Batticaloa Tamil dialect

Last updated

Batticaloa Tamil dialect is shared between Tamils, Moors, Veddhas and Portuguese Burghers in the Batticaloa-Amparai region of the Eastern Province, Sri Lanka. The Tamil dialect used by residents of the Trincomalee District has many similarities with the Jaffna Tamil dialect. [1] According to Kamil Zvelebil a linguist, the Batticaloa Tamil dialect is the most literary like of all spoken dialects of Tamil, and it has preserved several antique features, and has remained more true to the literary norm than any other form of Tamil while developing a few striking innovations. Although Batticaloa Tamil has some very specific features of vocabulary, it is classified with other Sri Lankan Tamil dialects as it is related to them by characteristic traits of its phonology. It also maintains some words that are unique to present day. [2] Also, the dialect has less influence of Sanskrit. [3]

Related Research Articles

Trincomalee City in Sri Lanka

Trincomalee also known as Gokanna/Gokarna, is the administrative headquarters of the Trincomalee District and major resort port city of Eastern Province, Sri Lanka. Located on the east coast of the island overlooking the Trincomalee Harbour, 237 kilometres (147 mi) north-east of Colombo, 182 kilometres (113 mi) south-east of Jaffna and 111 kilometres (69 mi) miles north of Batticaloa, Trincomalee has been one of the main centres of Sri Lankan Tamil language speaking culture on the island for over two millennia. With a population of 99,135, the city is built on a peninsula of the same name, which divides its inner and outer harbours. People from Trincomalee are known as Trincomalians and the local authority is Trincomalee Urban Council. Trincomalee city is home to the famous Koneswaram temple from where it developed and earned its historic Tamil name Thirukonamalai. The town is home to other historical monuments such as the Bhadrakali Amman Temple, Trincomalee, the Trincomalee Hindu Cultural Hall and, opened in 1897, the Trincomalee Hindu College. Trincomalee is also the site of the Trincomalee railway station and an ancient ferry service to Jaffna and the south side of the harbour at Muttur.

Batticaloa City in Sri Lanka

Batticaloa is a major city in the Eastern Province, Sri Lanka, and its former capital. It is the administrative capital of the Batticaloa District. The city is the seat of the Eastern University of Sri Lanka and is a major commercial centre. It is on the east coast, 111 kilometres (69 mi) south of Trincomalee, and is situated on an island. Pasikudah is a popular tourist destination situated 35 km (22 mi) northwest with beaches and flat year-round warm-water shallow-lagoons.

Tamil National Alliance Centre-left political alliance in Sri Lanka

The Tamil National Alliance is a political alliance in Sri Lanka that represents the country's Sri Lankan Tamil minority. It was formed in October 2001 by a group of moderate Tamil nationalist parties and former militant groups. The alliance originally supported self-determination in an autonomous state for the island's Tamils. It supported negotiations with the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to resolve the civil war in Sri Lanka. The TNA was considered a political proxy of the LTTE which selected some of its candidates even though its leadership maintains it never supported the LTTE and merely negotiated with the LTTE just as the Government did.

Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese, Ceylonese Portuguese Creole or Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole (SLPC) is a language spoken in Sri Lanka. While the predominant languages of the island are Sinhala and Tamil, the interaction of the Portuguese and the Sri Lankans led to the evolution of a new language, Sri Lanka Portuguese Creole (SLPC), which flourished as a lingua franca on the island for over 350 years. SLPC continues to be spoken by an unknown, extremely small population.

Sri Lankan Tamils South Asian ethnic group

Sri Lankan Tamils, also known as Ceylon Tamils or Eelam Tamils, are Tamils native to the South Asian island state of Sri Lanka. Today, they constitute a majority in the Northern Province, live in significant numbers in the Eastern Province and are in the minority throughout the rest of the country. 70% of Sri Lankan Tamils in Sri Lanka live in the Northern and Eastern provinces.

Sri Lankan Mukkuvar is a Tamil speaking ethnic group found in the Western and Eastern coastal regions of Sri Lanka. They are primarily concentrated in the districts of Batticaloa, Ampara and Puttalam. They are also related to "Sri Lankan Moors". Sri Lankan Mukkuvars along with Eastern Muslims of Sri Lankan claim their origin from Kerala and matrilineal in practice. Recent studies show their habits and clan structure, as well as dialects, show affinity towards the Northern Kerala regions.

Sri Lankan Tamil dialects Group of dialects of Tamil

The Sri Lankan Tamil dialects or Ceylon Tamil or commonly in Tamil language Eelam Tamil are a group of Tamil dialects used in Sri Lanka by its native Tamil people and Eastern Moors, and Coast Veddas that is distinct from the dialects of Tamil spoken in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. It is broadly categorized into three sub groups: Jaffna Tamil, Batticaloa Tamil, and Negombo Tamil dialects. But there are number of sub dialects within these broad regional dialects as well. These dialects are also used by ethnic groups other than Tamils and Moors such as Sinhalese people, Portuguese Burghers and the indigenous Coastal Vedda people.

Sri Lankan Moors Muslim ethnic minority in Sri Lanka

Sri Lankan Moors are an ethnic minority group in Sri Lanka, comprising 9.2% of the country's total population. Most of them are native speakers of the Tamil language who also speak Sinhalese as a second language. They are predominantly followers of Islam. The Sri Lankan Muslim community is divided as Sri Lankan Moors, Indian Moors and Sri Lankan Malays depending on their history and traditions.

Negombo Tamil dialect or Negombo Fishermen's Tamil is a Sri Lankan Tamil language dialect used by the fishers of Negombo, Sri Lanka. This is just one of the many dialects used by the remnant population of formerly Tamil speaking people of the western Puttalam District and Gampaha District of Sri Lanka. Those who still identify them as ethnic Tamils are known as Negombo Tamils or as Puttalam Tamils. Although most residents of these districts identify them as ethnic Sinhalese some are bilingual in both the languages.

This is a list of Tamil population per city.

Batticaloa International Airport Airport in Puthunagar, Sri Lanka

Batticaloa International Airport, formerly known as Batticaloa Airport, is an international airport serving eastern Sri Lanka. It is also a military airbase known as Sri Lanka Air Force Batticaloa or SLAF Batticaloa. The airport is located in the village of Puthunagar on the island of Thimilathiu, 1 nautical mile south-west of the city of Batticaloa. It resides at an elevation of 3 m (10 ft) and has one runway designated 06/24 with a bitumen surface measuring 1,560 by 46 metres.

Sri Lankan Tamil literature or Ceylon Tamil literature refers to Tamil literature produced in the current day country of Sri Lanka by various Tamil speaking communities such as the Sri Lankan Tamils, Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan Muslims. The earliest extant records survived from the Sangam age academies and continued in the medieval era in the courts of the Jaffna kingdom until modern times. The destruction of the Saraswathy Mahal library of Nallur and the burning of Jaffna library led to the loss of a large tract of Sri Lankan Tamil literature, although much survives through oral traditions and the unearthing and preservation of palm-leaf manuscripts, copper plate inscriptions & stone inscriptions.

Vaddukoddai is small but important town in the minority Sri Lankan Tamil dominated Jaffna peninsula of Sri Lanka. It became prominent with the founding of Asia’s first modern university level collegiate known as Batticotta Seminary by the American Missionaries from New England in 1823.

History of Eastern Tamils of Sri Lanka is informed by local legends, native literature and other colonial documents. Sri Lankan Tamils are subdivided based on their cultural, dialects & other practices as into Northern, Eastern and Western groups. Eastern Tamils inhabit a region that is divided into Trincomalee District, Batticalo District and Ampara District.

Swami Vipulananda

Swami Vipulananda, also known as Vipulananda Adigal, was a Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu social reformer, literary critic, author, poet, teacher and ascetic from the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka. Vipulanada was an early pioneer associated with the Indian-based Ramakrishna Mission in Sri Lanka. Along with other reformers, Vipulanada was instrumental in the revival of the Hindu religion and native traditions in Sri Lanka after a long period of dormancy and decline during the previous 500 years of colonial rule by various European powers.

Vanni chieftaincies

The Vanni chieftaincies or Vanni principalities was a region between Anuradhapura and Jaffna, but also extending to along the eastern coast to Panama and Yala, during the Transitional and Kandyan periods of Sri Lanka. The heavily forested land was a collection of chieftaincies of principalities that were a collective buffer zone between the Jaffna Kingdom, in the north of Sri Lanka, and the Sinhalese kingdoms in the south. Traditionally the forest regions were ruled by Vedda rulers. Later on, the emergence of these chieftaincies were a direct result of the breakdown of central authority and the collapse of the Kingdom of Polonnaruwa in the 13th century, as well as the establishment of the Jaffna Kingdom in the Jaffna Peninsula. Control of this area was taken over by dispossessed Sinhalese nobles and chiefs of the South Indian military of Māgha of Kalinga (1215–1236), whose 1215 invasion of Polonnaruwa led to the kingdom's downfall. Sinhalese chieftaincies would lay on the northern border of the Sinhalese kingdom while the Tamil chieftaincies would border the Jaffna Kingdom and the remoter areas of the eastern coast, north western coast outside of the control of either kingdom.

The Jaffna Tamil dialect is a Tamil dialect native to the Jaffna Peninsula and is the primary dialect used in Northern Sri Lanka. The Jaffna Tamil dialect has a very similar intonation to Malayalam and is sometimes mistaken for Malayalam when heard in Tamil Nadu. Both preserve certain archaic words and phonemes which have gone out of vogue in most dialects of Indian Tamil. Consequently many consider the Jaffna dialect to be a more conservative form of Tamil.

The Pathans of Sri Lanka were a Muslim community in Sri Lanka of Pashtun ancestry. Most of them left in the 20th century, however a small number of families living in the country still claim Pathan ancestry.

1987 Eastern Province massacres Massacres of Sinhalese in the Eastern Province by Tamil militant groups

The 1987 Eastern Province massacres were a series of massacres of the Sinhalese population in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka by Tamil mobs and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during the Sri Lankan Civil War. Though they began spontaneously, they became more organized, with the LTTE leading the violence. Over 200 Sinhalese were killed by mob and militant violence, and over 20,000 fled the Eastern Province. The violence has been described as having had the appearance of a pogrom.

Sexual violence against Tamils in Sri Lanka has occurred repeatedly during the island's long ethnic conflict. The first instances of rape of Tamil women by Sinhalese mobs were documented during the 1958 anti-Tamil pogrom. This continued in the 1960s with the deployment of the Sri Lankan Army in Jaffna, who were reported to have molested and occasionally raped Tamil women.

References

  1. Kuiper, L.B.J (March 1964). "Note on Old Tamil and Jaffna Tamil". Indo-Iranian Journal . 6 (1): 52–64. doi:10.1163/000000062791616020. JSTOR   24646759. S2CID   161679797.
  2. Subramaniam, Folk traditionas and Songs..., p.9-10
  3. "மட்டக்களப்பு மாநாட்டு நினைவு மலர்-1996 (பேராசிரியர் ஆ.வேலுப்பிள்ளை)". Archived from the original on 2012-12-17. Retrieved 2012-10-25.