A Linguistic Study on the Impact of Facebook on the Sinhalese Language

Abstract

One of the current trends in the modem society is the frequent use of Facebook and it is being used almost everywhere in the world. Using Facebook is very much popular among Sinhalese speakers as well. Being a popular social networking site, Facebook has a significant impact on all the languages of the world and Sinhalese is no exception. In this background, the present study is focused on discovering the impacts of Facebook on the Sinhalese language. It seems that no previous linguistics research has been carried out on this maller. Therefore, the objective of this research is to fulfillthis gap. Data were collected by analysing the Sinhalese languages used in Facebook posts and by interviewing Facebook user. Accordingly, it is discovered that Facebook has a considerable amount of impact on the Sinhalese language in morphological, syntactic, semantic and sociolinguistic aspects.