Sinhala script

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Sinhala
The syllable ka in Sinhala
ka in Sinhala 		Distribution area of ​​Sinhala
Font Abugida
languages Sinhala
Used in Sri Lanka
ancestry Protosinaitic script
 →  Phoenician script
  →  Aramaic script
   →  Brahmic script
    →  Sinhala
particularities Belongs to the Indian font family.
Unicode block U + 0D80-U + 0DFF
ISO 15924 Sinh

The Sinhala script ( සිංහල හෝඩිය , singhala ) is one of the Indian scripts . Like this, it is an intermediate form of the alphabet and syllabary , a so-called Abugida . It is used in Sri Lanka to write the Sinhala language .

history

Like many other Indian scripts, the Sinhala script has its origins in the Brahmi script .

With Buddhism came in the 3rd century BC. The script from India to Sri Lanka. Later the Sinhala script was heavily influenced by the South Indian Grantha script . As with the other South Indian scripts, the round shape of the letters developed from the fact that writing was mainly carried out on palm leaves , which would have been split with straight lines.

Working principle

The Sinhala script, like the other Indian scripts, is an intermediate form of the alphabet and syllabary , a so-called Abugida . In an Abugida, any consonant that does not have a vowel sign has the inherent vowel a . This inherent vowel can be changed by adding vowel signs that are firmly associated with the consonant. The consonant ක is therefore a ka , while කි is a ki .

Vowels are only represented with their own, independent characters if they occur without associated consonants, for example at the beginning of a word. As in many other Indian scripts, a consonant without an associated vowel is identified by the addition of a virama , which can have two forms in the Sinhala script: it usually looks like a small superscript p (e.g. in ක් k ) for characters that start with end in a bow, the Virama takes the form of a loop (e.g. in බ් b ).

character

The Sinhala alphabet is summarized in two inventories: the first inventory, called ශුද්ධ හෝඩිය śuddha hōḍiya (pure alphabet), contains all the characters needed to write modern Sinhala. The second inventory is called මිශ්‍ර හෝඩිය miśra hōḍiya (mixed alphabet) and expands the first to include characters that are only needed in loan words from Sanskrit and Pali .

Vowel mark

The Sinhala script has 18 vowel characters, 6 of which only occur in the mixed alphabet . The independent vowel signs on the left are only used for vowels without associated consonants, for example at the beginning of a word. If, on the other hand, a vowel occurs together with a consonant, the combining vowel signs on the right are used, which combine with the consonant sign and form a fixed unit. The combining vowel signs are shown here using the consonant ක k as an example .

Independent vowel signs COMBINING VOWEL SIGNS
character Transliteration Sound value character Transliteration Sound value
අ a [⁠ a ⁠] , [⁠ ə ⁠] ක ka [ ka ], [ kə ]
ආ - [ aː ], [ əː ] කා kā [ kaː ], [ kəː ]
ඇ æ [⁠ æ ⁠] කැ kæ [ kæ ]
ඈ ǣ [ æː ] කෑ kǣ [ kæː ]
ඉ i [⁠ i ⁠] කි ki [ ki ]
ඊ ī [ iː ] කී kī [ kiː ]
උ u [⁠ u ⁠] කු ku [ ku ]
ඌ ū [ uː ] කූ kū [ kuː ]
ඍ ṛ [ ru ] කෘ kṛ [ kru ]
ඎ ṝ [ ruː ] කෲ kṝ [ kruː ]
ඏ ḷ [ li ] කෟ kḷ [ kli ]
ඐ ḹ [ liː ] කෳ kḹ [ kliː ]
එ e [⁠ e ⁠] කෙ ke [ ke ]
ඒ ē [ eː ] කේ kē [ keː ]
ඓ ai [ ai ] කෛ kai [ ai ]
ඔ O [⁠ o ⁠] කො ko [ ko ]
ඕ O [ oː ] කෝ kō [ koː ]
ඖ ouch [ au ] කෞ chew [ au ]

Consonants

Consonant table of the Sinhala script

The Sinhala script has 40 consonants, 13 of which only occur in the mixed alphabet . The transliteration is shown in this table without the inherent vowel a, which is normally always present when the consonant does not have a vowel sign or virama.

A characteristic that distinguishes the Sinhala script from other Indian scripts is the existence of so-called "half-nasals". These represent prenasalized sounds and are represented with their own characters, as they have different meanings in modern Sinhala.

Although there is no longer any retroflexes / ɭ / or / ɳ / in the modern Sinhalese language , these sounds are still represented with separate characters. There is also a half-nasal ඦ n̆j , although the corresponding sound does not occur in Sinhala and the sign is never used.

The list of consonant characters also includes a ෆ f . This character was only recently introduced to represent the sound / f / in English loan words. Often, however, the ප p is used instead.

character Transliteration Sound value
ක k [⁠ k ⁠]
ඛ kh [⁠ k ⁠]
ග G [⁠ g ⁠]
ඝ gh [⁠ g ⁠]
ඞ ṅ [⁠ ŋ ⁠]
ච c [⁠ tʃ ⁠]
ඡ ch [⁠ tʃ ⁠]
ජ j [⁠ dʒ ⁠]
ඣ century [⁠ dʒ ⁠]
ඤ ñ [⁠ ɲ ⁠]
ට ṭ [⁠ ʈ ⁠]
ඨ ṭh [⁠ ʈ ⁠]
ඩ ḍ [⁠ ɖ ⁠]
ඪ ḍh [⁠ ɖ ⁠]
ණ ṇ [ n̪ ]
ත t [ t̪ ]
ථ th [ t̪ ]
ද d [ d̪ ]
ධ ie [ d̪ ]
න n [ n̪ ]
ප p [⁠ p ⁠]
ඵ ph [⁠ p ⁠]
බ b [⁠ b ⁠]
භ bra [⁠ b ⁠]
ම m [⁠ m ⁠]
ය y [⁠ j ⁠]
ර r [⁠ ɾ ⁠]
ල l [⁠ l ⁠]
ව v [⁠ ʋ ⁠]
ශ ś [⁠ ʃ ⁠]
ෂ ṣ [⁠ s ⁠]
ස s [⁠ s ⁠]
හ H [⁠ h ⁠]
ළ ḷ [⁠ l ⁠]
ඟ n̆g [ ᵑɡ ]
ඦ n̆j [ ᶮdʒ ]
ඬ n̆ḍ [ ᶯɖ ]
ඳ n̆d [ ⁿ̪d̪ ]
ඹ m̆b [ ᵐb ]
ෆ f [⁠ f ⁠]

special character

The Sinhala script knows a number of special characters that can only occur in combination with a consonant or a separate vowel sign:

  • The anusvara has the shape of a small circle and is used in the Sinhala script to represent the consonant / ŋ /. Among other things, it occurs in the self-name සිංහල siṁhala .
  • The Visarga , which looks more or less like a colon , only exists in script to write loan words from Sanskrit; it is not used in the modern Sinhala language.
character Transliteration
කං came
කඃ kaḥ

Punctuation marks

The Sinhala script uses western punctuation marks. There used to be their own punctuation marks like the ෴, which was used similarly to the western point, but these have now been completely out of use.

Digits

Old Sinhala numerals

In today's modern Sinhala, only Arabic numerals are used.

The original Sinhala numerals have not been used since the British conquered the Kingdom of Kandy in 1815. Modern studies show that before there was not a single number system, but at least five different number systems were used in parallel.

Sinhala in Unicode

Unicode encodes the Sinhala script in the Unicode block Sinhala in the code range U + 0D80 – U + 0DFF.

0 1 2 3 4th 5 6th 7th 8th 9 A. B. C. D. E. F.
D80 ඁ ං ඃ අ ආ ඇ ඈ ඉ ඊ උ ඌ ඍ ඎ ඏ
D90 ඐ එ ඒ ඓ ඔ ඕ ඖ ක ඛ ග ඝ ඞ ඟ
DA0 ච ඡ ජ ඣ ඤ ඥ ඦ ට ඨ ඩ ඪ ණ ඬ ත ථ ද
DB0 ධ න ඳ ප ඵ බ භ ම ඹ ය ර ල
DC0 ව ශ ෂ ස හ ළ ෆ ් ා
DD0 ැ ෑ ි ී ු ූ ෘ ෙ ේ ෛ ො ෝ ෞ ෟ
DE0 ෦ ෧ ෨ ෩ ෪ ෫ ෬ ෭ ෮ ෯
DF0 ෲ ෳ ෴
  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m code point is not assigned

Individual references and sources

  1. ^ Dileep Chandralal: Sinhala . John Benjamin Publishing Company, Amsterdam 2010, ISBN 90-272-3815-4 , pp. 27 .
  2. ^ Gordon H. Fairbanks, James W. Gair, MWS De Silva: Colloquial Sinhalese . tape I . Cornell University, Ithaca 1968, pp. 79 .
  3. ↑ Chandralal, p. 21
  4. ↑ Julie D. Allen: The Unicode Standard, version 6.0 . The Unicode Consortium. The Unicode Consortium, Mountain View 2011, ISBN 978-1-936213-01-6 , Chapter 10: South Asian Scripts-II ( PDF, 700 KB ).
  5. ↑ Chandralal, p. 26
  6. ↑ Unicode Technical Report # 2
  7. ↑ Chandralal, p. 23
  8. ↑ Fairbanks et al., P. 108
  9. ↑ Fairbanks et al., P. 126
  10. ^ The Unicode Standard, pp. 314f
  11. ↑ Proposal to include Sinhala Numerals to the BMP and SMP of the UCS (PDF file; 1.41 MB)

Web links