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The Sinhala script (Sinhala: සිංහල අක්ෂර මාලාව, romanized: Siṁhala Akṣara Mālāwa), also known as Sinhalese script, is a writing system used by the Sinhalese people and most Sri Lankans in Sri Lanka and elsewhere to write the Sinhala language as well as the liturgical languages Pali and Sanskrit. [3]
Sinhala is a Unicode block containing characters for the Sinhala and Pali languages of Sri Lanka, and is also used for writing Sanskrit in Sri Lanka. The Sinhala allocation is loosely based on the ISCII standard, except that Sinhala contains extra prenasalized consonant letters, leading to inconsistencies with other ISCII-Unicode script allocations.
Sinhala idioms (Sinhala: රූඩි, rūḍi) and colloquial expressions that are widely used to communicate figuratively, as with any other developed language.This page also contains a list of old and popular Sinhala proverbs, which are known as prastā piruḷu (ප්රස්තා පිරුළු) in Sinhala.
Although Sinhala Braille was adopted from Bharati Braille, several letters toward the end of the Bharati alphabet (in the row of 'extra' letters) have been reassigned in Sinhala: ⠟ (Bharati kṣ) is used for Sinhala ඥ gn (Sanskrit jñ), ⠱ (Bharati jñ) for Sinhala ඵ ph, ⠷ (Bharati ḻ) for Sinhala ඇ æ, ⠻ (Bharati ṟ) for Sinhala ඈ ǣ, and ⠵ (Bharati z) for Sinhala ණ ṇ.
Sinhala (/ ˈ s ɪ n h ə l ə, ˈ s ɪ ŋ ə l ə / SIN-hə-lə, SING-ə-lə; [2] Sinhala: සිංහල, siṁhala, [ˈsiŋɦələ]), [3] sometimes called Sinhalese (/ ˌ s ɪ n (h) ə ˈ l iː z, ˌ s ɪ ŋ (ɡ) ə ˈ l iː z / SIN-(h)ə-LEEZ, SING-(g)ə-LEEZ), is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka, who make up the largest ethnic group on the ...
Sinhala words of Portuguese origin came about during the period of Portuguese colonial rule in Sri Lanka between 1505–1658. This period saw rapid absorption of many Portuguese words into the local language brought about by the interaction between Portuguese colonials and the Sinhalese people, mainly in the coastal areas of the island.
Exception from the standard are the romanization of Sinhala long "ä" ([æː]) as "ää", and the non-marking of prenasalized stops. Sinhala words of English origin mainly came about during the period of British colonial rule in Sri Lanka. This period saw absorption of several English words into the local language brought about by the ...
As per 2016, the Sinhala language is mostly spoken by the Sinhalese people, who constitute approximately 74.9% of the national population and total about 16.6 million. However, around 87% of the population are able to speak Sinhala. [2] It uses the Sinhala abugida script, which is derived from the ancient Brahmi script.