Sinhalese Braille

Sinhalese Braille Sinhala Braille
Type	Alphabet
Languages	Sinhala
Parent systems	Braille English Braille Bharati Braille Sinhalese Braille
Print basis	Sinhalese alphabet

Sinhalese Braille is one of the Bharati braille alphabets. While it largely conforms to the letter values of other Bharati alphabets, it diverges in the values of the letters assigned toward the end of those alphabets.^[1]

Alphabet

Although Sinhalese Braille was adopted from Bharati Braille, several letters toward the end of the Bharati alphabet (in the row of 'extra' letters) have been reassigned in Sinhalese: ⠟ (Bharati kṣ) is used for Sinhalese ඥ gn (Sanskrit jñ), ⠱ (Bharati jñ) for Sinhalese ඵ ph, ⠷ (Bharati ḻ) for Sinhalese ඇ æ, ⠻ (Bharati ṟ) for Sinhalese ඈ ǣ, and ⠵ (Bharati z) for Sinhalese ණ ṇ.

In addition, the pairs of letters e/ē and ś/ṣ have interchanged braille values from what one would expect from other Bharati alphabets, and the syllable codas (last row below) are mostly innovative. Punctuation and the digits, however, are as in the rest of Bharati braille. Also as in other Bharati alphabets, letters rather than diacritics are used for vowels, and they occur after consonants in their spoken order.

Print	අ	ආ	ඇ[2]	ඈ[2]	ඉ	ඊ	උ	ඌ	එ[3]	ඒ[3]	ඓ	ඔ	ඕ	ඖ
ISO	a	ā	æ	ǣ	i	ī	u	ū	e	ē	ai	o	ō	au
Braille

Print	ඍ		ඎ		ඏ[4]		ඐ[4]
ISO	ṛ		ṝ		ḷ		ḹ
Braille

Print	ක	ඛ	ග	ඝ	ඞ	ච	ඡ	ජ	ඣ	ඤ
ISO	k	kh	g	gh	ṅ	c	ch	j	jh	ñ
Braille

Print	ට	ඨ	ඩ	ඪ	ණ[2]	ත	ථ	ද	ධ	න
ISO	ṭ	ṭh	ḍ	ḍh	ṇ	t	th	d	dh	n
Braille

Print	ප	ඵ[2]	බ	භ	ම	ය	ර	ල	ළ	ව
ISO	p	ph	b	bh	m	y	r	l	ḷ	v
Braille

Print	ශ[5]	ෂ[5]	ස	හ	ඥ[2]	ෆ
ISO	ś	ṣ	s	h	gn	f
Braille

Codas

Print	ක්	කං[6]	කඃ[6]	(see below)*
Diacritics	Halant	Anusvara	Visarga	Candrabindu
Braille

* In print Sinhala, this is indicated by an additional set of letters:

ඟ n̆ga ⠆⠛, ඬ n̆ḍa ⠆⠫, ඳ n̆da ⠆⠙, ඹ m̆ba ⠆⠃

Punctuation

See Bharati Braille#Punctuation.

References

1. World Braille Usage, UNESCO, 2013
2. These letters are out of keeping with the values of Bharati braille, as described in the text.
3. Sinhala e and ē are reversed from what one would expect from other Bharati alphabets.
4. Not listed in Unesco (2013)
5. Ś and ṣ are reversed from the expected Bharati order, and also from the Acharya website.
6. Apart from the halant (hal kirīma), the diacritics differ from Bharati norms. Acharya, however, has කං ⠰ and කඃ ⠠ as expected for Bharati.