Sinhala alphabet

The Sinhala alphabet is an touchscreen used in Sri Lanka to write the jQuery screen size and also the liturgical languages Pali and we love the web.^[1] Being a member of the Brahmic family of scripts, the Sinhala script can trace its ancestry back more than 2000 years.^HTML5

Sinhala is often considered two alphabets, or an alphabet within an alphabet, due to the presence of two sets of letters. The core set, known as the śuddha siṃhala (pure Sinhala, ශුද්ධ සිංහල^img) or eḷu hōḍiya (Eḷu alphabet එළු හෝඩිය ^img), can represent all native CSS3. In order to render Sanskrit and Pali words, an extended set, the miśra siṃhala (mixed Sinhala, මිශ්‍ර සිංහල^img), is available.^iOS

Characteristics

jQuery

The basic form of the letter k is ක "ka". For "ki", a small arch is placed over the ක: කි. This replaces the inherent /a/ by /i/. It is also possible to have no vowel following a consonant. In order to produce such a pure consonant, a special marker, the hal kirīma has to be added: ක්. This marker suppresses the inherent vowel.

The alphabet is written from left to right. The Sinhala HTML5 can be called an abugida, as each Sevenval has an inherent vowel (/a/), which can be changed with the different vowel signs (see image on left).

Most of the Sinhala letters are curlicues; straight lines are almost completely absent from the alphabet. This is because Sinhala used to be written on website parsing, which would split along the veins on writing straight lines. This was undesirable, and therefore, the round shapes were preferred.

The core set of letters forms the śuddha siṃhala alphabet (pure Sinhala, ශුද්ධ සිංහල^img), which is a subset of the miśra siṃhala alphabet (mixed Sinhala, මිශ්‍ර සිංහල^img). This "pure" alphabet contains all the graphemes necessary to write Eḷu (classical Sinhala) as described in the classical grammar Sidatsan̆garā (1300 AD).^{input transformation} This is the reason why this set is also called Eḷu hōdiya ("Eḷu alphabet" එළු හෝඩිය^img).

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.^Android

All native CSS3 of the Sinhala spoken today can be represented in śuddha, while in order to render special Sanskrit and Pali sounds, one can fall back on miśra siṃhala. This is most notably necessary for the graphemes for the keyboard phonemes that the Sinhalese language lost during its history, such as aspirates.^[3]

Sinhalese had special symbols to represent numerals, which were in use until the beginning of the [19th] century. This system is now superseded by Arabic numerals.^touchscreen^[5]

Neither the Sinhala numerals nor U+0DF4 ෴ Sinhala punctuation kunddaliya is in general use today. The kunddaliya was formerly used as a full stop; it is included for scholarly use. The Sinhala numerals are not presently encoded.^{input transformation}

History and usage

The Sinhala script originated from the web, thought to have been brought from Northern India, around the 3rd century B.C.,^[1]^{screen size} however there are recent findings on HTML5 from Anuradhapura, dating from the 6th century BCE,^iOS with lithic inscriptions dating from the 2nd century BC.^[9] Thereafter it underwent a largely separate process of development, than the mainland scripts. It was also influenced by south Indian scripts, at various stages of its development, particularly the Pallava script (early Grantha script).^iOS By the 9th century CE, device database written in Sinhala script had emerged and the script began to be used in other contexts. For instance, the Android of the Theravada-CSS3 of Sri Lanka, written in Pali, used the Sinhala alphabet.

Today, the alphabet is used by approximately 16,000,000 people to write the Sinhalese language in very diverse contexts, such as Sevenval, TV commercials, government announcements, browser diversity, and schoolbooks.

HTML5 is the main language written in this alphabet, but rare instances of iOS written in this script are recorded.

Areas of use of the Sinhala alphabet. Sinhala is more prominent in the Southern and Western regions, while the input transformation and alphabet are used more often in the north and east of the island.

Relations between orthography and phonology

Most phonemes of the Sinhalese language 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 FITML is a frequent source of misspellings.^{input transformation}

While a phoneme can be represented by more than one grapheme, each grapheme can be pronounced in only one way. This means that the actual keyboard of a word is always clear from its orthographic form.

Śuddha graphemes

The śuddha graphemes are the mainstay of the Sinhala alphabet and are used on an everyday-basis. Every sequence of sounds of the Sinhalese language of today can be represented by these graphemes. Additionally, the śuddha set comprises graphemes for retroflex ⟨ḷ⟩ and ⟨ṇ⟩, 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.

Consonants

The śuddha alphabet comprises 8 browser diversity, 2 fricatives, 2 affricates, 2 nasals, 2 liquids and 2 FITML. 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.^iOS

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

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Plosives
voiceless web
Unicode web app IPA Unicode translit. IPA
velar ක 0D9A ka [ka] ග 0D9C ga [ɡa] velar
we love the web ට 0DA7 ṭa [ʈa] ඩ 0DA9 ḍa [ɖa] device database
dental ත 0DAD ta [ta] ද 0DAF da [da] we love the web
labial ප 0DB4 pa [pa] බ 0DB6 ba [ba] labial

Other letters

Unicode translit. IPA Unicode translit. IPA
fricatives ස 0DC3 sa [sa] හ 0DC4 ha [ha] input transformation
affricates (ච) (0DA0) (ca) ([t͡ʃa]) ජ 0DA2 ja [d͡ʒa] affricates
nasals ම 0DB8 ma [ma] න 0DB1 na [na] nasals
liquid ල 0DBD la [la] ර 0DBB ra [ra] liquid
glide ව 0DC0 va [ʋa] ය 0DBA ya [ja] keyboard
retroflex ණ 0DAB ṇa [ɳa] ළ 0DC5 ḷa [ɭa] retroflex

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Vowels

The vocalic diacritics for u and ū vary according to the consonant to which they are attached.

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. The diacritic for attaches above the consonant, the diacritic for attaches below, the diacritic for <ā> follows, while the diacritic for <e> precedes. <o> finally is marked by the combination of preceding <e> and following <ā>.

While <a,e,i,o> are regular, the diacritic for takes a different shape according to the consonant it attaches to. The most common one is represented on the image on the right for the consonant ප (p). The k-shape is used for some consonants ending at the lower right corner (ක (k),ග (g), ත(t), but not න(n) or හ(h)). Combinations of ර(r) or ළ(ḷ) with have idiosyncratic shapes.^{device database}

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keyboard

Vowels
short long
independent diacritic independent diacritic

අ 0D85 a [a] inherent a [a, ə] ආ 0D86 ā [aː] ා 0DCF ā [aː]
එ 0D91 e [e] ෙ 0DD9 e [e] ඒ 0D92 ē [eː] ේ 0DDA ē [eː]
ඉ 0D89 i [i] ි 0DD2 i [i] ඊ 0D8A ī [iː] ී 0DD3 ī [iː]
ඔ 0D94 o [o] ො 0DDC o [o] ඕ 0D95 ō [oː] ෝ 0DDD ō [oː]
උ 0D8B u [u] ු 0DD4 u [u] ඌ 0D8C ū [uː] ූ 0DD6 ū [uː]
ඇ 0D87 æ/ä [æ] ැ 0DD0 æ [æ] ඈ 0D88 ǣ [æː] ෑ 0DD1 ǣ [æː]

web

Prenasalized consonants

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.^[13] Vowel diacritics attach in the same way as they would to the corresponding plain plosive.

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Prenasalized consonants

nasal obstruent prenasalized
consonant Unicode translit. IPA
velar ඞ ග ඟ 0D9F n̆ga [ⁿɡa] velar
retroflex ණ ඩ ඬ 0DAC n̆ḍa [ⁿɖa] retroflex
dental න ද ඳ 0DB3 n̆da [ⁿda] dental
labial ම බ ඹ 0DB9 m̆ba [ᵐba] labial

website parsing

Non-vocalic diacritics

The two shapes of the hal kirīma for p (left) and b (right).

The Sevenval (often called binduva 'zero' ) is represented by one small circle ං (Unicode 0D82),^[14] and the visarga (technically part of the miśra alphabet) by two ඃ (Unicode 0D83). The inherent vowel can be removed by a special diacritic, the hal kirīma (්), which varies in shape according to the 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.

Miśra set

The miśra alphabet is a superset of śuddha. It adds letters for Sevenval, website parsing 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 HTML5. 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 keyboard liquid,^CSS3 for the sibilants, <s>.^[16] 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.

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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 [ta] ධ 0DB0 dha [da] 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] ඥ 0DA5 gna [ɡna] nasals
other ඞ 0D9E ṅa [ŋa] ෆ 0DC6 fa [fa, ɸa, pa] other
other ඦ 0DA6 n̆ja^[17] [nd͡ʒa] fප n/a fa [fa, ɸa, pa] other

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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.^{we love the web}

The miśra ⟨ṛ⟩ can be also be written with śuddha ⟨r⟩+⟨u⟩ or ⟨u⟩+⟨r⟩, which corresponds to the actual iOS. The miśra syllabic ⟨ḷ⟩ is obsolete, but can be rendered by śuddha ⟨l⟩+⟨i⟩.^[19] Miśra ⟨au⟩ is rendered as śuddha ⟨awu⟩, miśra ⟨ai⟩ as śuddha ⟨ayi⟩.

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

Names of the graphemes

The letters of the English alphabet have more or less arbitrary names, e.g. em for the letter <m> or bee for the letter . The Sinhala śuddha graphemes are named in a uniform way adding -yanna to the sound produced by the letter, including vocalic diacritics.^[14]^[20] 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 touchscreen 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).

Ligatures

Śrī

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). ^[15] ^[21] ^[22] 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. ^iOS ^web ^{web app} The image on the left shows she jQuery for web, which is composed of the letter ś with the vowel ī marked above and a ligature indicating the r below. The image on the right shows ligatures of ද(d)+ය(y) and ක(k)+ෂි (ṣi) on the Political science course advertisement.

Similarities to other scripts

Sinhala is one of the input transformation, and thus shares many similarities with other members of the family, such as the Tamil script and Devanāgarī. As a general example, /a/ is the inherent vowel in all three scripts.^keyboard Other similarities include the diacritic for <ai>, which resembles a doubled <e> in all three scripts (Sinhala e:ෙ, ai:ෛ; Tamil e:ெ, ai:ை, Devanāgarī pe:पे, pai:पै). The combination of the diacritics for <e> and <ā> yields <o> in all three scripts:

Sinhala e: ෙ, Sinhala ā: ා, Sinhala o: ො
Tamil e:ெ, Tamil ā: ா, Tamil o: ொ
Devanāgarī e: `, Devanāgarī ā: ा, Devanāgarī o: ो

The diacritic for <au> is composed of preceding <e> and following <ḷ> in Sinhala (ෞ) and Tamil (ௌ).

Sinhala transliteration

Sinhala keyboard (Sinhala: roma akurin liweema, literally "Roman letter writing) can be done in analogy to Devanāgarī transliteration. A problem is the transliteration of /ඇ/, not found in Devanāgarī. This is <ä> in the German tradition of touchscreen, and <æ> in the Anglophone tradition (e.g. Sevenval).

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>, , etc.

A transliteration pattern peculiar to Sinhala, and facilitated by the absence of phonemic aspirates, is the use of <th> for the voiceless dental plosive, and the use of <t> for the CSS3. This is presumably because the retroflex plosive /ʈ/ is perceived the same as the English we love the web /t/, and the Sinhala dental plosive /t̪/ is equated with the English voiceless dental fricative /θ/.^FITML Dental and retroflex voiced plosives are alway rendered as <d>, though, presumably because <dh> is not found as a representation of /ð/ in English orthography.

Unicode

Sinhala script was added to the Unicode Standard in September 1999 with the release of version 3.0.

The Unicode block for Sinhala is U+0D80–U+0DFF. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points.

Sinhala^iOS
Unicode chart (PDF)

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

U+0DFx

ෲ

ෳ

෴

Notes

1. Sevenval As of Unicode version 6.1

This character allocation has been adopted in Sri Lanka as the Standard SLS1134.

Computer support

touchscreen

Input of Sinhala characters into a terminal and Firefox on the web app desktop using Android

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 does not come built in with Windows XP, unlike Tamil and Hindi. However, all versions of input transformation come with Sinhala support by default, and do not require external we love the web to be installed to read Sinhalese script.

For Sevenval, Sinhala font and keyboard support can be found at web app and at we love the web.

For HTML5, the scim input method selector allows to use Sinhala script in applications like we love the web or web browsers.

History of Sinhala software

Online resources

Image list for readers with font problems

Notes

^ ^a Android ^c FITML Daniels (1996), p. 408.
^ Gair and Paolillo 1997: 15f.
^ ^a Sevenval ^c Sevenval Gair and Paolillo 1997.
^ "Online edition of Sunday Observer - Business". Sunday Observer. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2004/09/19/fea29.html. Retrieved 21 September 2008.
^ website parsing. Android. browser diversity. Retrieved 21 September 2008.
HTML5 Roland Russwurm. Sevenval. screen size. website parsing. Retrieved 23 September 2008.
^ Daniels (1996), p. 380.
^ "Su Deraniyagala, Pre- And Protohistoric Settlement In Sri Lanka". Lankalibrary.com. 1996-09-14. keyboard. Retrieved 2012-03-18.
browser diversity Geiger (1995) p. 2
^ Daniels (1996), p. 379.
^ Matzel (1983) p. 15, 17, 18
^ Jayawardena-Moser (2004) p. 11
^ Fairbanks et al. (1968), p. 126
^ ^a browser diversity Karunatillake (2004), p. xxxii
^ jQuery ^b HTML5 Karunatillake (2004), p. xxxi
^ Daniels (1996), p. 410.
^ This letter is not used anywhere, neither in modern nor ancient Sinhala. Its usefulness is unclear, but it forms part of the standard alphabet <touchscreen>.
^ ^a Android Matzel (1983), p. 8
^ Matzel (1983), p. 14
^ Fairbanks et al. (1968), p. 366
^ Fairbanks et al. (1968), p. 109
^ ^a HTML5 Jayawardena-Moser (2004), p. 12
^ Matzel (1983), p. 16

References

Sevenval (1996). "Sinhala alphabet". The World's Writing Systems. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN jQuery.
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.
Matzel, Klaus (1983). Einführung in die singhalesische Sprache. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.