LingoflySinhala
Sinhala — Indo-European family, about 17 million speakers (estimate, Ethnologue). Script: the Sinhala script: rounded signs where a vowel is written as a mark on the consonant. This site has 4049 words and 59 letters with audio.
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Demo language: Sinhala
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ස්තූතියි
stūtiyi
thank you
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ස්තූතියි
stūtiyi
- please
- thank you
- hello
- excuse me
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ස්තූතියි
thank you
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බොහොම ___
Thank you very much
- සමාවෙන්න · samāvenna
- ස්තූතියි · stūtiyi
- කරුණාකර · karuṇākara
- ආයුබෝවන් · āyubōvan
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ස්තූතියි
thank you
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ස්තූතියි
thank you
This is a choice based on text. Conversation and remembering over time still need practice and checking.
How answers are counted
Answers stay on this page. Statistics include the demo stage, overall result, interface language and saved counter consent choice, without answer text or a profile.
Where to start
A young course: the words, the lessons and the recordings are all here, but a native speaker has not read it end to end yet. Spot a rough edge? Tell us and we will fix it.
- →Sinhala alphabetAll letters with sound
- →Sinhala wordsBy topic and alphabetically
- →PhrasebookPhrases ready to use
- →GrammarRules without jargon
- →Reading textsShort texts with translation
- →How to readThe writing course from zero
- →TransliterationThe table, both ways
- →PronunciationWhat you hear and what is hard
- →From scratchWhere to start, and in what order
- →How long to studyAn honest estimate, with caveats
First words
Every conversation starts with them — and so does the first impression: one greeting in the local language and you stop being a stranger within a second.
- ආයුබෝවන්āyubōvanhelloaa-yu-boh-vun; the stress stays level — Sinhala barely uses any
- සුබ උදෑසනක්suba udǣsanakgood morningThe bookish greeting, but everyone knows it: hotels and the radio open with it. suba is 'auspicious', udǣsana is 'morning'
- ස්තූතියිstūtiyithank youstūtiyi — stoo-tee-yee, from the Sanskrit word for praise. It's often boosted: bohoma stūtiyi, 'many thanks', is the everyday strong version
- කොහොමද?kohomada?how are you?Literally just 'how?'. The particle -da at the end is the real question marker — the question mark only doubles it
- සමාවෙන්නsamāvennaexcuse meLiterally 'forgive me' — an imperative by shape, but it lives as a ready-made exclamation. To hail a stranger people more often just say ov or a polite title
- කරුණාකරkaruṇākarapleasekaruṇākara opens a request: 'kindly…'. It is never said in reply to 'thank you' — that slot belongs to other words
- ගිහින් එන්නම්gihin ennamgoodbyeLiterally 'I'll go and come back'. Shaped like two verbs, used as a set farewell — saying 'I'm off' without adding 'I'll be back' is considered bad luck
- ටිකක් අඩු කරන්න පුළුවන්ද?ṭikak aḍu karanna puḷuvanda?can you make it cheaper?Literally 'can you reduce it a little?'. Puḷuvanda is 'can you' — the universal polite wrapper for any request
How it sounds
Five words spoken aloud: click the speaker and pick the translation. The sound works on any phone, and nothing needs to be installed.
Curiosities in Sinhala
Sinhala's closest relative is Dhivehi, the language of the Maldives; the two split about a thousand years ago. Beyond that, Sinhala has no close kin: from the mainland Indo-Aryan languages it is separated by two and a half thousand years of separate life on the island.
Wilhelm Geiger, «An Etymological Glossary of the Sinhalese Language», 1941; Bruce D. Cain, Cornell, 2000
About the language
| Native name | සිංහල (siṁhala) · siṁhala |
| Official in | Sri Lanka |
| Also spoken in | the UAE, Italy and Australia |
| How many speakers | about 17 million speakers (estimate, Ethnologue) |
| Family | Indo-European family, Indo-Aryan group |
| Script | the Sinhala script: rounded signs where a vowel is written as a mark on the consonant |
| Writing direction | left to right |
Hard: a script with syllabic logic and the gap between written and spoken language.
Easy: no grammatical gender in everyday speech, a simple word order with the verb usually last.
What people most often take it up for: living and working in Sri Lanka, long winter stays, family.
How lessons work
A lesson is up to half an hour a day, split into three to five short sessions. A word comes back not on the course's schedule but at the moment you are about to forget it: the interval is computed by an algorithm from your own answers.
- The longer you want to keep a word, the longer the gap before reviewing it can be. To hold it for a week, review it after a day or two; to hold it for a year, after about three or four weeks.checked many timesCepeda et al., 2008, Psychological Science 19(11) · Over 1,350 participants, tested after delays of up to a year. The best gap is about 20–40% of the target interval when you need to remember for a week, and 5–10% when for a year.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- A material reward promised for doing a task lowers the wish to take it up of your own accord once the reward is gone. Praise for what was done, on the contrary, keeps that wish alive.checked many timesDeci, Koestner & Ryan, 1999, Psychological Bulletin 125(6) · 128 experiments. A material reward promised in advance and the time later spent on the task by free choice: d = −0.44 for finishing, −0.40 for taking part, −0.28 for performance; a reward unrelated to the task, −0.14, not significant. Praise: +0.33.
Frequently asked
Where to start learning Sinhala?
With the script: 59 letters are worked through in a week or two, and after that words stop being pictures.
How many people speak Sinhala?
About 17 million speakers — an estimate; source: Ethnologue. Nobody runs an exact census of languages, and sources disagree by noticeable amounts.
Is Sinhala hard?
A script with syllabic logic and the gap between written and spoken language. At the same time, no grammatical gender in everyday speech, a simple word order with the verb usually last.
Where is Sinhala spoken?
An official language in: Sri Lanka. Noticeable communities: the UAE, Italy and Australia.
Is Sinhala in Duolingo?
No. As of September 18, 2026, Duolingo’s catalogue has no such course at all, from any language. We have Sinhala in full: 4049 words, with audio, the script explained, a phrasebook and grammar in plain words.