This is not an easy language. I've figured that much out. Although I've read absolutely nothing about it yet and don't intend to until I'm here for a longer stretch. But, of course, it's interesting to be surrounded by a language you don't understand - I haven't experienced that for some time. And of course I'm listening and trying to work out what's going on at least some of the time. What I think I've worked out so far is
- it's tonal
- there are masculine and feminine nouns (fish (which I've forgotten how to say) is feminine)
- verbs do not decline in the present but do do other complicated things that are yet to be understood
- the pronunciation is very subtle
- questions are formed with "de" at the end of the sentence
-"iso gana pooloo-on de?" is my transliteration of how to say "can I get some prawns?" which is fun to know but, not having a kitchen right now, not hugely useful even if I'm understood!
- "kochira" means "how much" and possibly "how many" but this changes for feminine nouns
- "sale" (pronounced a l'espagnole) means money
- "mata" means "I"
That's it and it's not much.
And, of course, they do not use the Roman alphabet to write so there are no dictionaries I can immediately understand. This is a pain as I hate learning other scripts and am bad at it. I'm good at vocabulary and grammar though and as so many of the people I want to speak to don't have good English and most of my neighbours have virtually none I'm going to make an effort.
- it's tonal
- there are masculine and feminine nouns (fish (which I've forgotten how to say) is feminine)
- verbs do not decline in the present but do do other complicated things that are yet to be understood
- the pronunciation is very subtle
- questions are formed with "de" at the end of the sentence
-"iso gana pooloo-on de?" is my transliteration of how to say "can I get some prawns?" which is fun to know but, not having a kitchen right now, not hugely useful even if I'm understood!
- "kochira" means "how much" and possibly "how many" but this changes for feminine nouns
- "sale" (pronounced a l'espagnole) means money
- "mata" means "I"
That's it and it's not much.
And, of course, they do not use the Roman alphabet to write so there are no dictionaries I can immediately understand. This is a pain as I hate learning other scripts and am bad at it. I'm good at vocabulary and grammar though and as so many of the people I want to speak to don't have good English and most of my neighbours have virtually none I'm going to make an effort.
Hi there! I'm pretty confident Sinhala is *not* tonal -- I've seen no evidence of this in the phonetic/phonological literature on the language. Also, I believe that nouns can be one of THREE genders -- masculine, feminine, and inanimate. And verbs can't actually 'decline' -- they conjugate. The term 'declension' is used for case-marking on nouns. I'll be posting more on the phonetic inventory soon at The Lanka Log! (and I'm not trying to nit-pick -- it's just that linguistics happens to be what I do!)
ReplyDeleteHurrah. Will you learn and then teach it to me?
ReplyDeleteWorkin' on it. I've been at the phonetic inventory for a few hours now and it is INSANE -- not because of the language, but there seems to be no agreement among the several sources I've accumulated so far. It's slow going, but look for it soon on the Lanka Log!
ReplyDelete