1. How are you?

The word for how? and for the expression how are you? are the same in Sinhala: kohom~d~ / @k`@h`mq?
In the vocabulary section we have two ways of saying fine: war~d~k nae: / vrqK n$ and ohe: inn~wa: / o@H iNnv`

You can use either; the first literally means no problem and the second I’m existing well.

2. Where are you from?

We look at two questions here. You will most likely be asked where you are from and the question will be:

T1.3h

Literally: your country where

If you want to know where a Sri Lankan is from you can ask:

3. Negation

In English we use the word not to negate a sentence but in Sinhala there are various ways to do this. In this lesson we will start to look at two of these ways and you will get more exposure to them in later lessons.

Look at the following examples asking about nationalities and jobs:

T1.3i

T1.3j

In these examples we use nae: / n$ to say no initially but then we use nemeay / @n@mû to say that something isn’t the case rather, something else is actually true. We don’t use a separate word for this concept in English and it can be quite confusing. Look at some more examples with the job vocabulary from Lesson 2.

T1.3k

4. Talking about age:

Whereas we use to, and other prepositions to express various ideas, the Sinhalese change the word itself to express these meanings. From the dialogue, here is the first example of this:

T1.3l

Literally: to me years twenty seven
When you are talking about your age you need to say to me or to you or to him etc look at these examples:

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