Loan words inSri Lankan Tamilcame about mostly due contact betweencolonialpowers and the native population. Linguists study a language's lexicon for a number of reasons. Languages such as Tamil with centuries ofliteratureand multi-cultural contact offer the chance to compare the various processes of lexical change. The words of foreign origin orloanwordsillustrate those processes:calques,loanwords,the distinction betweenfunction wordsand content words.
Sri Lankan Tamil dialectsare distinct from theTamildialects used inTamil Nadu,India. They are used in Sri Lanka and in theSri Lankan Tamil diaspora.Linguistic borrowings from European colonizers such as thePortuguese,Englishand theDutchhave also contributed to a unique vocabulary that is distinct from the colloquial usage of Tamil in the Indian mainland. Furthermore, a form of Tamil spoken exclusively bySri Lankan Moorshas been strongly influenced byArabic.Words that are peculiar toSri Lankan Tamil dialectsare marked with an asterisk (*).
Most Portuguese loan words are for items the native population lacked when the encounter happened c. 1505. Some are administrative terms, others are personal usage terms as well as items directly introduced fromSouth Americavia the Portuguese traders. Most of these words are also shared withSinhalese languageusers.
Loanwords from the neighbouringIndo-EuropeanSinhalaare quite sparse in Sri Lankan Tamil (as opposed to the large number ofTamil loan words in Sinhala), which is most likely due to the relative isolation of the exclusively Tamil-speaking settlements in the North and East of the island.
There are also a few words from theMalay language.Malay words for edible fruits were introduced during the colonial period by traders[citation needed].The same terminology is shared with Sinhalese.
Halikowski Smith, Stefan (2011).Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds.Cambridge Scholars Publishing.ISBN978-144-38-30-447.
Dalgado, Sebastiao Rodolfo (1988).Portuguese Vocables in Asiatic Languages.Asian Education Services.ISBN978-81-20-604-131.
Avram, A.A., 2013. The Dutch lexical contribution to three Asian Portuguese Creoles//Contribuição lexical do holandês para três crioulos de base portuguesa da Ásia. PAPIA-Revista Brasileira de Estudos do Contato Linguístico, 23(1), pp.51-74.
Hoogervorst, T. (2018) ‘Sailors, Tailors, Cooks, and Crooks: On Loanwords and Neglected Lives in Indian Ocean Ports’, Itinerario, 42(3), pp. 516–548. doi:10.1017/S0165115318000645.
Thananjayarajasingham, Sabaratnasingham, "Some Dutch Loan-words in the Jaffna Dialect of Tamil", Proceedings of the First International Conference Seminar of Tamil Studies - Volume Two: First International Conference Seminar of Tamil Studies, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 16 - 23 April 1966. Edited by Thani Nayagam, Xavier S., International Association of Tamil Research, April 1969, 793-799.
Suntharesan, V. "Impact of borrowings from English on Jaffna Tamil (a text book for University students)." Language In India, vol. 14, no. 6, June 2014, pp. 426
