About a month ago I tried to learn the Sinhala alphabet. I was already familiar with Brahmic alphabets since I had learned the Hindi one, so I already understood many of the general concepts and just focused on trying to learn the distinct shapes of the letters. Sinhala has been described as one of the world's most creative alphabets. Since it used to be written on the back of leaves, most of its letters have distinct curlicue shapes which would have prevented the leaf from tearing.
Surprisingly, I could find very little information online about the Sinhala script, and focused my study mostly on a Wikipedia article that showed the letters and their corresponding international phonetic alphabet (IPA) pronunciation. I felt like most of these letters were distinct and easy to tell apart, but then I came across න (na) and ත (ta), and for the life of me I couldn't tell what made the two different.
My first thought was that it had something to do with "tail" length, since the tail on න seemed to go out further than ත. I ended up asking my Sri Lankan friend Naveen what the difference was. He told me it had nothing to do with the tail, but in fact it had to do more with the front. This is easier to see if the letters are bigger:
Surprisingly, I could find very little information online about the Sinhala script, and focused my study mostly on a Wikipedia article that showed the letters and their corresponding international phonetic alphabet (IPA) pronunciation. I felt like most of these letters were distinct and easy to tell apart, but then I came across න (na) and ත (ta), and for the life of me I couldn't tell what made the two different.
My first thought was that it had something to do with "tail" length, since the tail on න seemed to go out further than ත. I ended up asking my Sri Lankan friend Naveen what the difference was. He told me it had nothing to do with the tail, but in fact it had to do more with the front. This is easier to see if the letters are bigger:
න (na) : ත (ta)
On න (na), the point at the bottom left corner is facing up, whereas on ත (ta) it is facing down. That is the only difference between the two characters. This difference becomes clearer when a different font is used.
Letterhead of the website divaina.com, where the last letter is න
The mnemonic that I like to use to help me remember the difference is that for න (na) the letter's nose is arrogantly facing upward. Since nose starts with "n," that one is "na."
I suppose it might seem like such a difference is too small to make the letters distinct, but the Roman alphabet is equally full of such minor differences. My four-year old is learning to write now and constantly mixes up letters like "n" and "h" or "C" and "G." But when you're used to the language, you obviously don't notice just how similar all those letters really are.
I suppose it might seem like such a difference is too small to make the letters distinct, but the Roman alphabet is equally full of such minor differences. My four-year old is learning to write now and constantly mixes up letters like "n" and "h" or "C" and "G." But when you're used to the language, you obviously don't notice just how similar all those letters really are.
Anyway, I thought I would share that since I spent a long time trying to find information about it online and found nothing. There are seriously very few web resources in English that explain the Sinhala language. If you know of any, feel free to share them in the comments section.
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