Lingoflyඅ — a
«a» is a vowel of the Sinhala script, read as “a”. Short “a”, close to the first vowel of “about” said clearly — as in “cup”. For example, in the word “අද” (ada) — today. The Sinhala alphabet has 59 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. The same sound already sits inside every consonant: ක is “ka”, not “k”. A separate letter is needed only at the beginning of a word. It appears, for example, in the word “අපි” (api) — we.
In short
| Character | අ |
| Name | a |
| Sound | a |
| What it is | a vowel |
In our course the character comes 1st of 76: the order here is not alphabetical but from familiar to unfamiliar, after it comes ආ, appears in 361 words of this site.
How to type අ
- On a phone: add the Sinhala keyboard in the keyboard settings (Gboard on Android; Keyboards in the iPhone settings).
- In Word on Windows: type U+0D85 and press Alt+X right after it — the code turns into the character.
- On a Mac: switch to the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type 0D85.
- Unicode code point: U+0D85. With it, the character can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
Short “a”, close to the first vowel of “about” said clearly — as in “cup”
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
The character in the “twelve vowels you need” group
A separate vowel letter stands only at the beginning of a word: inside it the vowels are written as signs. Every short one has a long pair, and the length changes the meaning.
Words with this character
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 (for «a» it is “a”, as in the word “අද” (ada)), 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 — 59 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 අ read?
As “a” — it is a vowel of the Sinhala script. Short “a”, close to the first vowel of “about” said clearly — as in “cup”. For example, in the word “අද” (ada) — today.