How to read in Sinhala

A letter is already a syllable

The main thing to know about the Sinhala script: the vowel “a” already sits inside a consonant. ම is not “m” but “ma”. ක is “ka”. ර is “ra”.

So the first word is read at once, without a single vowel sign: මම (mama) — “mama”, “I”.

Such a system is called an abugida: the letter carries its own vowel until a sign changes it.

How to remove the vowel

If the “a” in the syllable is not needed, hal kirima — ් — is put over the letter. ක is “ka”, ක් is just “k”.

Sinhala words often end in a consonant, and almost every such word carries hal kirima on its last letter. බත් (bat) — “bat” (rice), not “bata”.

In බස් (bas) — “bas”, a bus — hal kirima also removes the vowel.

All the pili at once

The vowel signs are called pili. There are fourteen of them, split into “short — long” pairs. Length changes the meaning in Sinhala, so learn each pair together.

They are written on all four sides of the letter: right, above, below and left. Three of them — “o”, “oo” and “au” — hold the letter from both sides at once. No need to learn the table by heart at once: the signs are easier taken two or three at a time.

In the “Example” column each pili stands on ක (ka), the way the school charts in Sri Lanka do it. No letter in Sinhala comes without a vowel, so subtract that “k” in your head.

The vowel sign that stands where it does not sound

Kombuva ෙ is written to the left of the letter but pronounced after it. කෙ is “ke”, not “ek”.

This is the only spot where Sinhala writing goes against the order of speech, and everybody trips over it. The rule is simple: seeing a kombuva, look to the right, find the letter, and only then read.

Four more signs are assembled out of the kombuva: ේ (long “e”), ෛ (“ai”), ො (“o”) and ෝ (“oo”). In the last two the letter is squeezed from both sides — still one vowel sign, not two.

The dot that hums

Bindu ං — a dot at the top right. It adds to the syllable a nasal “n/ng” hum: ලංකාව (laṁkāva) — “Lankaava”, සිංහල (siṁhala) — “sinhala”.

Next to it five half-nasal letters are worth learning: ඟ, ඦ, ඬ, ඳ, ඹ. Each is one letter for a nasal shade plus a consonant: ළඟ (ḷanga) (“langa”, near), හොඳ (honda) (“honda”, good), අඹ (amba) (“amba”, mango).

The half-nasal letters exist neither in Sanskrit nor in the neighboring Tamil — this is what makes Sinhala Sinhala. By ear the shade is short: not “lan-ga” but almost “lănga”.

The whole script

There are seventy-six signs in the script, but not all of them need learning. The inventory splits in two. Shuddha sinhaala is “pure Sinhala”: the twelve vowels and twenty consonants that native words are written with. Misra sinhaala is the rest — the signs for Sanskrit and Pali borrowings.

The shuddha carries all everyday writing. Everything else sounds almost like its plain pair in everyday speech: the aspirates ඛ ඝ ඡ ඣ ඨ ඪ ථ ධ ඵ භ, the two extra “sh” ශ ෂ and the Sanskrit vowels. Reading them is useful, writing them never will be. Look for them in the alphabet, where they stand in the usual order.

What order to take the characters in

The writing course is split into 7 steps: one step is one lesson, a few characters at a time. Nobody takes the whole script at once out of mercy: 44 signs in an evening stay in memory for exactly that, an evening.

• Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many times
  Donovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
• 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 times
  Adesope, 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.

Next

• Sinhala alphabetA reference of all the characters
• TransliterationThe table, both ways
• PronunciationWhat you hear and what is hard
• How to break down an unfamiliar scripta note