Lingoflyවිස කරනවා
- විස කරනවාvisa karanavāto poison
“විස කරනවා” (visa karanavā) — to poison in Sinhala. Verb, level B1. Vi-sa ka-ra-na-vaa; don't mix it up with visi karanavā, 'to throw': one vowel sign apart, and a quite different meaning. In a live sentence: “රසායනික ද්රව්ය ගඟ විස කරනවා” (rasāyanika dravya ganga visa karanavā) — The chemicals poison the river. You can hear how it sounds right here. Written with the characters ව, ි, ස, ක, ර, න, ව, ා. A word from the everyday Sinhala course, level B1.
In short
| Written in Sinhala | විස කරනවා (visa karanavā) |
| Read in Latin letters | visa karanavā |
| Translation | to poison |
| Part of speech | verb |
| Level | B1 |
How to pronounce it
vi-sa ka-ra-na-vaa; don't mix it up with visi karanavā, 'to throw': one vowel sign apart, and a quite different meaning
Why it looks that way
From the word for poison. About water, earth, air. Being poisoned by food is a different turn altogether: 'got sick from the food'
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.
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 “to poison” in Sinhala?
«විස කරනවා» (visa karanavā), read “visa karanavā”. Vi-sa ka-ra-na-vaa; don't mix it up with visi karanavā, 'to throw': one vowel sign apart, and a quite different meaning. In a live sentence: “රසායනික ද්රව්ය ගඟ විස කරනවා” (rasāyanika dravya ganga visa karanavā) — The chemicals poison the river. You can hear how it sounds right on this page. Verb, level B1; written with the characters ව, ි, ස, ක, ර, න, ව, ා.
How is “විස කරනවා” (visa karanavā) written in Latin letters?
visa karanavā. 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?
From the word for poison. About water, earth, air. Being poisoned by food is a different turn altogether: 'got sick from the food'. 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 this 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.