Lingoflyළ — murdhaja-la-yanna
«murdhaja-la-yanna» is a consonant of the Sinhala script, read as “lla”. Hard “la” with the tongue curled back. For example, in the word “මාළු” (māḷu) — fish. The Sinhala alphabet has 59 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. The pair to ල. English has no such sound: the tongue moves back, and the sound comes out darker. It appears, for example, in the word “කොළඹ” (koḷamba) — Colombo.
In short
| Character | ළ |
| Name | murdhaja-la-yanna |
| Sound | lla |
| What it is | a consonant |
In our course the character comes 58th of 76: the order here is not alphabetical but from familiar to unfamiliar, its neighbours in the course are හ and ෆ, appears in 207 words of this site.
How to type ළ
- 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+0DC5 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 0DC5.
- Unicode code point: U+0DC5. With it, the character can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
Hard “la” with the tongue curled back
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 “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 (for «murdhaja-la-yanna» it is “lla”, as in the word “මාළු” (māḷu)), 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 ළ read?
As “lla” — it is a consonant of the Sinhala script. Hard “la” with the tongue curled back. For example, in the word “මාළු” (māḷu) — fish.
What is the letter ළ called?
Murdhaja-la-yanna. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Sinhala script: it is called “murdhaja-la-yanna” and reads as “lla”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.
What can ළ be confused with?
The pair to ල. English has no such sound: the tongue moves back, and the sound comes out darker. 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.