Why the work matters
Consistent romanization supports authoritative maps, gazetteers, government databases, search, navigation and the exchange of Sri Lankan geographical names internationally.
Numeration
Sinhala Illakkam and Lith Illakkam
Research undertaken under ICTA’s aegis identified two Sinhala numeral sets for encoding. Sinhala Lith Illakkam is a decimal place-value system with zero, historically used particularly in astrology. Sinhala Illakkam is a non-positional system with separate signs for units, tens, one hundred and one thousand and no zero.
Read the Sinhala numeration archive Official Unicode Sinhala Archaic Numbers chart
Character encoding
SLS 1134 third revision and Unicode
SLS 1134:2011, Sinhala Character Code for Information Interchange, is the third revision of the Sri Lanka Standard. It added the shapes, code points and keystrokes for Sinhala Illakkam and Sinhala Lith Illakkam while retaining compliance with ISO/IEC 10646. Harsha contributed to Sinhala numeral research and to the standards work associated with this revision.
Important distinction: BMP and SMP
Sinhala Lith Illakkam is in the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP) at U+0DE6–U+0DEF. Sinhala Illakkam—called “Sinhala Archaic Numbers” in Unicode—is not in the BMP. Its characters are encoded in the Supplementary Multilingual Plane (SMP) at U+111E1–U+111F4, within the block U+111E0–U+111FF.
Open SLS 1134:2011 — Third Revision (PDF) Official Unicode Sinhala character chart
The linked SLS document is published by the Sri Lanka Standards Institution and marked © SLSI 2011. The link opens the existing publicly available copy; the standard is not reproduced on this site.
Latest national language work
Romanization of Sinhala geographical names
Harsha contributed technical and language-technology expertise to Sri Lanka’s work on a national Sinhala romanization system for geographical names through the Survey Department. The work uses ISO 15919 as its technical foundation, incorporates modifications needed for Sri Lankan use, and supports consideration through the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names Working Group on Romanization Systems.
Harsha’s contribution
Review of the relationship between Sinhala source spelling, transliteration rules, Unicode data and practical implementation in national digital systems.