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.