Lingoflyඩ — murdhaja-da-yanna
«murdhaja-da-yanna» is a consonant of the Sinhala script, read as “dda”. Hard “da” with the tongue curled back, darker than English “d”. The Sinhala alphabet has 59 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. It appears, for example, in the word “පොඩි” (poḍi) — small.
In short
| Character | ඩ |
| Name | murdhaja-da-yanna |
| Sound | dda |
| What it is | a consonant |
In our course the character comes 34th of 76: the order here is not alphabetical but from familiar to unfamiliar, its neighbours in the course are ඨ and ඪ, appears in 361 words of this site.
How to type ඩ
- 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+0DA9 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 0DA9.
- Unicode code point: U+0DA9. With it, the character can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
Hard “da” with the tongue curled back, darker than English “d”
The character in the “twenty consonants of ‘pure sinhala’” group
Shuddha sinhaala is what native words are written with. Having learned these twenty, you read almost any sign: everything else in the script is needed for Sanskrit and Pali borrowings.
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, 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 ඩ read?
As “dda” — it is a consonant of the Sinhala script. Hard “da” with the tongue curled back, darker than English “d”.
What is the letter ඩ called?
Murdhaja-da-yanna. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Sinhala script: it is called “murdhaja-da-yanna” and reads as “dda”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.