The Sinhalese alphabet (Sinhala:සිංහල අක්ෂර මාලාව) (Sinhala Akṣara Malava) is an abugida used by the Sinhala people in Sri Lanka and elsewhere to write the Sinhala language and also the liturgical languages Pali and Sanskrit. Being a member of the Brahmic family of scripts, the Sinhalese script can trace its ancestry back more than 2,500 years.