Lingoflyත — dantaja-ta-yanna
«dantaja-ta-yanna» is a consonant of the Sinhala script, read as “ta”. Soft “ta”: the tongue at the upper teeth, not at the alveoli. For example, in the word “තේ” — tea. The Sinhala alphabet has 59 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. It appears, for example, in the word “ස්තූතියි” (stūtiyi) — thank you.
In short
| Character | ත |
| Name | dantaja-ta-yanna |
| Sound | ta |
| What it is | a consonant |
In our course the character comes 38th of 76: the order here is not alphabetical but from familiar to unfamiliar, its neighbours in the course are ඬ and ථ, appears in roughly every fifth word on this site.
How to type ත
- 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+0DAD 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 0DAD.
- Unicode code point: U+0DAD. With it, the character can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
Soft “ta”: the tongue at the upper teeth, not at the alveoli
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.
- තේtētea
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 «dantaja-ta-yanna» it is “ta”, as in the word “තේ”), 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 ත read?
As “ta” — it is a consonant of the Sinhala script. Soft “ta”: the tongue at the upper teeth, not at the alveoli. For example, in the word “තේ” — tea.
What is the letter ත called?
Dantaja-ta-yanna. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Sinhala script: it is called “dantaja-ta-yanna” and reads as “ta”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.