Sinhala script
Sinhala script (Sinhalese) සිංහල අක්ෂර මාලාව Siṁhala Akṣara Mālāva | ||
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Script type | ||
Time period | c. 300 – present Unicode range
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The theorised Semitic origins of the Brahmi script are not universally agreed upon. | ||
Brahmic scripts |
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The Brahmi script and its descendants |
The Sinhala script (
The Sinhala script is an abugida written from left to right. Sinhala letters are classified in two sets. The core set of letters forms the śuddha siṃhala alphabet (Pure Sinhala, ශුද්ධ සිංහල), which is a subset of the miśra siṃhala alphabet (Mixed Sinhala, මිශ්ර සිංහල).
History
The Sinhala script is a
Medieval Sinhalese, which emerged around 750 AD, is marked by very strong influence from the Grantha script.[1] Subsequently, Medieval (and modern) Sinhalese resemble the South Indian scripts.[6] By the 9th century CE, literature written in the Sinhala script had emerged and the script began to be used in other contexts. For instance, the Buddhist literature of the Theravada-Buddhists of Sri Lanka, written in Pali, used Sinhala script.
Modern Sinhalese emerged in the 13th century and is marked by the composition of the grammar book Sidat Sangara.
Today, the alphabet is used by over
.Structure
Sinhala script is an
Sinhala letters are ordered into two sets. The core set of letters forms the śuddha siṃhala alphabet (Pure Sinhala, ශුද්ධ සිංහල), which is a subset of the miśra siṃhala alphabet (Mixed Sinhala, මිශ්ර සිංහල). This "pure" alphabet contains all the graphemes necessary to write Eḷu (classical Sinhala) as described in the classical grammar Sidatsan̆garā (1300 AD).
Most phonemes of Sinhala can be represented by a śuddha letter or by a miśra letter, but normally only one of them is considered correct. This one-to-many mapping of
While a phoneme can be represented by more than one grapheme, each grapheme can be pronounced in only one way, with the exceptions of the inherent vowel sound, which can be either [a] (stressed) or [ə] (unstressed), and "ව" where the consonant is either [v] or [w] depending on the word. This means that the actual pronunciation of a word is almost always clear from its orthographic form. Stress is almost always predictable; only words with [v] or [w] (which are both allophones of "ව"), and a very few other words need to be learnt individually.
Some pronunciation exceptions in Sinhala:
- කරනවා – to do – [kərənəˈwaː] (not [ˈkarənəˈwaː])
- හතලිහ – forty – [ˈhat̪əlihə] (not [ˈhat̪əliˈha])
Diacritics
In Sinhala the diacritics are called පිලි pili (vowel strokes). දිග diga means "long" because the vowel is sounded for longer and දෙක deka means "two" because the stroke is doubled when written.
Using the consonant 'k' + 'vowel' as an example: | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
පිල්ල pilla | Name | Transliteration | Formation | Compound form | ISO 15919 | IPA |
◌් | හල් කිරිම | Hal kirīma | ක් | ක් | k | [k] |
◌ | Inherent /a/ (without any pili) | ක් + අ | ක | ka | [ka] | |
◌ා | ඇලපිල්ල | Ælapilla | ක් + ආ | කා | kā | [kaː] |
◌ැ | ඇදය | Ædaya | ක් + ඇ | කැ | kæ | [kæ] |
◌ෑ | දිග ඇදය | Diga ædaya | ක් + ඈ | කෑ | kǣ | [kæː] |
◌ි | ඉස්පිල්ල | Ispilla | ක් + ඉ | කි | ki | [ki] |
◌ී | දිග ඉස්පිල්ල | Diga ispilla | ක් + ඊ | කී | kī | [kiː] |
◌ු | පාපිල්ල | Pāpilla | ක් + උ | කු | ku | [ku] |
◌ූ | දිග පාපිල්ල | Diga pāpilla | ක් + ඌ | කූ | kū | [kuː] |
◌ෘ | ගැටය සහිත ඇලපිල්ල | Gæṭaya sahita ælapilla | ක් + ර් + උ | කෘ | kru | [kr̩] |
◌ෲ | ගැටය සහිත ඇලපිලි දෙක | Gæṭaya sahita ælapili deka | ක් + ර් + ඌ | කෲ | krū | [kr̩ː] |
◌ෟ | ගයනුකිත්ත | Gayanukitta | Used in conjunction with kombuva for consonants. | |||
◌ෳ | දිග ගයනුකිත්ත | Diga gayanukitta | Not in contemporary use | |||
ෙ | කොම්බුව | Kombuva | ක් + එ | කෙ | ke | [ke] |
ේ | කොම්බුව සහ හල්කිරීම | Kombuva saha halkirīma | ක් + ඒ | කේ | kē | [keː] |
ෛ | කොම්බු දෙක | Kombu deka | ක් + ඓ | කෛ | kai | [kaj] |
ො | කොම්බුව සහ ඇලපිල්ල | Kombuva saha ælapilla | ක් + ඔ | කො | ko | [ko] |
ෝ | කොම්බුව සහ හල්ඇලපිල්ල | Kombuva saha halælapilla | ක් + ඕ | කෝ | kō | [koː] |
ෞ | කොම්බුව සහ ගයනුකිත්ත | Kombuva saha gayanukitta | ක් + ඖ | කෞ | kau | [kau] |
Non-vocalic diacritics
The anusvara (often called binduva 'zero' ) is represented by one small circle ◌ං (Unicode 0D82),[12] and the visarga (technically part of the miśra alphabet) by two ◌ඃ (Unicode 0D83). The inherent vowel can be removed by a special virama diacritic, the hal kirīma (◌්), which has two shapes depending on which consonant it attaches to. Both are represented in the image on the right side. The first one is the most common one, while the second one is used for letters ending at the top left corner.
Letters
Śuddha set
The śuddha graphemes are the mainstay of Sinhala script and are used on an everyday basis. Every sequence of sounds of Sinhala of today can be represented by these graphemes. Additionally, the śuddha set comprises graphemes for
Vowels | අ | ආ | ඇ | ඈ | ඉ | ඊ | උ | ඌ | එ | ඒ | ඔ | ඕ |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Transliteration | a | ā | æ | ǣ | i | ī | u | ū | e | ē | o | ō |
IPA | [a,ə] | [aː,a] | [æ] | [æː] | [i] | [iː] | [u] | [uː] | [e] | [eː] | [o] | [oː] |
Consonants | ක | ග | ඟ | ච | ජ | ට | ඩ | ණ | ඬ | ත | ද | න | ඳ | ප | බ | ම | ඹ | ය | ර | ල | ළ |
ව | ස | හ |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Transliteration | k | g | n̆g | c | j | ṭ | ḍ | ṇ | n̆ḍ | t | d | n | n̆d | p | b | m | m̆b | y | r | l | ḷ | v | s | h |
IPA | [k] | [g] | [ᵑɡ] | [t͡ʃ~t͡ɕ] | [d͡ʒ~d͡ʑ] | [ʈ] | [ɖ] | [ɳ] | [ᶯɖ] | [t] | [d] | [n] | [ⁿd] | [p] | [b] | [m] | [ᵐb] | [j] | [r] | [l] | [ɭ] | [ʋ] | [s] | [ɦ] |
Vowels
short | long | ||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
independent | diacritic | independent | diacritic | ||||||||||||
අ | 0D85 | a | [a] | inherent | a | [a, ə] | ආ | 0D86 | ā | [aː] | ා | 0DCF | ā | [aː] | |
ඇ | 0D87 | æ/ä | [æ] | ැ | 0DD0 | æ | [æ] | ඈ | 0D88 | ǣ | [æː] | ෑ | 0DD1 | ǣ | [æː] |
ඉ | 0D89 | i | [i] | ි | 0DD2 | i | [i] | ඊ | 0D8A | ī | [iː] | ී | 0DD3 | ī | [iː] |
උ | 0D8B | u | [u] | ු | 0DD4 | u | [u] | ඌ | 0D8C | ū | [uː] | ූ | 0DD6 | ū | [uː] |
එ | 0D91 | e | [e] | ෙ | 0DD9 | e | [e] | ඒ | 0D92 | ē | [eː] | ේ | 0DDA | ē | [eː] |
ඔ | 0D94 | o | [o] | ො | 0DDC | o | [o] | ඕ | 0D95 | ō | [oː] | ෝ | 0DDD | ō | [oː] |
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Vowels come in two shapes: independent and diacritic. The independent shape is used when a vowel does not follow a consonant, e.g. at the beginning of a word. The diacritic shape is used when a vowel follows a consonant. Depending on the vowel, the diacritic can attach at several places (see diacritics section above)
While most diacritics are regular, the diacritic for ⟨u⟩ takes a different shape according to the consonant it attaches to. The most common one is the one used for the consonant ප (p): පු (pu) and පූ (pū). Some consonants ending at the lower right corner (ක (k),ග (g), ත(t), but not න(n) or හ(h)) use this diacritic: කු (ku) and කූ (kuu). Combinations of ර(r) or ළ(ḷ) with ⟨u⟩ have idiosyncratic shapes, viz රු (ru) රූ (rū) ළු (ḷu) ළූ (ḷū).[13]
The diacritic used for රු (ru) and රූ (rū) is what is normally used for the ⟨æ⟩, and therefore there are idiosyncratic forms for ræ and rǣ, viz රැ and රෑ.
Consonants
Plosives
| ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
voiceless
|
voiced
| |||||||
Unicode | translit. | IPA | Unicode | translit. | IPA | |||
velar | ක | 0D9A | ka | [ka] | ග | 0D9C | ga | [ɡa] |
retroflex
|
ට | 0DA7 | ṭa | [ʈa] | ඩ | 0DA9 | ḍa | [ɖa] |
dental | ත | 0DAD | ta | [t̪a] | ද | 0DAF | da | [d̪a] |
labial | ප | 0DB4 | pa | [pa] | බ | 0DB6 | ba | [ba] |
Other letters | ||||||||
Unicode | translit. | IPA | Unicode | translit. | IPA | |||
fricatives | ස | 0DC3 | sa | [sa] | හ | 0DC4 | ha | [ha] |
affricates | (ච) | (0DA0) | (ca) | ([t͡ʃa]) | ජ | 0DA2 | ja | [d͡ʒa] |
nasals
|
ම | 0DB8 | ma | [ma] | න | 0DB1 | na | [na] |
liquid | ල | 0DBD | la | [la] | ර | 0DBB | ra | [ra] |
glide | ව | 0DC0 | va | [ʋa] | ය | 0DBA | ya | [ja] |
retroflex | ණ | 0DAB | ṇa | [ɳa] | ළ | 0DC5 | ḷa | [ɭa] |
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The śuddha alphabet comprises 8
. Additionally, there are the two graphemes for the retroflex sounds /ɭ/ and /ɳ/, which are not phonemic in modern Sinhala, but which still form part of the set. These are shaded in the table.The voiceless affricate (ච [t͡ʃa]) is not included in the śuddha set by purists since it does not occur in the main text of the Sidatsan̆garā. The Sidatsan̆garā does use it in examples though, so this sound did exist in Eḷu. In any case, it is needed for the representation of modern Sinhala.[10]
The basic shapes of these consonants carry an inherent /a/ unless this is replaced by another vowel or removed by the hal kirīma.
Prenasalized consonants
nasal | obstruent | prenasalized consonant |
Unicode | translit. | IPA | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
velar | ඞ | ග | ඟ | 0D9F | n̆ga | [ᵑɡa] | ||
retroflex | ණ | ඩ | ඬ | 0DAC | n̆ḍa | [ᶯɖa] | ||
dental | න | ද | ඳ | 0DB3 | n̆da | [ⁿd̪a] | ||
labial | ම | බ | ඹ | 0DB9 | m̆ba | [ᵐba] | ||
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The prenasalized consonants resemble their plain counterparts. ⟨m̆b⟩ is made up by the left half of ⟨m⟩ and the right half of ⟨b⟩, while the other three are just like the grapheme for the plosive with a little stroke attached to their left.[14] Vowel diacritics attach in the same way as they would to the corresponding plain plosive.
Miśra set
The miśra alphabet is a
ඤ (ñ) and ඥ (gn) cannot be represented by śuddha graphemes but are found only in fewer than 10 words each. ෆ fa can be represented by ප pa with a Latin ⟨f⟩ inscribed in the cup.Vowels | ඍ | ඎ | ඓ | ඖ | ඏ | ඐ |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Transliteration | r̥ | r̥̄ | ai | au | l̥ | l̥̄ |
IPA | [r̩] | [r̩ː] | [aj] | [au] | [l̩] | [l̩ː] |
Consonants | ඛ | ඝ | ඞ | ඡ | ඣ | ඤ | ඥ | ඨ | ඪ | ථ | ධ | න | ඵ | භ | ශ | ෂ | ෆ |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Transliteration | kh | gh | ṅ | ch | jh | ñ | jña | ṭh | ḍh | th | dh | n | ph | bh | ś | ṣ | f |
IPA | [k] | [g] | [ŋ] | [t͡ʃ~t͡ɕ] | [d͡ʒ~d͡ʑ] | [ɲ] | [d͡ʒɲa] | [ʈ] | [ɖ] | [t] | [d] | [n] | [p] | [b] | [ʃ] | [ʃ] | [f] |
Vowels
Vocalic diacritics | |||||||||||||||||||||||
independent | diacritic | independent | diacritic | ||||||||||||||||||||
diphthongs | ඓ | 0D93 | ai | [ai] | ෛ | 0DDB | ai | [ai] | ඖ | 0D96 | au | [au] | ෞ | 0DDE | au | [au] | diphthongs | ||||||
syllabic r | ඍ | 0D8D | ṛ | [ur] | ෘ | 0DD8 | ṛ | [ru, ur] | ඎ | 0D8E | ṝ | [ruː] | ෲ | 0DF2 | ṝ | [ruː, uːr] | syllabic r | ||||||
syllabic l | ඏ | 0D8F | ḷ | [li] | ෟ | 0DDF | ḷ | [li] | ඐ | 0D90 | ḹ | [liː] | ෳ | 0DF3 | ḹ | [liː] | syllabic l | ||||||
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There are six additional vocalic diacritics in the miśra alphabet. The two diphthongs are quite common, while the "syllabic" ṛ is much rarer, and the "syllabic" ḷ is all but obsolete. The latter are almost exclusively found in loanwords from Sanskrit.[17]
The miśra ⟨ṛ⟩ can also be written with śuddha ⟨r⟩+⟨u⟩ or ⟨u⟩+⟨r⟩, which corresponds to the actual pronunciation. The miśra syllabic ⟨ḷ⟩ is obsolete, but can be rendered by śuddha ⟨l⟩+⟨i⟩.[18] Miśra ⟨au⟩ is rendered as śuddha ⟨awu⟩, miśra ⟨ai⟩ as śuddha ⟨ayi⟩.
The transliteration of both ළ් and ෟ is ⟨ḷ⟩. This is not very problematic as the second one is extremely scarce.
Consonants
Extra miśra plosives | |||||||||||
voiceless | voiced | ||||||||||
Unicode | translit. | IPA | Unicode | translit. | IPA | ||||||
velar | ඛ | 0D9B | kha | [ka] | ඝ | 0D9D | gha | [ɡa] | velar | ||
retroflex | ඨ | 0DA8 | ṭha | [ʈa] | ඪ | 0DAA | ḍha | [ɖa] | retroflex | ||
dental | ථ | 0DAE | tha | [t̪a] | ධ | 0DB0 | dha | [d̪a] | dental | ||
labial | ඵ | 0DB5 | pha | [pa] | භ | 0DB7 | bha | [ba] | labial | ||
Other additional miśra graphemes | |||||||||||
Unicode | translit. | IPA | Unicode | translit. | IPA | ||||||
sibilants | ශ | 0DC1 | śa | [sa] | ෂ | 0DC2 | ṣa | [sa] | sibilants | ||
aspirate affricates | ඡ | 0DA1 | cha | [t͡ʃa] | ඣ | 0DA3 | jha | [d͡ʒa] | aspirate affricates | ||
nasals | ඤ | 0DA4 | ña | [ɲa] | ඞ | 0D9E | ṅa | [ŋa] | nasals | ||
other | ඥ | 0DA5 | jña | [d͡ʒɲa] | ඦ | 0DA6 | n̆ja[19] | [nd͡ʒa] | other | ||
other | ෆ | 0DC6 | fa | [fa, ɸa, pa] | fප | n/a | fa | [fa, ɸa, pa] | other | ||
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Consonant conjuncts
Certain combinations of graphemes trigger special
IPA | Letters | Unicode | Combined | Unicode | Type |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
/kja/ | ක්ය | U+0D9A U+0DCA U+0DBA | ක්ය | U+0D9A U+0DCA U+200D U+0DBA | yansaya |
/kjo/ | ක්යො | U+0D9A U+0DCA U+0DBA U+0DCC | ක්යො | U+0D9A U+0DCA U+200D U+0DBA U+0DCC | yansaya |
/ɡja/ | ග්ය | U+0D9C U+0DCA U+0DBA | ග්ය | U+0D9C U+0DCA U+200D U+0DBA | yansaya |
/kra/ | ක්ර | U+0D9A U+0DCA U+0DBB | ක්ර | U+0D9A U+0DCA U+200D U+0DBB | rakāransaya |
/ɡra/ | ග්ර | U+0D9C U+0DCA U+0DBB | ග්ර | U+0D9C U+0DCA U+200D U+0DBB | rakāransaya |
/rka/ | ර්ක | U+0DBB U+0DCA U+0D9A | ර්ක | U+0DBB U+0DCA U+200D U+0D9A | rēpaya |
/rɡa/ | ර්ග | U+0DBB U+0DCA U+0D9C | ර්ග | U+0DBB U+0DCA U+200D U+0D9C | rēpaya |
/kjra/ | ක්ය්ර | U+0D9A U+0DCA U+0DBA U+0DCA U+0DBB | ක්ය්ර | U+0D9A U+0DCA U+200D U+0DBA U+0DCA U+200D U+0DBB | yansaya + rakāransaya |
/ɡjra/ | ග්ය්ර | U+0D9C U+0DCA U+0DBA U+0DCA U+0DBB | ග්ය්ර | U+0D9C U+0DCA U+200D U+0DBA U+0DCA U+200D U+0DBB | yansaya + rakāransaya |
/rkja/ | ර්ක්ය | U+0DBB U+0DCA U+0D9A U+0DCA U+0DBA | ර්ක්ය | U+0DBB U+0DCA U+200D U+0D9A U+0DCA U+200D U+0DBA | rēpaya + yansaya |
/rɡja/ | ර්ග්ය | U+0DBB U+0DCA U+0D9C U+0DCA U+0DBA | ර්ග්ය | U+0DBB U+0DCA U+200D U+0D9C U+0DCA U+200D U+0DBA | rēpaya + yansaya |
/kva/ | ක්ව | U+0D9A U+0DCA U+0DC0 | ක්ව | U+0D9A U+0DCA U+200D U+0DC0 | conjunct |
/kʃa/ | ක්ෂ | U+0D9A U+0DCA U+0DC2 | ක්ෂ | U+0D9A U+0DCA U+200D U+0DC2 | conjunct |
/ɡdʰa/ | ග්ධ | U+0D9C U+0DCA U+0DB0 | ග්ධ | U+0D9C U+0DCA U+200D U+0DB0 | conjunct |
/ʈʈʰa/ | ට්ඨ | U+0DA7 U+0DCA U+0DA8 | ට්ඨ | U+0DA7 U+0DCA U+200D U+0DA8 | conjunct |
/t̪t̪ʰa/ | ත්ථ | U+0DAD U+0DCA U+0DAE | ත්ථ | U+0DAD U+0DCA U+200D U+0DAE | conjunct |
/t̪va/ | ත්ව | U+0DAD U+0DCA U+0DC0 | ත්ව | U+0DAD U+0DCA U+200D U+0DC0 | conjunct |
/d̪d̪ʰa/ | ද්ධ | U+0DAF U+0DCA U+0DB0 | ද්ධ | U+0DAF U+0DCA U+200D U+0DB0 | conjunct |
/d̪va/ | ද්ව | U+0DAF U+0DCA U+0DC0 | ද්ව | U+0DAF U+0DCA U+200D U+0DC0 | conjunct |
/nd̪a/ | න්ද | U+0DB1 U+0DCA U+0DAF | න්ද | U+0DB1 U+0DCA U+200D U+0DAF | conjunct |
/nd̪ʰa/ | න්ධ | U+0DB1 U+0DCA U+0DB0 | න්ධ | U+0DB1 U+0DCA U+200D U+0DB0 | conjunct |
/mma/ | ම්ම | U+0DB8 U+0DCA U+0DB8 | ම්ම | U+0DB8 U+200D U+0DCA U+0DB8 | touching |
Letter names
The Sinhala śuddha graphemes are named in a uniform way adding -yanna to the sound produced by the letter, including vocalic diacritics.[12][22] The name for the letter අ is thus ayanna, for the letter ආ āyanna, for the letter ක kayanna, for the letter කා kāyanna, for the letter කෙ keyanna and so forth. For letters with hal kirīma, an epenthetic a is added for easier pronunciation: the name for the letter ක් is akyanna. Another naming convention is to use al- before a letter with suppressed vowel, thus alkayanna.
Since the extra miśra letters are phonetically not distinguishable from the śuddha letters, proceeding in the same way would lead to confusion. Names of miśra letters are normally made up of the names of two śuddha letters pronounced as one word. The first one indicates the sound, the second one the shape. For example, the aspirated ඛ (kh) is called bayanu kayanna. kayanna indicates the sound, while bayanu indicates the shape: ඛ (kh) is similar in shape to බ (b) (bayunu = like bayanna). Another method is to qualify the miśra aspirates by mahāprāna (ඛ: mahāprāna kayanna) and the miśra retroflexes by mūrdhaja (ළ: mūrdhaja layanna).
Numerals
Sinhala had special symbols to represent numerals, which were in use until the beginning of the 19th century. This system is now superseded by Hindu–Arabic numeral system.[23][24]
- Sinhala Illakkam (Sinhala Archaic Numbers)
Sinhala Illakkam were used for writing numbers prior to the fall of
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 | 60 | 70 | 80 | 90 | 100 | 1000 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
𑇡 | 𑇢 | 𑇣 | 𑇤 | 𑇥 | 𑇦 | 𑇧 | 𑇨 | 𑇩 | 𑇪 | 𑇫 | 𑇬 | 𑇭 | 𑇮 | 𑇯 | 𑇰 | 𑇱 | 𑇲 | 𑇳 | 𑇴 |
- Sinhala Lith Illakkam (Sinhala Astrological Numbers)
Prior to the fall of Kandyan Kingdom all calculations were carried out using Lith digits. After the fall of the
0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
෦ | ෧ | ෨ | ෩ | ෪ | ෫ | ෬ | ෭ | ෮ | ෯ |
Neither the Sinhala numerals nor U+0DF4 ෴ Sinhala punctuation kunddaliya is in general use today, but some use it in social media, Internet messaging and blogs. The kunddaliya was formerly used as a full stop.[25]
Transliteration
Sinhala transliteration (Sinhala: රෝම අකුරින් ලිවීම rōma akurin livīma, literally "Roman letter writing") can be done in analogy to Devanāgarī transliteration.
Layman's transliterations in Sri Lanka normally follow neither of these. Vowels are transliterated according to English spelling equivalences, which can yield a variety of spellings for a number of phonemes. /iː/ for instance can be ⟨ee⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨ea⟩, ⟨i⟩, etc. A transliteration pattern peculiar to Sinhala, and facilitated by the absence of phonemic aspirates, is the use of ⟨th⟩ for the
Use for the Pali language
Many of the oldest Pali manuscripts are written in the Sinhala script. Miśra consonants are used to represent Pali phonemes that have no Sinhala counterpart. The following table lays out the Sinhala representations of Pali consonants with their standard academic Romanizations:
class | unaspirated unvoiced |
aspirated | voiced | aspirated voiced |
nasal |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
velar | ක (ka) | ඛ (kha) | ග (ga) | ඝ (gha) | ඞ (ṅa) |
palatal | ච (ca) | ඡ (cha) | ජ (ja) | ඣ (jha) | ඤ (ña) |
retroflex | ට (ṭa) | ඨ (ṭha) | ඩ (ḍa) | ඪ (ḍha) | ණ (ṇa) |
dental | ත (ta) | ථ (tha) | ද (da) | ධ (dha) | න (na) |
labial | ප (pa) | ඵ (pha) | බ (ba) | භ (bha) | ම (ma) |
unordered | ය (ya) | ර (ra) | ල (la) | ව (va) | ස (sa) | හ (ha) | ළ (ḷa) |
The vowels are a subset of those for writing Sinhala:
Independent | Romanization | Dependent (on ක ka) |
Romanization |
---|---|---|---|
අ | a | ක | ka |
ආ | ā | කා | kā |
ඉ | i | කි | ki |
ඊ | ī | කී | kī |
උ | u | කු | ku |
ඌ | ū | කූ | kū |
එ | e | කෙ | ke |
ඔ | o | කො | ko |
The niggahīta is represented with the sign ං. Consonant sequences may be combined in ligatures in a manner identical to that described above for Sinhala.
As an example, below is the first verse from the Dhammapada in Pali in Sinhala script, followed by Romanization:
මනොපුබ්බඞ්ගමා ධම්මා, මනොසෙට්ඨා මනොමයා;
මනසා චෙ පදුට්ඨෙන, භාසති වා කරොති වා;
තතො නං දුක්ඛමන්වෙති, චක්කංව වහතො පදං.
Manopubbaṅgamā dhammā, manoseṭṭhā manomayā;
manasā ce paduṭṭhena bhāsati vā karoti vā;
tato naṁ dukkhamanveti cakkaṁva vahato padaṁ.— Yamaka-vaggo 1
Relation to other scripts
- Similarities
Sinhala is one of the
Script | ⟨e⟩ | ⟨ai⟩ | ⟨au⟩ |
---|---|---|---|
Sinhala | ෙ | ෛ | ෞ |
Malayalam |
െ | ൈ | ൗ |
Tamil |
ெ | ை | ௌ |
Bengali | ে | ৈ | ৌ |
Odia | େ | ୈ | ୌ |
Dēvanāgarī |
े | ै | ौ |
Likewise, the combination of the diacritics for ⟨e⟩ and ⟨ā⟩ yields ⟨o⟩ in all these scripts.
Script | ⟨e⟩ | ⟨ā⟩ | ⟨o⟩ |
---|---|---|---|
Sinhala | ෙ | ා | ො |
Malayalam | െ | ാ | ൊ |
Tamil | ெ | ா | ொ |
Bengali | ে | া | ো |
Odia | େ | ା | ୋ |
Dēvanāgarī | े | ा | ो |
- Differences
Sinhala alphabet differs from other Indo-Aryan alphabets in that it contains a pair of vowel sounds (U+0DD0 and U+0DD1 in the proposed Unicode Standard) that are unique to it. These are the two vowel sounds that are similar to the two vowel sounds that occur at the beginning of the English words at (ඇ) and ant (ඈ).[27]
Another feature that distinguishes Sinhala from its sister Indo-Aryan languages is the presence of a set of five nasal sounds known as half-nasal or prenasalized stops.
ඟ | ඦ | ඬ | ඳ | ඹ |
n̆ga | n̆ja | n̆ḍa | n̆da | m̆ba |
Computer encoding
Generally speaking, Sinhala support is less developed than support for Devanāgarī, for instance. A recurring problem is the rendering of diacritics which precede the consonant and diacritic signs which come in different shapes, like the one for ⟨u⟩.
Sinhala support did not come built in with Microsoft Windows XP, unlike Tamil and Hindi, but was supported by third-party means such as Keyman by SIL International. Thereafter, all versions of Windows Vista and above, including Windows 10 come with Sinhala support by default, and do not require external fonts to be installed to read Sinhala script. Nirmala UI is the default Sinhala font in Windows 10. The latest versions of Windows 10 have added support for Sinhala Archaic Numbers that were not supported by default in previous versions.
For
For Linux, the IBus, and SCIM input methods allow the use Sinhala script in applications with support for a number of key maps and techniques such as traditional, phonetic and assisted techniques.[28] In addition, newer versions of the Android mobile operating system also support both rendering and input of Sinhala script by default and applications like Helakuru serve as dedicated keyboard integrators.
Unicode
Sinhala script was added to the Unicode Standard in September 1999 with the release of version 3.0. This character allocation has been adopted in Sri Lanka as the Standard SLS1134.
The main Unicode block for Sinhala is U+0D80–U+0DFF. Another block, Sinhala Archaic Numbers, was added to Unicode in version 7.0.0 in June 2014. Its range is U+111E0–U+111FF.
Sinhala[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) | ||||||||||||||||
0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | |
U+0D8x | ඁ | ං | ඃ | අ | ආ | ඇ | ඈ | ඉ | ඊ | උ | ඌ | ඍ | ඎ | ඏ | ||
U+0D9x | ඐ | එ | ඒ | ඓ | ඔ | ඕ | ඖ | ක | ඛ | ග | ඝ | ඞ | ඟ | |||
U+0DAx | ච | ඡ | ජ | ඣ | ඤ | ඥ | ඦ | ට | ඨ | ඩ | ඪ | ණ | ඬ | ත | ථ | ද |
U+0DBx | ධ | න | ඳ | ප | ඵ | බ | භ | ම | ඹ | ය | ර | ල | ||||
U+0DCx | ව | ශ | ෂ | ස | හ | ළ | ෆ | ් | ා | |||||||
U+0DDx | ැ | ෑ | ි | ී | ු | ූ | ෘ | ෙ | ේ | ෛ | ො | ෝ | ෞ | ෟ | ||
U+0DEx | ෦ | ෧ | ෨ | ෩ | ෪ | ෫ | ෬ | ෭ | ෮ | ෯ | ||||||
U+0DFx | ෲ | ෳ | ෴ | |||||||||||||
Notes |
Sinhala Archaic Numbers[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) | ||||||||||||||||
0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | |
U+111Ex | 𑇡 | 𑇢 | 𑇣 | 𑇤 | 𑇥 | 𑇦 | 𑇧 | 𑇨 | 𑇩 | 𑇪 | 𑇫 | 𑇬 | 𑇭 | 𑇮 | 𑇯 | |
U+111Fx | 𑇰 | 𑇱 | 𑇲 | 𑇳 | 𑇴 | |||||||||||
Notes |
See also
- Sinhala Braille
- History of Sinhala software
- Loanwords
- Dutch loanwords in Sinhala
- English loanwords in Sinhala
- Portuguese loanwords in Sinhala
- Tamil loanwords in Sinhala
References
- ^ a b c Diringer, David (1948). Alphabet a key to the history of mankind. p. 389.
- ^ Handbook of Literacy in Akshara Orthography, R. Malatesha Joshi, Catherine McBride(2019),p.28
- ^ a b c Daniels (1996), p. 408.
- ^ Masica, Colin P. (1993). The Indo-Aryan Languages. p. 143.
- ^ Daniels (1996), p. 379.
- ^ a b Cardona, George; Dhanesh, Jain (2003). The Indo-Aryan Languages. p. 109.
- ISBN 9780521011099.
- ^ a b "The Sinhala Script". Dalton Maag. Archived from the original on 26 August 2018. Retrieved 26 August 2018.
- ISBN 978-94-6093-011-9.
- ^ a b c d Gair and Paolillo 1997.
- ^ Matzel (1983) p. 15, 17, 18
- ^ a b Karunatillake (2004), p. xxxii
- ^ Jayawardena-Moser (2004) p. 11
- ^ Fairbanks et al. (1968), p. 126
- ^ a b c Karunatillake (2004), p. xxxi
- ^ Daniels (1996), p. 410.
- ^ a b Matzel (1983), p. 8
- ^ Matzel (1983), p. 14
- ^ This letter is not used anywhere, neither in modern nor ancient Sinhala. Its usefulness is unclear, but it forms part of the standard alphabet <http://unicode.org/reports/tr2.html>.
- ^ Fairbanks et al. (1968), p. 109
- ^ a b Jayawardena-Moser (2004), p. 12
- ^ Fairbanks et al. (1968), p. 366
- ^ Brigadier (Retd) B. Munasinghe (19 September 2004). "How ancient Sinhala Brahmi numerals were invented". Sunday Observer. Archived from the original on 7 February 2009. Retrieved 21 September 2008.
- ^ "Unicode Mail List Archive: Re: Sinhala numerals". Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 21 September 2008.
- ^ Roland Russwurm. "Old Sinhala Numbers and Digits". Sinhala Online. Archived from the original on 30 September 2008. Retrieved 23 September 2008.
- ^ Matzel (1983), p. 16
- ^ "Trilingual Sinhala-Tamil-English National Web Site of Sri Lanka". 3 January 2016.
- ^ A screenshot showing some of the options
Further reading
- Coperahewa, Sandagomi. Sinhala Akuru Puranaya [Chronicle of Sinhala Letters] Nugegoda: Sarasavi, 2018.
- ISBN 0-19-507993-0.
- Fairbanks, G. W.; J. W. Gair; M. W. S. D. Silva (1968). Colloquial Sinhalese (Sinhala). Ithaca, NY: South Asia Programm, Cornell University.
- Gair, J. W.; John C. Paolillo (1997). Sinhala. München, Newcastle: South Asia Programm, Cornell University.
- Geiger, Wilhelm (1995). A Grammar of the Sinhalese Language. New Delhi: AES Reprint.
- Jayawardena-Moser, Premalatha (2004). Grundwortschatz Singhalesisch – Deutsch (3 ed.). Wiesbaden: Harassowitz.
- Karunatillake, W. S. (1992). An Introduction to Spoken Sinhala ([several new editions] ed.). Colombo.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Matzel, Klaus (1983). Einführung in die singhalesische Sprache. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
External links
- Scripts (ISO 15924) "Sinhala"
- Sinhala Unicode Characters
- Sinhala Unicode Characters
- Sinhala Unicode Character Code Chart
- Sinhala Archaic Numbers Unicode Character Code Chart
- Complete table of consonant-diacritic-combinations Archived 6 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine
Online resources