: Developed from Sinhala Prakrit and was heavily influenced by South Indian Grantha and Kadamba scripts. Its letters are uniquely curved and "voluptuous," a style that evolved because they were historically written on fragile ola (palm) leaves ; straight lines would have torn the leaf.
A distinguishing feature of the Tamil script is its use of grantha letters to represent sounds not native to Tamil (such as 'sha', 'ksha', or 'sri'). This allows the language to incorporate Sanskrit loanwords and proper nouns without altering the core phonetic structure. Like Sinhala, Tamil is written from left to right and follows the abugida system, where consonants carry an inherent vowel that is altered by diacritic symbols. tamil sinhala alphabet
While they share a common ancestor, the modern alphabets differ significantly in character count and phonetic range. : Developed from Sinhala Prakrit and was heavily
| ච (ca) | ඡ (cha) | ජ (ja) | ඣ (jha) | ඤ (ña) | This allows the language to incorporate Sanskrit loanwords
| ත (ta) | ථ (tha) | ද (da) | ධ (dha) | න (na) |