Home to 2 dialects represented on Dialect Atlas, spanning 2 language families.
also: Jaffna Tamil, Eelam Tamil
The Tamil of northern and eastern Sri Lanka. Often described as more conservative than Indian Tamil, retaining several features lost in the Chennai variety.
also: Sinhalese
An Indo-Aryan language and the majority language of Sri Lanka, descended from settlers from northern India in the 1st millennium BCE. Geographically far removed from its closest Indo-Aryan relatives.