A Study on the Influence of the English Language on the Formation of Compound Words in the Sinhalese Language.

Abstract

A Compound word is formed by shortening a few words into one word. It is done to make the language precise in practical usage. The author of ‘Sidath Sangarawa’ has introduced five methods of creating Sinhala Compound words. The objective of this study is to investigate the influence of the English Language on the formation of compound words in Sinhalese language. Therefore, the research problem in this study is to identify how the compound words in Sinhalese Language are formed with the influence of English words. When considering the history of Sinhalese Language, it is evident that the Eastern and the Western Languages have influenced Sinhalese Language. Therefore, the study is based on the hypothesis that new compound words formed by English words are results of Language contact. In this study, the compound words of contemporary Sinhalese that were formed by English words were collected initially. Then they were analyzed and classified, and the formation of Sinhala Compound words with the influence of English words were analysed. For this purpose, both primary and secondary sources were used from the library. In that process six methods of Sinhalese compound formation were identified including; English-Sinhala mixed compounds, Sinhala-English mixed compounds, English-English compounds, Sinhala-Sinhala compounds which were translated from English, compounds that were not used as one word, but as compounds in Sinhala and that were used as a single word in English but used as a compound in Sinhala. It was observed that these compounds are more common in speech than in writing. The tendency at present to use 'Singlish' is also a result of this tendency. It was confirmed that the number of English compounds at present has increased when compared to the time that English was first introduced to the country. It could be concluded that the process of borrowing which was a result of language contact was the cause for this linguistic tendency.