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Singhalease is the language spoken by the majority of people in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is an ethnicaly very diverse countyr consisting of Sinhalease, Tamil, Muslim and Burger races. The sinhalese, who make up the majority speak the sinhalese language.
The sinhalese is a Aryan langauge related to other Indo-Aryan languages and is derived from the Pali and Sanskrit languages. More interestingly Sinhalese is also connected to all the Indo European languages such as German, English, Russian, Swedish etc.
The sinhalese alphabet is a sylabic alphabet consisting of 54 consonants and 24 vowels. (The numbers are a little hard to pin down because there are some ancient letters that are no longer in use and their have been additions to deal with other languages). The general use is limited to 38 consonants and 18 vowels. The letters are constructed in intircate curves. The straight edges found in the parental alphabets have transformed into curves because early Sri Lankan lettering was done on dry palm leaves, where the straight edges would tear the paper.
The following alphabet was obtained from http://www.omniglot.com/writing/sinhala.htm
I am not an expert on languages or on sinhalese but the following sites contain a very informative account of the sinhalease language and the alphabet.
Though I try to keep the list updated some of the links might not be uptodate.
- Sinhalese Language Links (This site contains many links to sinhalese language sites.)
- Sinhala Alphabet (This link contains a pictorial description of the sinhalese alphabet)
- Sinhala Language Resources (This site contains many links to
- Introduction to the Sinhalese writing system
- Evolution of the Sinhala Language
- Learn to Speak Sinhalese
- The origin of Sinhala
- The sinhala alphabet - but you need fonts
- The roots of Sinhala
- The sinhalese alphabet
- Sinhala, 6000 years ago
- Some unique features of Sinhala Language by Edward Perera
- Sinhala Alphabet
- - Sinhala Slang - by James J. Hughes ( Maintained by Muditha Abhaya )
- Department of Linguistics: Sinhala Study Group ( All the links to Sinhala Language )
- Down load FREE Sinhala Fonts
- Read News Papers in Sinhala ( Needs to have Sinhala Fonts in your PC )
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OTHER RESOURCES
If you know of any other sites that contain information on the sinhalese language and the writing system pls send me a e-mail and I will be happy to put your link up on my site.
CREDITS : SOUNDFILE: Ayubowan, the greeting that was sent with the voyager space probe.
OBTAINED FROM http://vraptor.jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/languages/sinhalese.au