Sinhala alphabet

Quick Facts

Type - Syllabic Alphabetic
Family - Brahmi
Location - Sri Lanka
Time - 8th century CE to Present

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

This is a syllabic alphabet in which all consonants have an inherent vowel. Diacritics, which can appear above, below, before or after the consonant they belong to, are used to change the inherent vowel. When they appear the the beginning of a syllable, vowels are written as independent letters. Prenasalized consonants, such as mb, nd, n?d and ng, are formed by special conjunct symbols that combine the stop and the homorganic nasal. When consonants are combined with r or y, special conjunct symbols are used. A subset of the letters was used to write classical Sinhala (Elu). 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.