Language/Sinhala/Pronunciation/Alphabet-and-Pronunciation

Sinhala Alphabet & Pronunciation

Hello everyone, 😀

Sinhala (සිංහල, siṁhala), also known as Sinhalese, is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka. In today's lesson, you will learn how to write the different letters of the Sinhala alphabet, how to pronounce these letters whether it is through the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), or through a video with the pronunciation of the letters by a native speaker. You will also find at the end of this lesson a virtual keyboard to be able to type each special character of this language.

Happy learning!

Sinhala Alphabet and IPA Pronunciation

Consonants

Letter	ක	ග	ට	ඩ	ත	ද	ප	බ	ස	හ	ච	ජ	ම	න	ල	ර	ව	ය	ණ	ළ	ඟ	ඬ	ඳ	ඹ
IPA of name	[ka]	[ɡa]	[ʈa]	[ɖa]	[t̪a]	[d̪a]	[pa]	[ba]	[sa]	[ha]	[t͡ʃa]	[d͡ʒa]	[ma]	[na]	[la]	[ra]	[ʋa]	[ja]	[ɳa]	[ɭa]	[ⁿɡa]	[ⁿɖa]	[ⁿd̪a]	[ᵐba]

Vowels

Letter	අ	ඇ	ඉ	උ	එ	ඔ	ආ	ඈ	ඊ	ඌ	ඒ	ඕ
Diacretic	◌	ැ	ි	ු	ෙ	ො	ා	ෑ	ී	ූ	ේ	ෝ
IPA of letter	[a]	[æ]	[i]	[u]	[e]	[o]	[aː]	[æː]	[iː]	[uː]	[eː]	[oː]
IPA of diacritic	[a, ə]

English Equivalents

Sinhala Alphabet	English Sound	Pronunciation Example
ක	[ka]	as in card
ග	[ga]	as in garage
ට	[ʈa]	as in tale
ත	[ta]	as in task
ප	[pa]	as in pan
ඩ	[ɖa]	as in sail
ද	[da]	as in charm
බ	[ba]	as in mark
ස	[sa]	as in last
(ච)	([t͡ʃa])	as in vast
ම	[ma]	as in narrow
ල	[la]	as in that
ව	[ʋa]	as in dark
ණ	[na]	as in basket
හ	[ha]	as in hard
ජ	[d͡ʒa]	as in Japan
න	[na]	as in narrow
ර	[ra]	as in rat
ය	[ja]	as in yard
ළ	[la]	as in laser
අ	[a]	as in apple
එ	[e]	as in elephant
ඉ	[i]	as in kit
ඔ	[o]	as in top
උ	[u]	as in cut
ඇ	[æ]	as in hay
ෙ	[e]	as in elephant
ි	[i]	as in ink
ො	[o]	as in opera
ු	[u]	as in but
ැ	[æ]	as in late
ආ	[aː]	as in rate
ඒ	[eː]	as in meat
ඊ	[iː]	as in sweat
ඕ	[oː]	as in pool
ඌ	[uː]	as in root
ඈ	[æː]	as in bait
ා	[aː]	as in bait
ේ	[eː]	as in late
ී	[iː]	as in sweat
ෝ	[oː]	as in toy
ූ	[uː]	as in hut
ෑ	[æː]	as in mate

Sinhala Online Virtual Keyboard