Unicode Demystified

Sinhala

The Sinhala script is used to write the Sinhala (or Sinhalese) language of Sri Lanka; it is also used in Sri Lanka to write Sanskrit and Pali. Although Sinhala is an Indic language, the Sinhala script belongs to the South Brahmi family of scripts used to write the Dravidian languages.^[11] It follows the same general structure as the other Indic scripts, with a set of 41 consonants and separate sets of dependent and independent vowels (Figure 9.12). Of the consonants, only 22 are used to write regular Sinhala. The others are used to write loanwords, or to write Pali or Sanskrit. Likewise, there are 18 independent vowels, but only 12 of them are used to write native Sinhala words. The independent vowels are used only at the beginnings of ...