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The Sinhala script is an abugida script used in Sri Lanka to write the official language Sinhala...

The Sinhala script is an abugida script used in Sri Lanka to write the official language Sinhala and also sometimes the liturgical languages Pali and Sanskrit. Being a member of the Brahmic family of scripts, the Sinhala script can trace its ancestry back more than 2000 years. Sinhala is often considered two alphabets, or an alphabet with another alphabet, due to the presence of two different sets of letters. The core set, known as the śuddha siṃhala (Pure Sinhala, ශුද්ධ සිංහල) or eḷu hōḍiya (Eḷu alphabet එළු හෝඩිය), can represent all native phonemes. In order to render Sanskrit and Pali words, an extended set, the miśra siṃhala (Mixed Sinhala, මිශ්‍ර සිංහල), is available. The alphabet is written from left to right. The Sinhala writing system can be called an abugida, as each consonant has an inherent vowel (/a/), which can be changed with the different vowel signs (see image on left). Most of the Sinhala letters are curlicues; straight lines are almost completely absent from the alphabet. This is because Sinhala used to be written on dried palm leaves, which would split along the veins on writing straight lines. This was undesirable, and therefore, the round shapes were