Abstract:
Jaffna Peninsula, the northern most part of Sri Lanka, has a population of around 632 thousand and is
predominantly Tamil speaking. Tamil is “Diglossic” in nature. The highly codified variety is
considered “standard” and used for writing, while there are various dialects spoken in India and in
Srilanka. Sociolects within a dialect could be observed in India where the social segregation on the
basis of caste is rigid but it is not so in Sri Lanka where the social segregation is not strictly followed.
However, specific vocabulary and usage patterns unique to each caste could be identified in the Sri
Lankan context. This paper illustrates this with examples found in a study which is currently
underway in Jaffna Peninsula which has its own dialect/s.
Even though there are various social changes taking place,the unique vocabulary and usage patterns
still exist and each caste preserves its uniqueness.
This study is descriptive and participatory in nature. Direct participation, observation, interviews and
focus group discussions were used to obtain information. Further, secondary sources such as journals,
books and web resources were also used.
Sri Lanka has three major Tamil dialects: namely, Jaffna, Batticaloa and Hill Country dialects. Jaffna
Tamil is considered the oldest, most archaic, and claimed to be closest to old Tamil. It preserves many
archaic features that predate Tolkappiam, the grammatical treatise of Tamil. Further, there are a
number of Prakrit loan words too.A sociolect of “Paraiyar “of Kayts still has a number of archaic
words and Prakrit loans not found in any other dialect or sociolect of Tamil. A similar phenomenon
could be observed in the language of other castes in Jaffna. Even though there are 17 identifiable
castes in Jaffna now, this presentation will focus only on the Velalar (Farmers), Paraiyar (Drum
beaters), Sakiliyar (Leather workers) and Kusavar (Clay workers/Potters).
