Editing Sinhala script (section)

==Transliteration==
Sinhala [[transliteration]] (Sinhala: රෝම අකුරින් ලිවීම ''rōma akurin liwīma'', literally "Roman letter writing") can be done in analogy to [[Devanagari transliteration|Devanāgarī transliteration]].

Layman's transliterations in Sri Lanka normally follow neither of these. Vowels are transliterated according to English spelling equivalences, which can yield a variety of spellings for a number of phonemes. {{IPA|/iː/}} for instance can be {{angle bracket|ee}}, {{angle bracket|e}}, {{angle bracket|ea}}, {{angle bracket|i}}, etc.
A transliteration pattern peculiar to Sinhala, and facilitated by the absence of phonemic aspirates, is the use of {{angle bracket|th}} for the [[voiceless dental plosive]], and the use of {{angle bracket|t}} for the [[voiceless retroflex plosive]].
This is presumably because the retroflex plosive {{IPA|/ʈ/}} is perceived the same as the English [[voiceless alveolar plosive|alveolar plosive]] {{IPA|/t/}}, and the Sinhala dental plosive {{IPA|/t̪/}} is equated with the English  [[voiceless dental fricative]] {{IPA|/θ/}}.{{sfnp|Matzel|1983|p=16}} Dental and retroflex voiced plosives are always rendered as {{angle bracket|d}}, though, presumably because {{angle bracket|dh}} is not found as a representation of {{IPAslink|ð}} in English orthography.