Sinhala alphabet: every letter to copy
Sinhala (සිංහල) is the language of the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka, spoken by about 17 million people as a first language and widely as a second language across the island. Its script is famous for its round, curly letters. The Sinhala alphabet is called හෝඩිය (hodiya). This page lists its vowels like අ ආ ඇ ඈ, consonants like ක ඛ ග ඝ, vowel signs, the al-lakuna and other marks.
Tap any letter to copy it.
The Sinhala letters
- ස්වර (vowels): අ ආ ඇ ඈ ඉ ඊ උ ඌ ඍ එ ඒ ඓ ඔ ඕ ඖ.
- ව්යඤ්ජන (consonants): ක ඛ ග ඝ ඞ, ච ඡ ජ ඣ ඤ, ට ඨ ඩ ඪ ණ, ත ථ ද ධ න, ප ඵ බ භ ම, ය ර ල ව ශ ෂ ස හ ළ ෆ.
- Prenasalised letters: ඟ ඦ ඬ ඳ ඹ, sounds special to Sinhala.
- Signs: ං anusvaraya and ඃ visargaya.
Sounds unique to Sinhala
Sinhala has vowels and consonants you will not find in most other Indian scripts. The vowels ඇ and ඈ stand for the sound in English “cat”. The prenasalised letters ඟ ඬ ඳ ඹ combine a soft n or m sound with the next consonant in one letter, as in අඹ (mango). These help make Sinhala sound and look distinct.
Vowel signs and al-lakuna
Vowel signs, called pili, attach to consonants: ා ැ ෑ ි ී ු ූ ෘ ෙ ේ ෛ ො ෝ ෞ. For example, ක + ා = කා. The al-lakuna ් removes the vowel from a consonant, as in ක්. When copied alone, these may appear on a dotted circle. Paste them after a consonant and they join.
Sinhala also uses a special joiner to make certain combined letters, like the ශ්රී in ශ්රී ලංකා. When you copy a whole word, the joiner comes along with it.
Sinhala punctuation and digits
The kundaliya ෴ is a traditional Sinhala mark once used as a full stop, and it now appears in poetry and decoration. Sinhala also has old digits called lith numbers, like ෦ ෧ ෨, which were used in astrology and old documents. Today most Sinhala text uses 0 to 9.
Typing Sinhala
Gboard and the iPhone keyboard support Sinhala, and phonetic tools let you type in English letters and get Sinhala text. Windows and Mac include Sinhala layouts. For a single letter, a vowel sign or a rare mark, copy it from this page.
Sinhala for festivals and family
Sri Lankans around the world use Sinhala for Sinhala and Tamil New Year (Aluth Avurudu) wishes in April, Vesak greetings and family messages. Copy letters here to write “සුභ අලුත් අවුරුද්දක්” or a loved one’s name.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the Sinhala alphabet called?
- It is called හෝඩිය (hodiya).
- What is the al-lakuna?
- The al-lakuna ් is a mark that removes the vowel from a consonant, like ක් for k.
- What is ෴?
- ෴ is the kundaliya, a traditional Sinhala punctuation mark now used mostly for decoration.
- How many letters are in Sinhala?
- The full Sinhala alphabet has around 60 letters, including vowels, consonants and prenasalised letters.
- How do I type කා?
- Copy ක, then copy the vowel sign ා and paste it right after.