Sinhala Beginners

The aim of this course is to provide students with a basic knowledge of Sinhala and of contemporary Sinhala culture. It concentrates on spoken Sinhala, the language used by speakers at all social and from all educational backgrounds. Literary Sinhala differs markedly from the colloquial variant and does not form the basis of this course.

The course includes a pronunciation guide, lessons on conversation, grammar and set exercises followed by review exercises after every four lessons. An analysis of the grammar follows the conversations and is intended to help the student to construct new sentences. Each lesson introduces new vocabulary. For the first six sessions, Sinhala material will be presented in a phonemic transcription which will help students acquire Sinhala speech sounds accurately. The basic Sinhala script is introduced from lesson seven onwards. All new Sinhala materials will be given in this script. Students will be given extra homework to learn and practise the new script.

Course materials have been specially designed to assist students to engage with the language. The medium of instruction is largely English but Sinhala expressions are used as often as possible to ease the student into using Sinhala directly rather than using an English-to-Sinhala translation approach. In addition to materials supplied, students are encouraged to make use of recommended websites, listen to radio broadcasts and watch television programmes available on the intranet. At the end of the course, students are able to: use greetings; introduce themselves; use time expressions; order a taxi; order food in a cafe or restaurant.