In today’s lesson, we will be adding adjectives to our toolbelt of expressions.
How to Use Adjectives
Like in many languages, English included, when an adjective is connected to
a noun in Sinhala, it goes in front of the noun. Let’s take a look:
The big dog eats food.
Loku ballaa kǣma kanawaa.
ලොකු බල්ලා කෑම කනවා.
The little boy reads.
Podi kolla kiyawanawaa.
පොඩි කොල්ලා කියවනවා.
If you know the adjective, then adding it to your sentence is pretty
straightforward.
Adverbs
Adverbs work exactly the same as adjectives.
The small girl eats fast.
Podi kella ikmanaṭa kanawaa.
පොඩි කෙල්ල ඉක්මනින් කනවා.
Noun is Adjective:
The only kind of changes made to adjectives that I have seen so far is in the
“Noun is adjective” sentence. Let’s see how this plays out:
Let’s take the subject, lassana mal( ලස්සන මල්), beautiful flowers
These flowers are beautiful.
Me mal lassanayi.
මේ මල ලස්සනයි.
That’s all for this lesson. If you need another way of looking at this concept,
I highly recommend the posts on adjectives from the Lazy but Smart Sinhala blog.
Hi Judy,
ReplyDeleteThank you for all the great content so far, it's always great to have more resources to learn from!
One thing I find a bit confusing is the pronunciation of the 'is/are adjective' form. To my ear, lassanayi can sound a lot like lassanay. Do you know of any other instances like this where the written word and its spoken form don't quite match up? Or is it just my untrained ear...
David,
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading! I think it is fair to say that there are many instances where the pronunciation of a word doesn't seem to match its written form. This is due to the fact that Sinhala speakers tend speak quickly, which means you might not be able to hear certain sound within a word, like the -yi sound for example. I definitely have run into the same problem as you, and I would say that it is a trained ear kind of deal. I think with more exposure to spoken Sinhala, you will start to be able to differentiate the sounds within words.
Hope that helps!