සරනේරුවලට තෙල් දානවා

In short

Why it looks that way

Tel is 'oil' and dānavā 'to put': the language made no verb for oiling — the oil is simply 'put', and machine oil isn't separated from kitchen oil by any word. The door hinge is saranēruva; at the shop they'll understand the English 'hinges' too

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.

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  දොරේ සරනේරුවලට තෙල් දාන්න

  dorē saranēruvalaṭa tel dānna

  Oil the door hinges

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 times
  Kim & 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 times
  Adesope, 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 times
  Bertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.

Next

• අගුල මාරු කරනවා (agula māru karanavā) — to change the lockread “agula māru karanavā”
• බල්බ් එක දානවා (balb eka dānavā) — to put in a light bulbread “balb eka dānavā”
• පුටුව හදනවා (puṭuva hadanavā) — to fix a chairread “puṭuva hadanavā”
• බිංදු වැටෙනවා (biṁdu væṭenavā) — to dripread “biṁdu væṭenavā”
• All Sinhala wordsIndex by topic
• Why a word list doesn't sticka note