Sinhala: Basic Sentence Structure
01 January, 2024
Hello again, and Happy New Year! සුභ අලුත් අවුරුද්දක් වේවා! Today we will look into understanding Sinhala sentence structure. Technically speaking, most of the time, word order in a sentence wouldn't make any difference to the meaning and is grammartically correct (personally, I never use a specific word order). However, it would be best practice to have a general structure in mind when you're first learning the language. That where today's post come in. If you haven't looked into the Sinhala Script before, I recommend you do it here.
We begin with statements. For example: I went home. This structure is applicable for both present and non-present tenses (we will cover it next lesson).
- Present tense: මම ගෙදර යනවා. (I am going home)
- Non-present tense (past): මම ගෙදර ගියා. (I went home)
With statements, I recommend you use a structure of [subject] + [object] + [verb]. However, this isn't to say that a different order would've made much of a difference. But things get a bit tricky when you have multiple entities in the subject along with adverbs and adjectives. See the following examples:
- Present tense: ඔයායි මමයි ලොකු ගෙදරට හෙමිහිට දුවනවා. (You and I are slowly running to the big house.)
- Non-present tense (past): ඔයායි මමයි ලොකු ගෙදරට හෙමිහිට දිව්වා. (You and I slowly ran to the big house.)
Here, note that ඔයායි මමයි are two entities (you and I); but similar to English, they are collectively considered as one subject. So, you can't separate them within a sentence, in order to be grammatically correct. Next, look at ලොකු ගෙදරට. ලොකු means big, and is the adjective, while ගෙදර[ට] means [to the] house and is the object. Again, similar to English, the adjective is considered as part of the object and cannot be split within a sentence. However, now that we reach හෙමිහිට දුවනවා, things change. හෙමිහිට means slowly and දුවනවා means [is/am/are] running. But the thing is, unlike the others, it wouldn't be wrong for you to split the two within the sentence.
Moving on to questions, we can see that the change is not a drastic one. Looking at the following example, we can see that the only difference is that there is a question particle added to the end.
- Present tense: මම ගෙදර යනවාද? (Am I going home?)
- Non-present tense (past): මම ගෙදර ගියාද? (Did I go home?)
So, as a starting point, I'd reccommend you to stick with a sentence structure because that would help you to develop your vocabulary and other grammar first and then work on the nuances of the language.
[adjective(s) + subject(s)] + [adjective(s) + object(s)] + [adverb(s) + adjective(s)] + (question part.)
Important!!! Although you begin with a template sentence
structure, I encourage you to try and move things around and understand the
dynamics of the langauge. Trust me, it is a beautiful language, but every
beautiful art once had some (relatively) hideous sketch lines. Until next
time!