SACE Stage 2 Sinhala (continuers) cheat sheet

Sinhala verbs agree with the subject in person, number and (in the third person) animacy: ගියා (he/she/it went), ගියෝ (they went), ගියා (it went).

Spoken Sinhala drops the copula in equational sentences: මම ශිෂ්යයෙක් (I [am] a student); the written register uses ශිෂ්යයෙකි.

Politeness is encoded by pronoun and verb choice: ඔබ/ඔබතුමා + plural verb form marks respect; තෝ/තී is familiar or derogatory and is avoided with strangers.

Yes/no questions are formed by adding the question particle -ද to the focused element: ඔබ එනවාද? (Are you coming?); wh-questions keep normal word order and place the wh-word before the verb.

To accept an invitation use එන්නම් (I will come) or හොඳයි, එන්නම්; to decline politely use කණගාටුයි, මට බැහැ (sorry, I can't) followed by a reason.

Turn-taking markers: ඔව් (yes), එහෙනම් (then/well then), ඇත්තටම (really?), හරි (okay); back-channels හ්ම් and ඔව් ඔව් signal active listening.

Address terms differ by relationship: අයියා (elder brother), අක්කා (elder sister), මල්ලි (younger brother), නංගි (younger sister); these are used as vocatives even with non-relatives.

Request softening uses -දෙන්න / -පුළුවන්ද: මට උදව් කරන්න පුළුවන්ද? (Could you help me?) is more polite than the imperative උදව් කරන්න.

Sinhala is written left to right in the Sinhala script; the basic word order is Subject-Object-Verb, so the finite verb normally appears at the end of the clause.

Case is marked by suffixes on the noun: -ෙ (dative/accusative inanimate), -ට (dative), -ෙන් (instrumental/ablative), -ෙහි/-ේ (locative), -ගේ (genitive). Reading case endings is essential to identify who does what.

Definiteness and number are shown by the final vowel/consonant: පොත (book), පොත් (books), පොතක් (a book), පොත (the book); -ක් marks indefinite singular.

Relative clauses precede the noun they modify and use a participle: ඊයේ ආ මිනිසා (the man who came yesterday); there is no separate relative pronoun.

Inference questions require linking stated facts, not prior knowledge; if a text says වැස්ස නිසා පන්තිය නැවතුණා, the inference is that the class was cancelled because of rain.

Register signals: literary texts use -ය, -යි and longer verb forms (ගියේය); news and dialogue use colloquial forms (ගියා); identify register to judge tone.

Author attitude is often carried by evaluative adjectives and discourse markers: අවාසනාවකට (unfortunately), ඇත්තෙන්ම (truly), එහෙත් (however) shift or signal stance.

Summarising requires retaining main clauses and deleting examples; a good summary keeps the topic sentence's claim and the concluding consequence, not the illustrative detail.

Formal letters follow: sender address, date, recipient address, salutation (ගරු මහත්මයා/මහත්මිය), body, closing (ඔබගේ විශ්වාසී), signature; informal letters use ආදරණීය (dear) and casual closings.

Narrative texts in Sinhala typically open with a time/place setting (එක් දිනක් - one day), then complicating action, then resolution; past tense uses -ා/-ණා/-ණේ forms.

Cohesion is built with connectors: එබැවින් (therefore), එහෙත් (however), ඊට අමතරව (in addition), පසුව (afterwards), අවසානයේ (finally).

Reported speech uses කියා/යැයි after the quoted clause: ඔහු එනවා කියා කීවා (he said that he would come); the embedded verb keeps its own tense.

Imperative and hortative forms for instructions and proposals: කරන්න (do), කරමු (let us do), නොකරන්න (do not do); negative imperative adds නො-.

Essay structure for SACE tasks: introduction stating the position, two or three body paragraphs each with a topic sentence and evidence, conclusion restating the position without new points.

Formal written style prefers full verb forms and avoids English loanwords where a Sinhala equivalent exists: use පරිගණකය (computer), රූපවාහිනිය (television) in formal prose.

Descriptive writing uses sensory adjectives and similes with වගේ (like): රන්වන් හිරු එළිය වගේ (like golden sunlight); place the simile after the noun it describes.

Sinhala belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of Indo-European and is spoken mainly in Sri Lanka; its closest relative is Dhivehi (Maldivian), and it has been influenced by Pali, Sanskrit, Tamil and Portuguese, Dutch and English.

The Sinhala script derives from Brahmi; it is an abugida, so each consonant carries an inherent vowel /a/ unless a vowel sign (pili) or hal kirima (්) changes it.

Diglossia is central: literary Sinhala (ග්රන්ථ) differs sharply from spoken Sinhala (කථා), e.g., literary ගියේය versus colloquial ගියා.

Sinhala has prenasalised voiced stops (ඳ, ඬ, ඟ) and a distinction between retroflex and dental nasals (ණ/න) and laterals (ළ/ල) that affects spelling accuracy.

Cultural norms: respect for elders is shown by using ඔබතුමා/ඔබතුමිය and by not using first names for teachers; the head is sacred and touching it is avoided.

The Sinhala and Tamil New Year (අලුත් අවුරුද්ද) in April is marked by the nonagathe (auspicious time), kiribath (milk rice) and anointing oil; Vesak (May) commemorates the Buddha's birth, enlightenment and passing.

Traditional arts include Kandyan dance (with ves, naiyadi and udekki drums), low-country dance, and Sinhala literature such as the sandesa kavya (message poems) and the Jataka-based stories.

Buddhism shapes everyday vocabulary and idiom: පින් (merit), කර්මය (karma), බුදු සරණයි (a blessing); understanding these terms is necessary for interpreting texts about festivals and family life.