A Grammar of the Cingalese language

Chater, James

Edité par Nicholas Bergman at the Government Press, Colombo, 1815

A propos de cet article

The first English grammar of Sinhala

Chater, James. A Grammar of the Cingalese language. 1815. Colombo. Nicholas Bergman at the Government Press. 8vo. 5 ff., 141 pp. Modern half morocco, raised bands to spine, red morocco lettering piece. Neat repair to blank upper margin and outer edge of title, light occasional browning, else perfect; long manuscript note on title page dated 1816.

First edition, Chater's book is the first English grammar of Sinhala, the major language of Sri Lanka, and the first major book to be published in Sri Lanka under British rule; very rare, no copy appears to exist in any institutions in the United States.

Chater was a Baptist missionary who also published several religious texts in Sri Lanka. William Martin Harvard was a Wesleyan missionary, who supervised the Missionary Press. He intended that the book '.may be copied by missiona[ries] coming out to the South of Cey[lon] and furnish matter for study on the voyage. Nov. 8. 1816'.

The Portuguese Creole language had been in use in Sri Lanka since the first settlers arrived in the early 16th century; a mix of it is still in use 'Portuguese-based creoles are the oldest creoles based on a European language' (de Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan, and Hugo Schuchardt. "'On the Indo-Portuguese of Ceylon': A Translation of a Hugo Schuchardt Manuscript." Portuguese Studies 15 (1999): 52?69). Even after occupation by the Dutch, Portuguese remained in use until the late 18th century, with the arrival of the British altered the status quo. However, Portuguese remained the official language, albeit a corrupt version of it.

"Robert Percival writing in 1803 says: The language spoken most universally, both by Europeans and Asiatics who resort to Columbo, is the Portuguese of India, a base, corrupt dialect, altogether different from that spoken in Portugal. It may indeed be considered as a barbarous compound of a number of Indian languages combined with several European, among which French is very distinguishable. Though this dialect be considered as the most vulgar of any, yet it is a very useful and even necessary acquisition, as in most of the settlements on the coast, particularly those which have been in the possession of the Dutch, it is common to meet with both Moors and Malabars who speak it. In Ceylon it is particularly useful to be understood, and indeed without it, a person finds it impossible to maintain any conversation with the Dutch ladies, as they seldom address one in any other language. This last circumstance a surprised me good deal, as in every other place I always found everything accounted vulgar the particular abhorrence of the ladies. And yet the Dutch ladies at Colombo hardly ever attempt to speak even in their own families and to their own connections in Dutch, although it is reckoned the polite language." (G. P. V. Somaratna).

Sinhala is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka, who make up the largest ethnic group on the island, numbering about 16 million. It is also the first language of about two million other Sri Lankans. It is written in Sinhalese script, a Brahmic script closely related to the Grantha script of South India.

Provenance: long inscription to title page, signed 'Harv?' and dated November 1816; 'Richmond College. Surrey', bookplate on front pastedown, with a note in pencil 'Bookplate from original binding'.

Extremely rare, we locate copies the British Library, Royal Danish Library, Australian National Univ., and Bibliotheque Geneve.

N° de réf. du vendeur 3722

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: A Grammar of the Cingalese language
• Éditeur: Nicholas Bergman at the Government Press, Colombo
• Date de parution: 1815
• Édition: Edition originale
• État de l'article: Très bon