Sinhala Alphabet
The Sinhalese alphabet is an abugida used by Sinhala People in Sri Lanka and elsewhere, to write the Sinhala and also the liturgical languages Pali and Sanskrit. Being a member of the Brahmic family of scripts, the Sinhalese script can trace its ancestry back more than 2000 years.
Sinhalese 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 Sinhalese, ශුද්ධ සිංහලimg) or eḷu hōḍiya (Eḷu alphabet එළු හෝඩිය img), can represent all native phonemes. In order to render Sanskrit and Pali words, an extended set, the miśra siṃhala (mixed Sinhalese, මිශ්ර සිංහලimg), is available.
Read more about Sinhala Alphabet: Characteristics, History and Usage, Relations Between Orthography and Phonology, Śuddha Graphemes, Miśra Set, Names of The Graphemes, Ligatures, Similarities To Other Scripts, Sinhala Transliteration, Unicode, Computer Support, Image List For Readers With Font Problems
Famous quotes containing the word alphabet:
“I believe the alphabet is no longer considered an essential piece of equipment for traveling through life. In my day it was the keystone to knowledge. You learned the alphabet as you learned to count to ten, as you learned “Now I lay me” and the Lord’s Prayer and your father’s and mother’s name and address and telephone number, all in case you were lost.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)