Lingoflyඃ — visargaya
«visargaya» is a sign of the Sinhala script. A voiceless breath at the end of a syllable — a sign from Sanskrit; it does not occur in Sinhala words. The Sinhala alphabet has 59 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. This character does not count as a letter of the alphabet. On a carrier the character looks like this: කඃ. It appears, for example, in the word “මනඃකල්පිත කතාව” (manaḥkalpita katāva) — fiction.
In short
| Character | ඃ |
| Name | visargaya |
| Sound | visarga (breath h) |
| What it is | a sign |
| On the carrier | කඃ |
In our course the character comes 76th of 76: the order here is not alphabetical but from familiar to unfamiliar, before it comes ං.
How to type ඃ
- 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+0D83 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 0D83.
- Type this sign after its base letter, even where it is drawn before it: letter first, then the sign, and they join.
- Unicode code point: U+0D83. With it, the character can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
A voiceless breath at the end of a syllable — a sign from Sanskrit; it does not occur in Sinhala words
The character in the “hal, bindu and visarga” group
Three signs that are not vowels. Hal kirima removes the vowel altogether, the bindu adds a nasal shade, the visarga has remained from Sanskrit.
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 ඃ read?
Visarga (breath h). It is a sign of the Sinhala script. A voiceless breath at the end of a syllable — a sign from Sanskrit; it does not occur in Sinhala words.
What is the sign ඃ called?
Visargaya is what this character is called when the alphabet is recited aloud.