning from the left to the right. The letters are forty-eight 

 in number, of which five are short vowels, A I U (or the Greek 

 oy, for here U ought to be so pronounced) E 0, and five long 

 vowels AA, II, UTJ, AY, AU. To these vowels must also be 

 added four others expressed by IRU, IRUU, ILU, and ILUU, 

 arranged by the Singalese in their alphabet intermediate 

 between the other vowels. Some (scholars), however, express 

 these four sounds by IRIE, IRIE, ILIE, ILIE,as for instance 

 the Rev. J. Cronenburg,* himself educated in Ceylon, in his 

 Singalese alphabet which, with a Singalese vocabulary, he 

 published some years ago on my account, and he noted with 

 reference to these letters that their power could not be 

 exactly expressed. 



The table oppositef shows the forms both of the vowels 



* Valentyn (vol. I., pp. 415, 416) mentions a Conradus Cronenburg, who 

 was a predikant in Ceylon from 1692 to 1700.— D. W, F. 



See also "An account of the Dutch Church in Ceylon " in Journal of 

 the R.A.S., C.B., for 1848, p. 45, where a Rev. Mr. Cronenberg is mentioned 

 as having- returned to Holland in 1700. 



f In this table the author represents the dentals S5, 6, q, and 5) by ta, 

 tha, da, and dha, and the Unguals O, a), and by these letters, with the 

 addition of a line across the upper part of the consonant, or in other 

 words, he uses an intersecting line above instead of a dot below to dis- 

 tinguish the Unguals from the dentals. Strange to say e long and o long 

 and the "bleating" vowels e and e are omitted altogether, so that only 

 fourteen vowel sounds are given instead of eighteen, the recognized 

 number at the present day. The number of consonants, however, is 

 correct, thirty-four. The half nasals ^o,&c, and the guttural ^8 are also 

 omitted. This alphabet agrees with that given by Ruell, who also states 

 that there are forty-eight letters in Sinhalese, fourteen of which are 

 vowels and thirty-four consonants, the long e and long o being omitted. 



