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Language of the Ceylonese. 
The hyperbolical strain of compliment and adulation which 
is common to all the Asiatic nations, is found no where in 
greater perfection than in the island of Ceylon. There is here 
a degree of punctilious minuteness, with which the phraseology 
employed is exactly adjusted to the rank of the person address- 
ed, that altogether astonishes an European. There is no im- 
propriety which a man can be guilty of more unpardonable in 
their eyes, than addressing a superior in language that is only 
fit for an equal or an inferior. 
There is something very peculiar in the pronunciation of 
the Ceylonese. They seem to steal out the first part of the 
sentence in such a manner as scarcely to catch the attention, 
and then dwell with a loud and long accent on the concluding 
syllables. They are particularly fond of closing with an empha- 
tic ye or ah, which forms the last syllable of a great number 
of their words. 
The Ceylonese language is so harsh and disagreeable to an 
European that few or none ever attempt to speak it ; nor in- 
deed is it at all necessary. The officers of the regiments sta- 
tioned here have little opportunity and little occasion to learn 
it, few or none of the natives of the island but who have some 
other dialect being in our domestic service. Some little smat- 
tering of the Moor and Malabar language is necessary to be 
able to speak to the black servants of that description. The 
low Portuguese is the universal language spoken amongst the 
Cinglese in our settlements, and indeed amongst all the natives 
who have any intercourse or connexion with Europeans; a?id 
it is also spoken by the Moor and Malabar servants. 
They divide their time nearly as we do, only their year com- 
mences on the twenty-eighth of March. The manner in which 
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