Lingoflyඏ — lu
«lu» is a vowel of the Sinhala script, read as “lu”. A syllabic “l” — a sign from the Sanskrit tradition. The Sinhala alphabet has 59 letters in total. It is in the table but not in the language: it occurs in a handful of borrowings. In the alphabet it sits in the “two diphthongs — and four from sanskrit” group.
In short
| Character | ඏ |
| Name | lu |
| Sound | lu |
| What it is | a vowel |
In our course the character comes 11th of 76: the order here is not alphabetical but from familiar to unfamiliar, its neighbours in the course are ඎ and ඐ.
How to type ඏ
- 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+0D8F 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 0D8F.
- Unicode code point: U+0D8F. With it, the character can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
A syllabic “l” — a sign from the Sanskrit tradition
The character in the “two diphthongs — and four from sanskrit” group
The diphthongs ඓ ඖ (“ai”, “au”) are not common. The last four (ඍ ඎ ඏ ඐ) are met almost never. These are the Sanskrit syllabic “r” and “l”, left in the table for completeness.
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 ඏ read?
As “lu” — it is a vowel of the Sinhala script. A syllabic “l” — a sign from the Sanskrit tradition.