Sinhalese is the language spoken by the native people Sinhalese, who have a large ethnic group living in Sri Lanka. It is one of the national and official languages in the country. It has its own writing style which is called Sinhalese alphabet. It is a descendent of the old Brahmi script. A major role in developing Theravada Buddhist literature was played by Sinhalese along with Pali. The oldest literature can be traced back to the time when Buddhism arrived in Sri Lanka. However, the literary works that exist can be traced back from ninth century. The Maldivian language has close relations with Sinhalese. Because of a long history of colonial rule, the language includes loanwords from Portuguese, English and Dutch languages.