් — hal kirima
«hal kirima» is sign of Sinhala, the “the Sinhala script” script, read as “hal (no vowel)”. No vowel at all: ක් — just “k”. The Sinhala alphabet has 76 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. The very sign that turns a syllable into a bare consonant. Almost every closed word ends with it: බත් is “bat”, not “bata”. On a carrier the character looks like this: ක්. It appears, for example, in the word “ආයුබෝවන්” — hello.
In short
| Character | ් |
| Name | hal kirima |
| Sound | hal (no vowel) |
| What it is | sign |
| On the carrier | ක් |
In our course the character comes 74th of 76: the order here is not alphabetical but from familiar to unfamiliar, its neighbours in the course are ෞ and ං, appears in roughly every other word on this site.
How it sounds
No vowel at all: ක් — just “k”
The character in the “hal, bindu and visarga” group
Three signs that are not vowels. Hal kirima removes the vowel altogether, the bindu adds a nasal shade, the visarga has remained from Sanskrit.
Words with this character
- ආයුබෝවන්āyubōvanhello
- සුබ උදෑසනක්suba udǣsanakgood morning
- ස්තූතියිstūtiyithank you
- සමාවෙන්නsamāvennaexcuse me
- ඔව්ovyes
- ඔයාගේ නම මොකක්ද?oyāgē nama mokakda?what is your name?
- මට තේරෙන්නේ නෑmaṭa tērenne nǣI don't understand
- හෙමින්heminslowly
- නැවත කියන්නnævata kiyannasay it again, please
- ගිහින් එන්නම්gihin ennamgoodbye
- උදව්udavhelp
- බත්batrice
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound, see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 76 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Sinhala character ් read?
As “hal (no vowel)” — it is sign of the “the Sinhala script” script. No vowel at all: ක් — just “k”.
What is the letter ් called?
Hal kirima. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Sinhala script: it is called “hal kirima” and reads as “hal (no vowel)”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.
What can ් be confused with?
The very sign that turns a syllable into a bare consonant. Almost every closed word ends with it: බත් is “bat”, not “bata”. Similar characters are best studied side by side and deliberately compared: learned on different days, they stay separate and get mixed up at their first meeting inside a word.