එළවළු තෙල්
“එළවළු තෙල්” (eḷavaḷu tel) — cooking oil in Sinhala. Noun, level A1. In the kitchen one fries in coconut oil; 'vegetable oil' is the label on a sunflower bottle from the supermarket. In a live sentence: “එළවළු තෙල් බෝතලයක් ගන්න” — Buy a bottle of cooking oil. You can hear how it sounds right here. Written with the characters එ, ළ, ව, ළ, ු, ත, ෙ, ල, ්. A word from the everyday Sinhala course, level A1.
In short
| Written in Sinhala | එළවළු තෙල් |
| Read in Latin letters | eḷavaḷu tel |
| Translation | cooking oil |
| Part of speech | noun |
| Level | A1 |
- එළවළු තෙල්eḷavaḷu telcooking oil
Why it looks that way
In the kitchen one fries in coconut oil; 'vegetable oil' is the label on a sunflower bottle from the supermarket
A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
In a live sentence
A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.
- එළවළු තෙල් බෝතලයක් ගන්නeḷavaḷu tel bōtalayak gannaBuy a bottle of cooking oil
How not to forget this word
Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.
- This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many timesKim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
- 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.
- An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many timesBertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.
Frequently asked
How do you say “cooking oil” in Sinhala?
«එළවළු තෙල්», read “eḷavaḷu tel”. In a live sentence: “එළවළු තෙල් බෝතලයක් ගන්න” — Buy a bottle of cooking oil. You can hear how it sounds right on this page. Noun, level A1; written with the characters එ, ළ, ව, ළ, ු, ත, ෙ, ල, ්.
How is “එළවළු තෙල්” written in Latin letters?
eḷavaḷu tel. This is a practical spelling — you need it to read aloud and be understood, not to meet an academic standard.
Why does this word look the way it does?
In the kitchen one fries in coconut oil; 'vegetable oil' is the label on a sunflower bottle from the supermarket. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
Can I hear how it sounds?
Yes, right on this page: click the word and it will play. The sound works on any phone, and nothing needs to be installed.