Sinhala alphabet   

Origin

The Sinhala alphabet, a descendent of the Brahmi script, started to appear in inscriptions during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. Both the alphabet and the language have changed considerably since then. The earliest surviving literature in Sinhala dates from the 9th century AD.

Notable features

• Type of writing system: syllabic alphabet.
• Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines.
• When they appear the the beginning of a syllable, vowels are written as independent letters.
• Prenasalized consonants, such as mb, nd, ṇd and ng, are formed by special conjunct symbols that combine the stop and the homorganic nasal.
• Conjunct symbols are used only when writing Sanskrit of Pali with the Sinhala alphabet.
• A subset of the letters, known as Eḷu hōḷdiya, was used to write classical Sinhala (Eḷu) - shown in blue below. Many extra letters were added to write Sanskrit and Pali loanwords.

Used to write:

Sinhala or Sinhalese, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Sri Lanka by about 12 million people. There are also considerable numbers of Sinhala speakers in Singapore, Thailand, Canada and the United Arab Emirates.

Also used to write Pali and Sanskrit in Sri Lanka.

Sinhala alphabet

Vowels

Vowel diacritics with ka

Consonants

Numerals

These numerals are no longer used in written Sinhala, instead the Western-style numerals are used.

Sample text in Sinhala

Source: http://si.wikipedia.org/wiki/සිංහල භාෂාව

Spreadsheet containing the Sinhala alphabet (Excel, 56K)

Links

Information about the Sinhala alphabet and language
http://www.sinhalapage.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhala_alphabet
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/bylanguage/sinhalachart.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhalese_language

Let's Speak Sinhala - online lessons
http://www.speaksinhala.com

Online dictionaries and other information about Sinhala and Sri Lanka
http://www.sinhala-online.com
http://www.sinhaladictionary.com
http://www.ceylon-online.com

Free Sinhala fonts and software
http://www.fonts.lk
http://www.info.lk/slword/
http://www.metta.lk/fonts/
http://www.downloads.sinhalaya.com/Pages/SinhalaFont.htm

Sinhala search engine
http://www.sinhalasearch.com

Other syllabic alphabets

Ahom, Balinese, Batak, Bengali, Brahmi, Buhid, Burmese, Cham, Dehong Dai, Devanagari, Dhives Akuru, Ethiopic, Evēla Akuru, Grantha, Gujarati, Gurmukhi (Punjabi), Hanuno'o, Hmong, Javanese, Kannada, Kharosthi, Khmer, Lanna, Lao, Lepcha, Limbu, Lontara/Makasar, Malayalam, Manpuri, Modi, New Tai Lue, Oriya, Pallava, Phags-pa, Ranjana, Redjang, Sharda, Siddham, Sinhala, Sorang Sompeng, Sourashtra, Soyombo, Sundanese, Syloti Nagri, Tagalog, Tagbanwa, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Tocharian, Varang Kshiti

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