Sinhala alphabet

The Sinhala script ( si, සිංහල අක්ෂර මාලාව, Siṁhala Akṣara Mālāva), also known as Sinhalese script, is a writing system used by the Sinhalese people and most Sri Lankans in Sri Lanka and elsewhere to write the Sinhala language as well as the liturgical languages Pali and Sanskrit.Daniels (1996), p. 408. The Sinhalese Akṣara Mālāva, one of the Brahmic scripts, is a descendant of the Ancient Indian Brahmi script. It is also related to the Grantha 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 ' alphabet (Pure Sinhala, ), which is a subset of the ' alphabet (Mixed Sinhala, ).

History

The Sinhala script is a Brahmi derivate and was imported from Northern India around the 3rd century BCE. It developed in a complex manner, partly independently but also strongly influenced by South Indian scripts at various stages, manifestly influenced by the early Grantha script. Pottery from the 6th century BCE has been found in Anuradhapura with lithic inscriptions dating from the 2nd century BCE written in Prakrit.

Medieval Sinhalese, which emerged around 750 AD, is marked by very strong influence from the Grantha script. Subsequently, Medieval (and modern) Sinhalese resemble the South Indian scripts. 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''. In 1736, the Dutch were the first to print with Sinhala type on the island. The resulting type followed the features of the native Sinhala script used on palm leaves. The Dutch created type was monolinear and geometric in fashion, with no separation between words in early documents. During the second half of the 19th century, during the colonial period, a new style of Sinhala letterforms emerged in opposition to the monolinear and geometric form that used high contrast and had varied thicknesses. This high contrast type gradually replaced the monolinear type as the preferred style and continues to be used in the present day. The high contrast style is still preferred for text typesetting in printed newspapers, books, and magazines in Sri Lanka.

Today, the alphabet is used by over 16 million people to write Sinhala in very diverse contexts, such as newspapers, TV commercials, government announcements, graffiti, and schoolbooks.

Sinhala is the main language written in this script, but rare instances of its use for writing Sri Lanka Malay have been recorded.

Structure

Sinhala script is an abugida written from left to right. It uses consonants as the basic unit for word construction as each consonant has an inherent vowel (), which can be changed with a different vowel stroke. To represent different sounds it is necessary to add vowel strokes, or diacritics called (Pili), that can be used before, after, above or below the base-consonant. Most of the Sinhala letters are curlicues; straight lines are almost completely absent from the alphabet, and it does not have joining characters. This is because Sinhala used to be written on dried palm leaves, which would split along the veins on writing straight lines. This was undesirable, and therefore, the round shapes were preferred. Upper and lower cases do not exist in Sinhala.

Sinhala letters are ordered into two sets. The core set of letters forms the ' alphabet (Pure Sinhala, ), which is a subset of the ' alphabet (Mixed Sinhala, ). This "pure" alphabet contains all the graphemes necessary to write Eḷu (classical Sinhala) as described in the classical grammar Sidatsan̆garā (1300 AD).Gair and Paolillo 1997. This is the reason why this set is also called ''Eḷu hōdiya'' ("Eḷu alphabet" ). The definition of the two sets is thus a historic one. Out of pure coincidence, the phoneme inventory of present-day colloquial Sinhala is such that yet again the ''śuddha'' alphabet suffices as a good representation of the sounds. All native phonemes of the Sinhala spoken today can be represented in ', while in order to render special Sanskrit and Pali sounds, one can fall back on '. This is most notably necessary for the graphemes for the Middle Indic phonemes that the Sinhala language lost during its history, such as aspirates.

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 phonemes onto graphemes is a frequent source of misspellings.Matzel (1983) p. 15, 17, 18

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 (stressed) or (unstressed), and "ව" where the consonant is either or 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 or (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 – (not )
* හතලිහ – forty – (not )

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.

Non-vocalic diacritics

The anusvara (often called ''binduva'' 'zero' ) is represented by one small circle ◌ං (Unicode 0D82),Karunatillake (2004), p. xxxii 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 retroflex and , which are no longer phonemic in modern Sinhala. These two letters were needed for the representation of Eḷu, but are now obsolete from a purely phonemic view. However, words which historically contain these two phonemes are still often written with the graphemes representing the retroflex sounds.

Vowels

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 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 have idiosyncratic shapes, viz රු (ru) රූ (rū) ළු (ḷu) ළූ (ḷū).Jayawardena-Moser (2004) p. 11

Note that the diacritic used for රු (ru) and රූ (rū) is what is normally used for the , and therefore there are idiosyncratic forms for ræ and rǣ, viz රැ and රෑ ifference may not be visible depending on how unicode is rendered in your browser

Consonants

The ''śuddha'' alphabet comprises 8 plosives, 2 fricatives, 2 affricates, 2 nasals, 2 liquids and 2 glides. Additionally, there are the two graphemes for the retroflex sounds and , 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 ) 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.

The basic shapes of these consonants carry an inherent unless this is replaced by another vowel or removed by the ''hal kirīma''.

Prenasalized consonants

The prenasalized consonants resemble their plain counterparts. is made up by the left half of and the right half of , while the other three are just like the grapheme for the plosive with a little stroke attached to their left.Fairbanks et al. (1968), p. 126 Vowel diacritics attach in the same way as they would to the corresponding plain plosive.

Miśra set

The ''miśra'' alphabet is a superset of ''śuddha''. It adds letters for aspirates, retroflexes and sibilants, which are not phonemic in today's Sinhala, but which are necessary to represent non-native words, like loanwords from Sanskrit, Pali or English. The use of the extra letters is mainly a question of prestige. From a purely phonemic point of view, there is no benefit in using them, and they can be replaced by a (sequence of) ''śuddha'' letters as follows: For the ''miśra'' aspirates, the replacement is the plain ''śuddha'' counterpart, for the ''miśra'' retroflex liquids the corresponding ''śuddha'' coronal liquid,Karunatillake (2004), p. xxxi for the sibilants, . 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 inscribed in the cup.

Vowels

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.Matzel (1983), p. 8

The ''miśra'' can also be written with ''śuddha'' + or +, which corresponds to the actual pronunciation. The ''miśra'' syllabic is obsolete, but can be rendered by ''śuddha'' +.Matzel (1983), p. 14 Miśra is rendered as ''śuddha'' , ''miśra'' as ''śuddha'' .

Note that the transliteration of both ළ් and ෟ is . This is not very problematic as the second one is extremely scarce.

Consonants

Consonant conjuncts

Certain combinations of graphemes trigger special ligatures. Special signs exist for an ර (r) following a consonant (inverted arch underneath), a ර (r) preceding a consonant (loop above) and a ය (y) following a consonant (half a ය on the right).

Fairbanks et al. (1968), p. 109
Jayawardena-Moser (2004), p. 12
Furthermore, very frequent combinations are often written in one stroke, like ''ddh'', ''kv'' or ''kś''. If this is the case, the first consonant is not marked with a ''hal kirīma''.



The image on the right shows the glyph for '' śrī'', which is composed of the letter ''ś'' with a ligature indicating the ''r'' below and the vowel ''ī'' marked above. Most other conjunct consonants are made with an explicit virama, called ''al-lakuna'' or ''hal kirīma'', and the zero-width joiner as shown in the following table, some of which may not display correctly due to limitations of your system. Some of the more common are displayed in the following table. Note that although modern Sinhala sounds are not aspirated, aspiration is marked in the sound where it was historically present to highlight the differences in modern spelling. Also note that all of the combinations are encoded with the ''al-lakuna'' (Unicode U+0DCA) first, followed by the zero-width joiner (Unicode U+200D) except for touching letters which have the zero-width joiner (Unicode U+200D) first followed by the ''al-lakuna'' (Unicode U+0DCA). Touching letters were used in ancient scriptures but are not used in modern Sinhala. Vowels may be attached to any of the ligatures formed, attaching to the rightmost part of the glyph except for vowels that use the ''kombuva'', where the ''kombuva'' is written before the ligature or cluster and the remainder of the vowel, if any, is attached to the rightmost part. In the table below, appending "o" (''kombuva saha ælepilla'' – ''kombuva'' with ''ælepilla'') to the cluster "ky" only adds a single code point, but adds two vowel strokes, one each to the left and right of the consonant cluster.

Letter names

The Sinhala ''śuddha'' graphemes are named in a uniform way adding ''-yanna'' to the sound produced by the letter, including vocalic diacritics.Fairbanks et al. (1968), p. 366 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.

;Sinhala Illakkam ( Sinhala Archaic Numbers)
Sinhala Illakkam were used for writing numbers prior to the fall of Kandyan Kingdom in 1815. These digits did not have a zero instead the numbers had signs for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 1000. These digits and numbers can be seen primarily in Royal documents and artefacts.

;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 Kandyan Kingdom, Sinhala Lith Illakkam were primarily used for writing horoscopes. However, there is evidence that they were used for other purposes such as writing page numbers etc. The tradition of writing degrees and minutes of zodiac signs in horoscopes continued into the 20th century using different versions of Lith Digits. Unlike the Sinhala Illakkam, Sinhala Lith Illakkam included a 0.

Neither the Sinhala numerals nor U+0DF4 ෴ Sinhala punctuatio
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.

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. for instance can be , , , , etc.
A transliteration pattern peculiar to Sinhala, and facilitated by the absence of phonemic aspirates, is the use of for the voiceless dental plosive, and the use of for the voiceless retroflex plosive.
This is presumably because the retroflex plosive is perceived the same as the English alveolar plosive , and the Sinhala dental plosive is equated with the English voiceless dental fricative .Matzel (1983), p. 16 Dental and retroflex voiced plosives are always rendered as , though, presumably because is not found as a representation of in English orthography.

Use for the Pali language

Many of the oldest manuscripts in the Pali language 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:

The vowels are a subset of those for writing Sinhala:

The 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:

Relation to other scripts

;Similarities
Sinhala is one of the Brahmic scripts, and thus shares many similarities with other members of the family, such as the Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil script and Devanāgarī. As a general example, is the inherent vowel in all these scripts. Other similarities include the diacritic for , which resembles a doubled in all scripts and the diacritic for which is composed of preceding and following .

Likewise, the combination of the diacritics for and yields in all these scripts.

;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).

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.

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 .

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 macOS, Apple Inc. has provided Sinhala font support for versions of macOS that are Catalina and above through Unicode integration. Keyboard support is available by third-party means such as Helakuru an
Keyman
In Mac OS X, Sinhala font and keyboard support were provided b
Nickshanks
an

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.A screenshot showing some of the options
/ref> 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.

See also

* Sinhala Braille
* Loanwords
** Dutch loanwords in Sinhala
** English loanwords in Sinhala
** Portuguese loanwords in Sinhala
** Tamil loanwords in Sinhala

References

Further reading

* Coperahewa, Sandagomi. ''Sinhala Akuru Puranaya'' 'Chronicle of Sinhala Letters''Nugegoda: Sarasavi, 2018.
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External links

Scripts (ISO 15924) "Sinhala"Sinhala Unicode CharactersSinhala Unicode CharactersSinhala Unicode Character Code ChartSinhala Archaic Numbers Unicode Character Code Chart

Online resources
* Sinhala guide of the Sinhala Wikipedia (in English)

Online Sinhala Unicode Writer

Sinhala English Dictionary and Sinhala To Hindi Language Translator

Sinhala Unicode Support Group

Online Unicode Converter

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sinhala script

Brahmic scripts