QCAA Sinhala (SEE) cheat sheet

The subject assesses Sinhala language competence across listening, speaking, reading and writing, with the written external examination carrying the main weighting.

Sinhala is an Indo-Aryan language written in the Sinhala script, an abugida in which each consonant carries an inherent vowel /a/ unless modified by a vowel sign (pili) or a hal kirima.

The standardised written variety (ලංකා සිංහල) is the register expected in formal examination responses; colloquial spoken forms differ systematically in verb endings and pronouns.

Sinhala distinguishes two deictic pronoun series: near (මේ, මෙයා, මෙය) and far (ඒ, එයා, එය), plus an honorific series (ඔයා, එතුමා) whose use depends on relative status and age.

Case is marked by suffixes on the noun: nominative (unmarked or -ා/-ය), accusative/dative (-ට), instrumental (-ෙන්), locative (-ෙහි/-ේ), ablative (-ෙන්), genitive (-ෙග්/-ගේ).

Verb agreement encodes person, number and honorific level; the ordinary past tense and the perfect/experiential forms (e.g. කර ඇත, කරලා තියෙනවා) must be matched to the time reference in the prompt.

Anusvara (ං), visarga (ඃ) and the three sibilants (ශ, ෂ, ස) are distinguished in spelling; correct use of ශ/ෂ/ස in loanwords and Sanskritic vocabulary is a common accuracy point.

Punctuation follows Sinhala conventions: the full stop is කුඩා කොමා-style dot (.), while the traditional end-of-sentence mark is the kunddaliya (෴), now largely literary.

Text comprehension questions require locating explicit information, inferring implied meaning, and identifying the writer's purpose or tone; answers must be supported by evidence from the passage.

Formal written tasks are assessed on task fulfilment, organisation (introduction, developed body, conclusion), cohesion, range and accuracy of vocabulary and grammar, and register consistency.

Sinhala orthography uses conjunct consonant forms and touching letters (e.g. ක්‍ර, ප්‍ර) that must be reproduced correctly; incorrect ligatures are treated as spelling errors.

The alveolar nasal (ණ) and dental nasal (න) are distinct phonemes in spelling though often merged in speech; the same applies to ල/ළ retroflexion.

Direct and indirect speech transformations require shifting pronouns, tense and deictic words (අද→එදා, මෙතන→එතන) and changing quotation markers to the complementiser කියා/යැයි.

Active-to-passive transformation in Sinhala typically uses the past participle plus a form of යනවා/ලැබෙනවා (e.g. ඔහු ලිව්වා → ඔහු විසින් ලියන ලදී).

Essay and letter formats follow fixed conventions: formal letters place the sender's address, date, recipient's address, salutation (ගරු ...), body and closing (ඉතා හොඳින්, ඔබගේ ...) in that order.

Idioms (වාක්‍යාංශ) and proverbs (ජනකථා/පිළිවෙළ) are tested for meaning and appropriate contextual use rather than literal translation.

Literary analysis requires identifying genre (කාව්‍ය, නවකතාව, කෙටිකතාව, නාට්‍ය), narrator or persona, setting, theme and stylistic device, with textual evidence quoted accurately.

Classical Sinhala poetry (e.g. සීගිරි ගී, සඳේශ කාව්‍ය, ජාතක කාව්‍ය) uses fixed metres; identifying the metre (e.g. ගී metre, සිලෝ metre) supports analysis of rhythm and form.

Figurative devices to name and explain: උපමා (simile), රූපක (metaphor), උත්ප්‍රේක්ෂා (personification), අතිශයෝක්තිය (hyperbole), ශබ්දාලංකාර (sound figures such as alliteration).

Modern Sinhala literature is conventionally periodised from the 20th century colonial encounter onward, with realism and social critique prominent in the novel and short story.

Author–work matching is a recurring item type; each identified author must be paired with the correct title, genre and rough period, with no confident guess substituted for knowledge.

Translation between Sinhala and English is judged on meaning equivalence, natural target-language idiom, and preservation of register; literal word-for-word rendering is penalised.

Summary writing requires condensing to a stated word limit, retaining main ideas only, and using own wording rather than lifting sentences from the source.

Register shift tasks (formal↔informal) require consistent adjustment of pronouns, verb endings and address terms throughout, not only in the opening sentence.