LEARNING TO WRITE

Part of our language learning experience has been learning the Sinhala script. At first it was pretty daunting to think about learning a new language with a different script and we thought we would just learn the spoken language. However, we found some books that also taught us how to read and write and we discovered it wasn't as difficult as we had feared it might be. In fact, it helps us to be able to learn the correct pronunciations of words.

What's more, we have since learnt how to teach our computer to write in Sinhala also. So today I thought I might introduce you to a few of the Sinhala letters to you and explain how I helped myself to learn them.

This ර makes an 'r' sound. It reminds me of a baby with a curl of hair on top of it's head, so I call it "Ah, baby". (Get it, r baby!)

This ට makes a 't' sound so I call it swirling your tea.

This ත makes a 'th' sound; not a hard 'th' like that, but a soft 'th' like thing. It reminds me of a prince with a big feather thingy in his turban, so I call it the fine prince's thingy.

This ඩ makes a 'd' sound and reminds me of a dragon, so it's simply the dragon.

This ඉ makes an 'i' sound, like icecream. I call this one cyclops because it's only got one eye (i) in the middle of his face.

This ප makes a 'p' sound so I call it the puppy. This one ඡ says 'j' so I call it the jumpy puppy because it's got that crazy ear.

This ල makes an 'l' sound and I call it the lollipop because it looks like one of those swirly lollipops.

This ග is wavy gravy because it looks like a wave and makes a 'g' sound, like in gravy. This ශ is the shurfing shcorpion because it makes a 'sh' sound, looks like a wave, but has a scorpion's tail.

The last letter I will show you today is ඊ which makes an 'ee' sound. Because it looks like it has 2 eyes that have jumped right off the face, I call it 'EE! You scared my eyes off of me!'.

Well, that's enough of a language lesson for today and probably also enough insight into the strange workings of my mind. It might seem a little weird but it's working!