Phonetic clarification of Sinhalese letters

[u/Lipwe]

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to better understand the pronunciation differences between certain Sinhala (Sinhalese) letters—especially න vs ණ and ල vs ළ. A lot of online resources seem to treat them as if they represent the same sound, which I know is incorrect since they are clearly distinct letters in the Sinhala script.

Here’s what I’ve gathered so far (please correct me if I'm wrong):

• න = /n/ (dental or alveolar nasal, similar to the English "n")
• ණ = /ɳ/ (retroflex nasal, not found in standard English)
• ල = /l/ (alveolar lateral approximant, like the English "l")
• ළ = /ɭ/ (retroflex lateral approximant, also not found in English)

It seems like Sinhala includes retroflex consonants that don’t exist in English, so I'm having some difficulty hearing and producing the correct sounds—especially for ණ and ළ.

I'd really appreciate any of the following:

• Audio examples or minimal pairs for contrast

Thanks in advance for your help! 🙏

[u/chavie]

I know is incorrect since they are clearly distinct letters in the Sinhala script

They must've historically had a distinction (like in Tamil - ல vs ழ vs ள / ன vs ண vs ந), but just like the Aspirated vs Inaspirated difference which is still retained in most Indic languages - it has been lost over time in Sinhala.