Ayubowan! Today’s lesson will be about expressing the idea of “I/He/She/It was not”.
While this may seem like a simple concept, it is not quite the same as it is in English, which is why I’ve decided to talk about it today.
So as we’ve learned previously, an “I am” sentence is:
I am a nurse.
Mama hedhiyak.
මම හෙදියක්.
In English, if we wanted to say that we were previously a doctor, we would just
change “am” to “was”. However, since Sinhala does not exactly have a verb to express
this concept, there is no past tense verb that translates directly.*
What we do instead is this:
We would express the statement the exact same way as we would in the present
tense, but we must include a detail about the time in the past that we are talking about.
Before coming to Australia, I was a nurse in France.
Ostreliyaavata enna kalin, mama pranshaye hediyak.
ඕස්ට්රේලියාවට එන්න කලින්, මම ප්රංශයේ හෙදියක්.
*Just as a side note, if we wanted to emphasize the fact that I am a nurse, we would place
the adjective Thamayi at the end of the sentence.
Mama hedhiyak thamayi (තමයි).
If we want to express this idea in the negative, it works a little differently.
We actually have to add an adjective Nemeyi to the end of the sentence.
I am not a good child.
mama hondha lamayek nemeyi.
මම හොඳ ළමයෙක් නෙමෙයි.
Similarly to before, the present and the past tense are the same.
When I was going to school, I was not a good child.
Iskole yana kale, mama hondha lamayek nemeyi.
ඉස්කෝලේ යනකලේ, මම හොඳ ළමයෙක් නෙමෙයි.
That’s it for this lesson! As always, if you have any questions or comments, please
leave them down below in the comments box. Stay tuned for the next lesson on
December 28th at 12AM PST, which is next week as opposed to two weeks from the date of
this posting.
Thank you for reading!
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