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Similar to Sinhala scripts, a Tamil letter carries the inherent vowel of /a/. Nowadays they are used to write words with English origin as well. There are six characters borrowed from Grantha and have been used to write Sanskrit loanwords. Borrowings from Sanskrit also added some special letters to Tamil. Sometimes these phonetic alterations are conditioned by the sound's position in the word. To write some of these sounds, some signs have multiple sound values: Tamil letter ka stands for both /ka/ and /ga. Unlike other South Asian scripts, Tamil does not have signs for voiceless aspirated (such as /kh/), voiced (/g/), and voiced aspirated stops (/gh/), which explains the relatively small number of signs in the Tamil script compared to other South Asian scripts. The present day Sinhala alphabet contains a total of 1660 individual characters. In Sinhala, all consonants are expanded for each vowel combination. However, the accepted Sinhala alphabet (sammatha sinhala akshara malawa) consists of 20 vowels and 41 consonants. A mixed Sinhala alphabet (mishra sinhala akshara malawa) consists of 18 vowels and 41 consonants. The basic pure Sinhala (Elu hodiya) consist of 12 vowels and 25 consonants. In Sinhala, there are three versions of the alphabet. There are no publications or even a simple chart giving the complete Sinhala alphabet in Sri Lanka.
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The Nature of the Sinhala and Tamil Alphabets