සිංහල අක්ෂර මාලාව

sinhala akshara malawa
සිංහල අක්ෂර මාලාවයනු සිංහල භාෂාව සහ සමහරවිට පාලි හෝ සංස්කෘත භාෂාවන් ලියනු ලබන අක්ෂර මාලාවයි.සිංහල අක්ෂර මාලාව පිළිබඳ විද්වත් මත වලට අනුව සිංහල අකාරය ආකාර දෙකකි.එනම් සංවෘත හා විවෘත භේදයයි .
Sinhalese is often considered two alphabets, or an alphabet within an alphabet, due to the presence of two sets of letters. The core set, known as theśuddha siṃhala(pure Sinhalese,  ශුද්ධ සිංහල) oreḷu hōḍiya(Eḷualphabet  එළු හෝඩිය), can represent all nativephonemes. In order to render Sanskrit and Pali words, an extended set, themiśra siṃhala(mixed Sinhalese, මිශ්‍ර සිංහල), is available.
The alphabet is written from left to right. The Sinhalese script is anabugida, as eachconsonanthas aninherent vowel(/a/), which can be changed with the different vowel signs or removed (see image on left for examples).
Most of the Sinhalese letters arecurlicues; straight lines are almost completely absent from the alphabet. This is because Sinhala used to be written ondried palm leaves, which would split along the veins on writing straight lines. This was undesirable, and therefore, the round shapes were preferred.
The core set of letters forms theśuddha siṃhalaalphabet (pure Sinhalese, ශුද්ධ සිංහල), which is a subset of themiśra siṃhalaalphabet (mixed Sinhalese, මිශ්‍ර සිංහල). This "pure" alphabet contains all the graphemes necessary to write Eḷu  (classical Sinhalese) as described in the classical grammar Sidatsan̆garā (1300 AD).This is the reason why this set is also calledEḷu hōdiya("Eḷu alphabet" එළු හෝඩිය).
The definition of the two sets is thus a historic one. Out of pure coincidence, the phoneme inventory of present-day colloquial Sinhala is such that yet again theśuddhaalphabet suffices as a good representation of the sounds.
All nativephonemesof the Sinhala spoken today can be represented inśuddha, while in order to render special Sanskrit and Pali sounds, one can fall back onmiśra siṃhala. This is most notably necessary for thegraphemesfor theMiddle Indicphonemes that theSinhalese languagelost during its history, such asaspirates.
Sinhalese had special symbols to represent numerals, which were in use until the beginning of the [19th] century.
This system is now superseded by Arabic numerals.
Neither theSinhala numeralsnor U+0DF4  ෴  Sinhalese punctuationkunddaliyais in general use today. The kunddaliya was formerly used as a full stop.
The Sinhalese script is aBrahmi derivate, and was imported from Northern India, around the 3rd century BCE,but was influenced at various stages by South Indian scripts, manifestly influenced by the earlyGrantha script.
There have been found potteries inAnuradhapurafrom the 6th century BCE, with lithic inscription dating from 2nd century BCE written inPrakrit.
By the 9th century CE,literaturewritten in Sinhalese script had emerged and the script began to be used in other contexts. For instance, theBuddhist literatureof theTheravada-Buddhistsof Sri Lanka, written inPali, used the Sinhalese alphabet.
Today, the alphabet is used by approximately16,000,000 peopleto write the Sinhalese language in very diverse contexts, such asnewspapers,TV commercials,governmentannouncements,graffiti, andschoolbooks.
Sinhalais the main language written in this script, but rare instances ofSri Lanka Malayare recorded.
Most phonemes of the Sinhalese language can be represented by aśuddhaletter or by amiśraletter, but normally only one of them is considered correct. This one-to-many mapping ofphonemesontographemesis a frequent source ofmisspellings.
While a phoneme can be represented by more than one grapheme, each grapheme can be pronounced in only one way. This means that the actualpronunciationof a word is always clear from its orthographic form.
Theśuddhagraphemes are the mainstay of the Sinhalese alphabet and are used on an everyday-basis. Every sequence of sounds of the Sinhalese language of today can be represented by these graphemes. Additionally, theśuddhaset comprises graphemes forretroflex⟨ḷ⟩ and ⟨ṇ⟩, which are no longer phonemic in modern Sinhala. These two letters were needed for the representation of Eḷu, but are now obsolete from a purely phonemic view. However, words whichhistoricallycontain these two phonemes are still often written with the graphemes representing the retroflex sounds.
Theśuddhaalphabet comprises 8plosives, 2fricatives, 2affricates, 2nasals, 2liquidsand 2glides. Additionally, there are the two graphemes for the retroflex sounds/ɭ/and/ɳ/, which are not phonemic in modern Sinhala, but which still form part of the set. These are shaded in the table.
The voiceless affricate (ච[t͡ʃa]) is not included in theśuddhaset by purists since it does not occur in the main text of the Sidatsan̆garā. The Sidatsan̆garā does use it in examples though, so this sound did exist in Eḷu. In any case, it is needed for the representation of modern Sinhala.
The basic shapes of these consonants carry an inherent/a/unless this is replaced by another vowel or removed by thehal kirīma.
Vowels
Vowels come in two shapes: independent anddiacritic. The independent shape is used when a vowel does not follow a consonant, e.g. at the beginning of a word. The diacritic shape is used when a vowel follows a consonant. Depending on the vowel, the diacritic can attach at several places. The diacritic for ⟨i⟩ attaches above the consonant, the diacritic for ⟨u⟩ attaches below, the diacritic for ⟨ā⟩ follows, while the diacritic for ⟨e⟩ precedes. ⟨o⟩ finally is marked by the combination of preceding ⟨e⟩ and following ⟨ā⟩.
While <a,e,i,o> are regular, the diacritic for ⟨u⟩ takes a different shape according to the consonant it attaches to. The most common one is represented on the image on the right for the consonant ප (p). The k-shape is used for some consonants ending at the lower right corner (ක (k),ග (g), ත(t), but not න(n) or හ(h)). Combinations of ර(r) or  ළ(ḷ) with ⟨u⟩ have idiosyncratic shapes.
In Sinhala the diacritics are called පිලිpili(vowel strokes). දිගdigameans "long" because the vowel is sounded for longer and දෙකdekameans "two" because the stroke is doubled when written.
Theprenasalized consonantsresemble their plain counterparts. ⟨m̆b⟩ is made up  by the left half of ⟨m⟩ and the right half of ⟨b⟩, while the other three are just like the grapheme for the plosive with a little stroke attached to their left.Vowel diacritics attach in the same way as they would to the corresponding plain plosive.
Theanusvara(often calledbinduva'zero' ) is represented by one small circle ං (Unicode 0D82),and thevisarga(technically part of themiśraalphabet) by two ඃ (Unicode 0D83). The inherent vowel can be removed by a specialviramadiacritic, thehal kirīma( ්), which has two shapes depending on which consonant it attaches to. Both are represented in the image on the right side. The first one is the most common one, while the second one is used for letters ending at the top left corner.
Themiśraalphabet is asupersetofśuddha. It adds letters foraspirates,retroflexesandsibilants, which are not phonemic in today's Sinhala, but which are necessary to represent non-native words, likeloanwordsfromSanskrit, Pali orEnglish. The use of the extra letters is mainly a question of prestige. From a purely phonemic point of view, there is no benefit in using them, and they can be replaced by a (sequence of)śuddhaletters as follows: For themiśraaspirates, the replacement is theplainśuddhacounterpart, for themiśraretroflexliquidsthe correspondingśuddhacoronalliquid,for thesibilants, ⟨s⟩.ඤ (ñ) and  ඥ (gn) cannot be represented byśuddhagraphemes but are found only in fewer than 10 words each. ෆ fa can be represented by ප pa with a Latin ⟨f⟩ inscribed in the cup.
There are six additional vocalic diacritics in themiśraalphabet. The twodiphthongsare quite common, while the "syllabic" ṛ is much rarer, and the "syllabic" ḷ is all but obsolete. The latter are almost exclusively found in loanwords from Sanskrit.
Themiśra⟨ṛ⟩ can also be written withśuddha⟨r⟩+⟨u⟩ or ⟨u⟩+⟨r⟩, which corresponds to the actualpronunciation. Themiśrasyllabic ⟨ḷ⟩ is obsolete, but can be rendered byśuddha⟨l⟩+⟨i⟩.Miśra ⟨au⟩ is rendered asśuddha⟨awu⟩,miśra⟨ai⟩  asśuddha⟨ayi⟩.
Note that the transliteration of both ළ් and ෟ is ⟨ḷ⟩. This is not very problematic as the second one is extremely scarce.
The letters of the English alphabet have more or less arbitrary names, e.g.emfor the letter ⟨m⟩ orbeefor the letter ⟨b⟩. The Sinhalaśuddhagraphemes are named in a uniform way adding-yannato the sound produced by the letter, including vocalic diacritics.The name for the letter අ is thusayanna, for the letter ආāyanna, for the letter කkayanna, for the letter කාkāyanna, for the letter කෙkeyannaand so forth. For letters withhal kirīma, anepentheticais added for easier pronunciation: the name for the letter  ක් isakyanna. Another naming convention is to useal-before a letter with suppressed vowel, thusalkayanna.
Since the extramiśraletters are phonetically not distinguishable from theśuddhaletters, proceeding in the same way would lead to confusion. Names ofmiśraletters are normally made up of the names of twośuddhaletters pronounced as one word. The first one indicates the sound, the second one the shape. For example, the aspirated  ඛ  (kh) is calledbayanu kayanna.kayannaindicates the sound, whilebayanuindicates the shape: ඛ  (kh) is similar in shape to  බ (b) (bayunu = like bayanna). Another method is to qualify themiśraaspirates bymahāprāna(ඛ:mahāprāna kayanna) and themiśraretroflexes bymūrdhaja(ළ:mūrdhaja layanna).
Certain combinations of graphemes trigger specialligatures. Special signs exist for an ර (r) following a consonant (inverted arch underneath), a ර (r) preceding a consonant (loop above) and a  ය (y) following a consonant (half a ය on the right).Furthermore, very frequent combinations are often written in one stroke, likeddh,kvorkś. If this is the case, the first consonant is not marked with ahal kirīma.The image on the left shows theglyphforśrī, which is composed of the letterświth a ligature indicating therbelow and the vowelīmarked above. Most other conjunct consonants are made with an explicit virama, calledal-lakunaorhal kirīma, and thezero-width joineras shown in the following table, some of which may not display correctly due to limitations of your system. Some of the more common are displayed in the following table. Note that although modern Sinhala sounds are not aspirated, aspiration is marked in the sound where it was historically present to highlight the differences in modern spelling. Also note that all of the combinations are encoded with theal-lakuna(Unicode U+0DCA) first, followed by the zero-width joiner (Unicode U+200D) except for touching letters which have the zero-width joiner (Unicode U+200D) first followed by theal-lakuna(Unicode U+0DCA). Touching letters were used in ancient scriptures but are not used in modern Sinhala. Vowels may be attached to any of the ligatures formed, attaching to the rightmost part of the glyph except for vowels that use thekombuva, where thekombuvais written before the ligature or cluster and the remainder of the vowel, if any, is attached to the rightmost part. In the table below, appending "o" (kombuva saha ælepilla–kombuvawithælepilla) to the cluster "ky"/kja/only adds a single code point, but adds two vowel strokes, one each to the left and right of the consonant cluster.
Sinhala is one of theBrahmic scripts, and thus shares many similarities with other members of the family, such as theKannada,Malayalam,Telugu,Tamil scriptandDevanāgarī. As a general example,/a/is the inherent vowel in all these scripts.Other similarities include the diacritic for ⟨ai⟩, which resembles a doubled ⟨e⟩ in all scripts and the diacritic for ⟨au⟩ which is composed of preceding ⟨e⟩ and following ⟨ḷ⟩.
Likewise, the combination of the diacritics for ⟨e⟩ and ⟨ā⟩ yields ⟨o⟩ in all these scripts.
Sinhala alphabet differs from other Indo-Aryan alphabets in that it contains a pair of vowel sounds (U+0DD0 and U+0DD1 in the proposed Unicode Standard) that are unique to it. These are the two vowel sounds that are similar to the two vowel sounds that occur at the beginning of the English wordsat(ඇ) andant(ඈ).
Another feature that distinguishes Sinhala from its sister Indo-Aryan languages is the presence of a set of five nasal sounds known as half-nasal or prenasalized stops.
Sinhalatransliteration(Sinhala: රෝම අකුරින් ලිවීමrōma akurin livīma, literally "Roman letter writing") can be done in analogy toDevanāgarī transliteration.
Layman's transliterations in Sri Lanka normally follow neither of these. Vowels are transliterated according to English spelling equivalences, which can yield a variety of spellings for a number of phonemes./iː/for instance can be ⟨ee⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨ea⟩, ⟨i⟩, etc.
A transliteration pattern peculiar to Sinhala, and facilitated by the absence of phonemic aspirates, is the use of ⟨th⟩ for thevoiceless dental plosive, and the use of ⟨t⟩ for thevoiceless retroflex plosive.
This is presumably because the retroflex plosive/ʈ/is perceived the same as the Englishalveolar plosive/t/, and the Sinhala dental plosive/t̪/is equated with the Englishvoiceless dental fricative/θ/.Dental and retroflex voiced plosives are always rendered as ⟨d⟩, though, presumably because ⟨dh⟩ is not found as a representation of/[[|ð]]/in English orthography.
Sinhalese script was added to theUnicodeStandard in September 1999 with the release of version 3.0.
This character allocation has been adopted in Sri Lanka as theStandardSLS1134.
The main Unicode block for Sinhala is U+0D80–U+0DFF. Another block,Sinhala Archaic Numbers, was added to Unicode in version 7.0.0 in June 2014. Its range is U+111E0–U+111FF.
සැකිල්ල:Unicode chart Sinhala Archaic Numbers
Generally speaking, Sinhala support is less developed than support for Devanāgarī for instance. A recurring problem is the rendering of diacritics which precede the consonant and diacritic signs which come in different shapes, like the one for ⟨u⟩.
Sinhala does not come built in withWindows XP, unlikeTamilandHindi. However, all versions ofWindows VistaandWindows 10come with Sinhala support by default, and do not require externalfontsto be installed to read Sinhalese script.Nirmala UIis the default Sinhala font in windows 10.
ForMac OS X, Sinhala font and keyboard support can be found atweb.nickshanks.com/typography/and atwww.xenotypetech.com/osxSinhala.html.
ForLinux, theIBus, andSCIMinput methods allow the use Sinhalese script in applications with support for a number of key maps and techniques such as traditional, phonetic and assisted techniques.In addition, newer versions of Android mobile operating system also support both rendering and input of the Sinhala script.