stylistic:tone, stylistic:style_transfer
Writing system

The Sinhala script, Sinhala hodiya, is based on the ancient Brahmi script, and is thus a Brahmic script along with most Indian scripts and many Southeast Asian scripts. The Sinhala script is closely related to Grantha script and Khmer script, but it has also taken some elements from the related Kadamba script.

The writing system for Sinhala is an abugida, where the consonants are written with letters while the vowels are indicated with diacritics (pilla) on those consonants, unlike alphabets like English where both consonants and vowels are full letters, or abjads like Urdu where vowels need not be written at all. Also, when a diacritic is not used, an "inherent vowel", either /a/ or /ə/, is understood, depending on the position of the consonant within the word. For example, the letter ක k on its own indicates ka, realized as /ka/ in stressed syllables and /kə/ in unstressed syllables. The other monophthong vowels are written: කා /kaː/, කැ /kæ/, and කෑ /kæː/ (after the consonant); කි /ki/ and කී /kiː/ (above the consonant); කු /ku/ and කූ /kuː/ (below the consonant); කෙ /ke/ and කේ /keː/ (before the consonant); and lastly, කො /ko/ and කෝ /koː/ (surrounding the consonant). For simple /k/ without a following vowel, a vowel-cancelling diacritic called හල් කිරීම (/hal kiriːmə/, hal kirima) is used, creating ක් /k/.

There are also a few diacritics for consonants, such as /r/ in special circumstances, although the tendency now is to spell words with the full letter ර /r/, with a hal kirima on whichever consonant has no vowel following it. One word that is still spelt with an "r" diacritic is ශ්රී, as in ශ්රී ලංකාව (Śri Lankāwa). The "r" diacritic is the curved line under the first letter ("ශ" → "ශ්ර"). A second diacritic representing the vowel sound /iː/ completes the word ("ශ්ර" → "ශ්රී").

Several of these diacritics occur in two or more forms, and the form used depends on the shape of the consonant letter. Vowels also have independent letters, but these are only used at the beginning of words where there is no preceding consonant to add a diacritic to.

The complete script consists of about 60 letters, 18 for vowels and 42 for consonants. However, only 57 (16 vowels and 41 consonants) are required for writing colloquial spoken Sinhala (śuddha Sinhala). The rest indicate sounds that have been merged in the course of linguistic change, such as the aspirates, and are restricted to Sanskrit and Pali loan words. One letter (ඦ), representing the sound /ⁿd͡ʒa/, is attested in the script, although only a few words using this letter are known (වෑංඦන, ඉඦූ).

The Sinhala script is written from left to right, and is mainly used for Sinhala. It is also used for the liturgical languages Pali and Sanskrit, which are important in Buddhism and academic works. The alphabetic sequence is similar to those of other Brahmic scripts: