The Laziest Way To Learn Sinhala Adjectives (And My First Attempt At a “Combo” Post)

Photo Credits: Awesome Father
(Taken at 8.30 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Explains the sleepy eyes & the f***ed up smile)

So here it is. I’m about to show you why learning Sinhala adjectives is as easy as posing for a blog photo on an early Sunday morning…

You’ll also notice that I’ve tried a couple of new things:

1. A “Combo” Post where I’ve combined 2 previous posts to introduce you to Sinhala Adjectives
2. A new interactive tool to test what you learned – but this is only for you good kids who read the entire blog post until the end, ok?

(Sidenote: I just Googled “Combo post” and didn’t find it being used anywhere, at least not in this context. So I own this word now!).

Ok, now let’s go tackle the big dark scary monster known as “Sinhala Adjectives” (no one calls it that, I just wanted to be over-dramatic)…

My Approach To Learning Sinhala Adjectives

One of our Tribesters, Julie suggested this kind of post back in October 2013. Then in Feb 2014 Lily, another member of our growing little family, also suggested it (I don’t think that she and Julie conspired together…). And only now have I got around to doing it (see what I mean by “Lazy”???). But thank you ladies for giving me the idea. Where would I be without you? :)

So, I’ve combined the following 2 posts:

• Colors in Sinhala
• Animals in Sinhala

But if you’ve not read either of them yet, no worries! I’ve done this post in a way that you can still learn the Sinhala Adjectives. But I do strongly recommend that you read them after you’re done with this, ok?

I’ve laid out a 5-Step plan to learn Sinhala Adjectives. I’ll be using the color “white” as our sample adjective and the animal “dog” as our sample noun.

Let’s start!

My 5-Step Plan To Learn Sinhala Adjectives

Step 1: Learn The Main Rule Of Sinhala Adjectives

Unlike with some other languages (French, Italian, or even Hindi as far as I know) in Sinhala the adjective is NEVER modified regardless if the noun following it is singular, plural, masculine, or feminine. The adjective word will always stay the same (just like in English)!!!

For example, in English when we say “Tall man”, “Tall woman”, “Tall men” or “Tall women”, the word “Tall” isn’t modified at all. This will be the same in Sinhala. FYI, in French, the word for tall (“grand”) will vary from “grand”, “grande”, “grands”, to “grandes” in the above example.

Now doesn’t that make the next 4 steps so much easier for us?

Step 2: Remember the words for WHITE and DOG in Sinhala

Note: In Sinhala ‘bal∙la’ means both “Dog” and “The dog”. Another lucky break for us. Nothing additional to remember.

Step 3: Learn to say “The white dog”

Here’s the complicated part…

No it’s not! It’s EASIEST part: You just simply put the color “su∙dhu” before ‘bal∙la’.

As mentioned before,the Sinhala adjective (in this case ‘su∙dhu’) will always stay the same even if we used the plural of dogs (‘bal∙lo’) or the feminine noun of dog (‘bæl∙li’).

So fricking simple!

Step 4: Replacing “White” with 12 other adjectives

Here’s a list of 12 other commonly used Sinhala adjectives to describe living things:

Click To Play With The Flashcards: Sinhala Adjectives

Step 5: A “Cool Tool” To Help You Remember These 12 Sinhala Adjectives

Did you honestly think that I was going to give you a list of Sinhala adjectives and (literally) fly away? “O ye of little faith…” You know that I wouldn’t do that to you.

Most of you know that I personally hate having to memorize things. Of course it’s sometimes necessary but I always try to minimize that part for you.

So… I’ve done a new playful thingamajig, that I think should help you remember these Sinhala adjectives in a fun way.

Ok, here it is: It’s a new multiple choice quiz. Click on “Get started” to erm… get started. Let me know if you find it useful and if I should do more of it in the future?

Also stay tuned for Part 2 of this post.. We’ll learn how to say “A white dog” (it’s a little more tricky) and we’ll replace DOG with some other new nouns.

Hope you enjoyed this one folks, speak to you again in the comments below.