เทเทเถเทเถฝ
Lingo7 lets you read books with a translation under every sentence in 49 languages. Sinhala is not one of them yet. Ask for it below, and see what adding it takes and what reading Sinhala involves.
Lingo7 does not read Sinhala yet: the app has no Sinhala dictionary, audio or shelf of books. You can vote for Sinhala here. Leave your email to vote; we add the most requested languages first and write to you once, when Sinhala is ready.
We add the most requested languages first. Leave your email and we'll write to you once, when Sinhala is ready.
Thank you!
We use your email only to tell you when Sinhala launches, and delete it whenever you ask. Privacy policy
The demo below is the live reader with a German book. Sinhala would work the same way once it is added.
Spoken in: Sri Lanka
Sinhala script is an abugida whose letters are almost all curves: it was written on dried palm leaves, which split along the veins when a stylus drew straight lines. The full alphabet has about 60 letters, 18 for vowels and 42 for consonants, of which 57 are enough for everyday Sinhala. A pure set of letters covers native words, and a larger mixed set adds letters for sounds in Sanskrit and Pali loans. A small stroke, the hal kirima, removes a consonant's built-in vowel, and words are separated by spaces.
Sinhala is strongly diglossic. Books, newspapers and official writing use literary Sinhala, whose verbs agree with their subject, while speech uses a spoken variety in which they do not, and the two differ in vocabulary and grammar as well. A learner who starts with spoken Sinhala has to learn the literary forms before reading a newspaper, and the other way round.
The traditional full stop, the kundaliya, has given way to Western punctuation. For graded reading, Sri Lanka's Educational Publications Department offers the state school textbooks as free downloads in Sinhala, from Grade 1 upward. StoryWeaver, a free online library, also has a small collection of illustrated Sinhala stories.
Our free tools cover the 49 languages in the app.
There is no date yet. We add the most requested languages first, and Sinhala needs the work described on this page. Leave your email in the form and we will write to you once, when Sinhala is ready.
Not yet. Lingo7 has no Sinhala dictionary, audio or shelf of books, so a Sinhala book would not get the sentence-by-sentence translation and word lookups the app is built on. The 49 languages it does read are listed on the home page.
One vote per email address per language. The count on this page shows a number once at least 10 people have asked, and refreshes within a minute of a new vote. Your email is stored only to tell you when Sinhala launches, and deleted whenever you ask at support@lingoseven.com.
Sinhala was traditionally written with a stylus on dried palm leaves, and straight lines would split the leaf along its veins, so the letters are built from curves and loops. Printed and handwritten Sinhala keep those round shapes today.
No. Literary Sinhala, used in books, newspapers and official texts, differs from spoken Sinhala in grammar and vocabulary, and the clearest sign is that literary verbs agree with their subject while spoken ones do not. A learner who wants to read needs the literary forms; one who wants to talk needs the spoken ones.
State school textbooks, free to download from Sri Lanka's Educational Publications Department, run from Grade 1 upward and work as a graded reading course. Illustrated children's stories on StoryWeaver are another free source.