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Language code: si

Technical information about ISO 639 language code si

Documentation

The table below provides technical details for the Sinhalese language, designated by the si code from the ISO 639-1 standard.

Code

si

Name

Official

Sinhalese

Native

සිංහල

Family
Indo-Aryan
Scripts
Sinhala
Text direction

Left-to-Right

Language varieties
Central (Kandyan)Southern (Rohana)Western (Low-country)Negombo Fishermen's
Related languages
Dhivehi (Maldivian)MarathiHindi
Key facts
Earliest Sinhala inscriptions date back to the 3rd century BCEThe script is an abugida derived from ancient Brahmi via Grantha and has over 60 distinct signsSinhala displays marked diglossia between its literary and spoken varietiesIt retains a full set of retroflex consonants rare among southern Indo-Aryan languagesSinhala and Dhivehi form the unique Insular Indo-Aryan subgroup.
Sample phrase

ආයුබෝවන්, ඔයා කොහොමද?

Character encodings

UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32

Supported in Localizely

Sinhalese, also known as Sinhala, is part of the Indo-European language family, specifically within the Indo-Aryan subgroup. It is one of the official languages of Sri Lanka and is written using the Sinhala script. It is estimated that there are around 16 million speakers worldwide.

Language presence globally

Speakers

Sri Lanka

17M

*The graph shows a rough estimate of Sinhalese speakers in countries where it is an official or minority language.

Related locale codes

si-LK – Sinhalese (Sri Lanka)

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