Can't do this wedding!

Submitted by sifaan on Fri, 10/12/2007 - 04:09

Tech note: If you cannot see the Sinhala characters, please download unicode Sinhala fonts here.

I've recently started taking notice of, and investigating, the influence of Sinhalese grammar and idioms on English in Sri Lanka. Some of the idioms, for example "can't do this wedding" (මේ මඟුල කරන්‍ඩ බැහැ) simply do not translate well, but a few, like "I'll put a wash and come" (මම ‍‍වො‍ෂ් එකක් දාලා එන්නං) have actually crept into normal usage.

In any case, it can be quite funny to try to reverse-engineer the original... but beware, phrase/word orders may have been changed to make it grammatically (ahem!) correct in English:

  • "It's raining for the best" or "It's raining for good"
  • "This is a surprising government"
  • (When driving) "cut to the left" or "cut to the right"
  • "This party is drying"
  • "Don't come and ask from me"
  • "I'll give you two"
  • "Did this come from the police"
  • "Are you de-stoning rice for your grandmother?" (can someone explain what this really means in Sinhalese?)

If you can come up with more cool "translations", please post in comments!

PS. Hint: key phrases (underlined) should be translated together.

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