[language] Sound Changes

[H.M. Hubey]

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I clipped the following from this website. I want to make some 
off-the-cuff comments (later).

http://members.tripod.com/~hettiarachchi/sinhala.html

For example, in Sanskrit, the sound r takes more prominence, appearing 
in many words. This is not so in Prakrit (Pali) which has a tendency to 
eliminate this sound. In turn Pali words possessed a high proportion of 
double consonants, a feature that was eliminated in Sinhala. This had 
taken place by the 3rd century B.C. as borne out by the earliest cave 
inscriptions.

        Sanskrit        Pali            Sinhala
        karman  kamma   kam  (work)
        marga           magga           maga  (path )

Other sound changes include the change of ch to s, which took place 
during the 8th century A.C. and became regular by the 10th century.

        Pali            Sinhala
        gachach         gasa (tree)
        kuchchi kusa (womb)

The change of p to v which occured between the 1st-2nd centuries A.C.

        Pali            Sinhala
        rupa            ruva  (form) 
        papa            pau  (sin)

The change of j to d, which first took place in the 4th century A.C. and 
became regular by
the 9th century.

        Pali            Sinhala
        vejja           vedha (physician)
        ajja            adha (today)

and the change of t to l, which as the renowned German philologist, 
Wilhelm Geiger has noted, took place through an intermediate d. This 
occured sometime between the 6th-10th centuries A.C.

        Pali            Sinhala
        putavi          polova (earth)
        mata            mala (dead)

There also exist a number of other sound changes that characterize 
Sinhala and distinguish it from its North Indian sister languages. The 
change of Sanskrit s to h and the latterÕs eventual disappearance is 
unique to Sinhala amongst Aryan languages, although such changes have 
occured in other Indo-European languages such as Greek and Armenian. We 
know from ancient Sinhalese inscriptions that the Sanskrit surya (sun) 
had become hir by the 9th century and hira by the end of the 12th 
century. This in turn became the present day ira by the 15th century. 
Owing to its geographical isolation, Sinhala has also preserved a number 
of old Aryan archaisms not found in any of the North Indian vernaculars. 
For example, whereas Sinhala, like Pali, has preserved the initial y of 
old Indo-Aryan, this has been changed to j in all the modern North 
Indian languages derived from Sanskrit.

 Sanskrit yati (go), Hindi jana, Bengali jay, Sinhala yanna. Some 
Sinhala words have however died out and been replaced by Pali or 
Sanskrit. For example, the old sinhala la (heart) occuring the Sigiri 
graffiti (8th-10 centuries) as la-kol hellambuyun (heart shattering fair 
damsels) is today extinct and has been replaced by the Pali hada. 
Similarly, the old Sinhala ag (fire) has been replaced by the Pali gini. 
The old Sinhala term for horse, as today exists only in compound terms 
such as as-val (horse-hair), as-hala (stable) and as-govva 
(horse-keeper) and has been superseded by the Sanskrit ashva.

 Such old Sinhala words like dana (people), rada (king), and pungul 
(person) have to all, intents and purposes ceased to exist, and have 
been superseded by their respective Sanskrit equivalents, jana, raja and 
pudgala. But by no means is pure Sinhala or Elu(as it is known in 
literary circles) confined to Sri Lanka. The speech of the Maldivian 
islanders, Divehi bas, is in fact a dialect of Sinhala, which branched 
off from the parent language sometime between the 4th-8th centuries.



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