REPORT ON THE CURRENT STATUS OF
UNITED NATIONS ROMANIZATION SYSTEMS FOR GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES
Compiled by the UNGEGN Working Group on Romanization Systems
Version 4.0, March 2016

Sinhalese

There does not seem to exist any national systems of romanization for Sinhalese (Sinhala) in Sri Lanka.

In 1972, D. N. Sharma prepared a romanization table for Sinhalese (Sinhala) which was published in vol. II of the conference report together with the other languages of the Indian group1.

Sinhalese uses an alphasyllabic script whereby each character represents a syllable rather than one sound. Vowels and diphthongs are marked in two ways: as independent characters (used syllable-initially) and in an abbreviated form, to denote vowels after consonants.

System of romanization

Character variants and a list of ligatures have been added to the table prepared by D. N. Sharma.

I. Independent vowel characters

1 a
2 ā
3 æ̆A
4 æA
5 i
6 ī
7 u
8 ū
9
10 ṝ
11 ĕ
12 e
13 aiA
14 ŏ
15 o
16 au

II. Abbreviated vowel characters and other symbols

1   a
2  ා ā
3 æ̆A
4 æA
5 i
6 ī
7 uB
8 ūC
9
10 ṝ
11 ĕ
12 e
13 ai
14 ŏ
15 o
16 au
17
18
19 (D)

III. Consonant characters

1 ka
2 khaA
3 ga
4 ghaA
5 ṅaA
6 chaA
7 chhaA
8 ja
9 jhaA
10 ñaA
11 ṭa
12 ṭhaA
13 ḍa
14 ḍhaA
15 ṇa
16 ta
17 thaA
18 da
19 dhaA
20 na
21 pa
22 phaA
23 ba
24 bhaA
25 ma
26 ya
27 ra
28 la
29 va
30 (ෆ fa)
31 shaA
32 ṣhaA
33 sa
34 ha
35 ḷa

IV. Consonant ligatures

Examples
  ර්‍  r- ර්‍ක rka, ර්‍ට rṭa, ර්‍ම rma, ර්‍ව rva, ර්‍ෂ rṣha.
්‍ර -r ක්‍ර kra, ග්‍ර gra, ඝ්‍ර ghra, ජ්‍ර jra, ට්‍ර ṭra, ඩ්‍ර ḍra, ත්‍ර tra, ද්‍ර dra, ධ්‍ර dhra, ප්‍ර pra, බ්‍ර bra, භ්‍ර bhra, ශ්‍ර shra.
්‍ය -y ක්‍ය kya, ත්‍ය tya, ව්‍ය vya.

Prenasalized sounds: ඟ ṅga, ඦ ñja, ඬ ṇḍa, ඳ nda, ඹ mba.

Other ligatures: ක්‍ෂ kṣha, ඥ jña, න්‍ද nda.

Reference

  1. Second United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names. London, 10–31 May 1972. Vol. II. Technical papers, pp. 151–152.