1. Greeting someone
People will tell you that the usual greeting in Sinhala is the word ayubo:wan / a`ý@b~vN. But probably the only times you will be greeted in this way, with palms pressed together in front of the chest, is when you get on an Sri Lankan Airlines plane or enter an expensive hotel. As a usual greeting just say hello.
2. Possessive adjectives
You will notice that all the possessive adjectives my, your his, her finish in this ge / @G sound. This is like the ‘s in English and by adding it to the end of a name you show possession for that person. For example:
3. Asking questions
Basically we can break down questions into two types:
- Question word questions such as what, where, why etc.
- Yes / No questions where the answer is either yes or no.
In the dialogue we have the question word what / mokadd~ / @m`kQq. Notice that the last syllable is d~ /q. This is common to almost all questions.
It is very easy to make Yes / No questions in Sinhala just add d~ / q to the statement. For example:
No comments:
Post a Comment