Sinhala
සිංහලSample Characters
First 48 characters from Sinhala (U+0D81–U+0DF4)
About Sinhala
The Sinhala script (සිංහල) is an abugida used to write the Sinhala language, spoken by approximately 17 million people in Sri Lanka. The script descended from the ancient Brahmi script through the Kadamba and Early Brahmi forms.
Sinhala script has a particularly large set of characters due to its preservation of many Sanskrit phonemic distinctions. It is written left-to-right and is notable for its circular, rounded letterforms, similar to other South and Southeast Asian scripts. Sinhala has been distinctly separated from Tamil in Sri Lanka's identity politics.
Data sourced from the ISO 15924 registry, Unicode CLDR, and the Unicode Character Database.
Script Family & Lineage
Languages Using Sinhala 1
Frequently Asked Questions
What type of writing system is Sinhala?
What direction does Sinhala read?
How many languages use the Sinhala script?
When was the Sinhala script created?
Does Sinhala have uppercase and lowercase letters?
Compare Sinhala With Another Script
Direction, characters, languages — side by side.
Key Facts
- ISO Code
- Sinh
- ISO Number
- 348
- Script Type
- Abugida
- Direction
- Left-to-right
- Status
- Living
- Region
- South Asian
- Characters
- 111
- Introduced
- 300 CE
- Languages
- 1
- Total Speakers
- ~17M
Unicode Ranges
-
SinhalaU+0D81–U+0DF4
-
Sinhala Archaic NumbersU+111E1–U+111F4
Script Properties
- Has Case
- No
- Cursive
- No
- Vowels
- inherent