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| Sunday, 10 November 2002 |
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English usage - in Colonial and post-Colonial Lanka : The King who refused to learn English by PADMA EDIRISINGHE A reader who had read my piece on the boy who refused to go on with his English education at the Kotte CMS has written to me asking whether the boy's repugnance of the English language was caused by the execution of his father by the British. First of all I must tell her (I do not have the courtesy to send personal replies) that I have never come across this story in any authentic historical document and that it was related to me by a neighbour. Anyway if the story is true the traumas that little boy underwent (first the execution of his father trailed by his banishment from the dear hill country he roamed about in blissful freedom and loss of his mother's companionship) would have led to his disgust not only with English education but with every positive facet in this world. That the way people including children react to situations varies greatly from one to another is also another relevant factor here. Some Sinhala Buddhist children adjust themselves very well to the alien environments in Christian missionary schools for the Christian fathers and mothers have not been sent by Satan as some die-hard fanatics try to portray. But some children do react in a negative way. This boy belonged obviously to the latter category and as destiny ordained a sudden fever killed him. It was definitely not the English language that killed him as that letter writer seems to have insinuated from my letter. She has ended up her letter by remarking that I constantly write in English but focus on stories that discourage others from learning English. I say, madam, I never will demean this global language. But facts remain facts and stories that pass from generation to generation do have seeds of truth in them. My eldest son himself developed a dislike to English in his childhood because of the many irregularities he found in it. He simply could not understand why "Put" is pronounced in one way and "but" pronounced in another way. He used to ask me why on earth "K" should precede "nee" in the word "Knee" when it is simply ignored when the word is pronounced. I tried to get away by talking of "language mysteries" and saying that even our own language has some of these mysteries but he was not one with a penchant for mysteries like his mother. The actual reasons for these mysteries were recently explained to me by a well-known translator who had made his own research on the matter. We will come to that later. Let me tell you about a king who refused to learn English, a King of Britain himself! If he was a king of this country, his hatred could be understood for it was the British who ended our 2500 plus monarchy line, one of the longest in the world. Their excuse was that the foremost adigars like Ehelapola invited them to get rid of the contemporary King Sri Wickrema. However, the chief adigar Ehelapola had his own plans of succeeding to the throne while the crafty governor Brownrigg, had his own plans of placing George the Fourth on the throne. The more powerful party succeeded while Ehelapola got banished to Mauritius where he spent his last days entertaining children of British families with Sinhala folk verses at parties. That was typical Buddhist forgiveness, and equanimity. By the way, one Mr. Holman, a British writer who had been a co-passenger on the ship that transported Mr. Bastian Jayawardene (who had accompanied Ehelapola to Mauritius and returned on an excuse of illness) had (according to Holman) been reading "Vicar of Wakefield" on the way, a fact that surprised the Britisher. Coming back to the main story, the king who refused to learn English that I mentioned was not a king of Lanka but a king of England himself! According to the Encyclopaedia he was none other than George I (1660-1727) who became heir to the throne of England on the rights of his mother, queen Sophia, an English princess. George was Hanoverian (hailing from Germany that ironically fought two bitter wars with England subsequently) and came to England to be enthroned simply due to the tide of circumstances. He displayed his dislike of the English language by not talking in it and by refusing to learn it. He seems to have been a rather mean character for he had kept his wife imprisoned for 32 years on suspicion of infidelity. Our Nayakkar kings were much more adjustable that way i.e. I mean the language way (As to women the Eastern kings kept whole harems of women imprisoned for their erotic pleasure thus outdoing their Western counterparts in this aspect). When these Nayakkar kings came over from India they held the Buddhist priests in high esteem and very tactfully learnt not only Sinhala but Buddhism too King Rajadhi Rajasinghe became so adept in Sinhala that he wrote a book in Sinhala too. There seem to have been much flexibility in language usage at that time for according to certain documents Rajasinghe II had corresponded with his brother Vijayapala in Tamil. He was the first king to marry a princess from South India but in his harem there had been beautiful princesses from the Jaffna peninsula too, probably from the Sankili royal family. It is evident that very close contacts had existed between the Kandyan and Jaffna royal families. King Karaliyadde Bandara who had fled with his queen and daughter Kusumasanadevi (the famous Dona Catherina) died enroute to Mannar to take refuge with the Portuguese and the left-over relatives had sojourned in the Jaffna royal court for a few months enjoying their lavish hospitality before proceeding to Mannar. Coming back to the English language and its irregularities that our children find such a problem, as such irregularities are much less in the native languages that informant of mine has this to say. "You know, the English race is a hotch-potch of varied sub-races as the Angles, the Saxons, the Normans, the Jutes etc. The Angles were the least developed sub-race and their language was not very structurally formed. But soon it dominated the other dialects and forged ahead and some basic irregularities remained in the new middle English language that began to emerge." I am only quoting for I am not writing an academic treatise on the evolution of the English language which much more learned ones in the field could take up, even correcting my informant. But personally I feel that it is nice for any language to trap some mysteries into it for when learning becomes too easy too it has no challenges. Intensive language grilling becomes important here. |
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