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The Application of World Orthography to Sinhalese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

H. S. Perera  and
Daniel Jones
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Extract

A Description of “World Orthography”, which is now the official manner of writing a number of languages of Africa, is to be found in the booklet Practical Orthography of African Languages published by the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures. The system is a phonetic one and is in most respects the same as the International Phonetic Alphabet, the chief exceptions being that j and y are used with their English values, vowel length is indicated by doubling the letter, and capital letters are provided for the use of those who consider them necessary. J. R. Firth has shown how World Orthography may be applied to Burmese and to several Indian languages, and it is the object of this article to show how it might be applied to Sinhalese.

Type
Papers Contributed
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , October 1938 , pp. 705 - 707
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1938

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References

page 705 note 1 Seymour House, Waterloo Place, London, S.W. 1.

page 705 note 2 Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, Vol. VIII, Parts 2 and 3, 1936.Google Scholar

page 705 note 3 In borrowed words only. Some speakers substitute p.

page 705 note 4 Manchester University Press.

page 706 note 1 =

page 706 note 2 =

page 706 note 3 =

page 706 note 4 =

page 706 note 5 Cf. redi (“clothes ”), in which the i cannot be lengthened.

page 706 note 6 Pronounced goq in colloquial.

page 707 note 1 This is the literary form of the pundits. The colloquial form is baasaavə. Some literary people use a compromise pronunciation bhaasaavə.