Sinhalese (/sɪnəˈliːz/), known natively as Sinhala (Sinhalese:සිංහල; singhala [ˈsiŋɦələ]), is the native language of the Sinhalese people, who make up the largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka, numbering about 16 million. Sinhalese is also spoken as a second language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, totalling about three million. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. Sinhalese has its own writing system, the Sinhala alphabet, which is one of the Brahmic scripts, a descendant of the ancient Indian Brahmi script closely related to the Kadamba alphabet.