Part one:

On the Speak English "Our way" enterprise - towards a cockney of our own?

By Dilshan Boange

Lingual dialectical diversity is a factor that is undeniable and is clearly visible in the Sinhala of Sri Lanka. The regional dialectical differences are markedly identifiable if one considers Sinhala vernacular from the provinces of the former Kandyan kingdom and the southern province. But then Sinhala is ours and ours alone, the mother tongue of a majority of the populace of our country.

English, on the other hand, which is very much the first language of a relatively small segment of Sri Lankans cannot be accorded that primacy in terms of regional diversification.

In Britain there are many dialectical divergences that have created variants in English dependent on region as well as class which is unquestionably bound with quality of education. It would be absurd to think that the Hon. David Cameron, an Etonian from an aristocratic background speaks the same English as Andy Capp.

Am I ridiculing the latter? Certainly not for his English; though his slovenly ways would best not even be considered for emulation. But then English is the mother tongue of the English, and whether they agree whose dialect deserves to be the standardized or not is their matter.

We in Sri Lanka have two native tongues which are mother tongues mainly to two ethnic groups, that being Sinhala and Thamil. Sinhala speakers whose dialect is marked with the features of the Kandyan variant cannot claim to speak the standard over the southerner dialectical variant nor vice-versa. And surely the speakers of Jaffna Thamil have not declared a standard for Thamil in Sri Lanka over the speakers of Thamil in Batticaloa? But then there is Standard Sri Lankan English (SLE). Why?

Well for one thing it wasn't a language that existed in Sri Lanka since time immemorial. And whether we like it or not it was imported as part of the British colonial enterprise and its perpetuation through the missionary school system was the bedding for Standard SLE to have developed over the course of time.

But then how is it that people of Sinhala and Thamil ethnic descent speak Standard SLE and the child who now comes to Colombo from Rajanganaya can't grasp certain phonology characteristic of English spoken by his peers who had their schooling in well resourced schools in Colombo?

The village lad does not come from an English speaking home environment and had little exposure to English at school level. I was many a time asked during my university days from fellow students and even some lecturers (not of the English department) 'how' and 'from where' I learnt my English.

The answer was simple, initially at home, and then also school. I am what can be academically classified according to Li Wei's Bilingualism Reader (2000) as a Natural Bilingual.

To be more precise, a Sinhala- English Natural Bilingual. How is that? Because both my parents are Sinhala- English bilinguals. And how are they so? Because both their parents of both of them, were/are Sinhala- English bilinguals. And so it goes back three generations, and on my maternal grandmother's side of the family it spans up to five. Yes schooling is a factor. It was the root factor. And so Trinity, Hillwood, Holy Family Convent Kurunegala, Visakha Vidyalaya and my own alma mater Wesley College have all played a part in my English language acquisition.

But after a point in any Sinhala or Thamil person's family tree one will arrive at the point where there were no speakers of English. This is not to say that they didn't speak any language other than their mother tongue, far from it.

Some Sinhala people were conversant in languages other than their own mother tongue, the classical ones being Pali and Sanskrit. But we can assume with great certainty that there was very likely no English.

Why might I ask that monolinguals who speak Sinhala from present rural villages incapable of grasping phonological tenants like the 'O' vowel or the 'f' sound not found in Sinhala? When four or five generations ago a segment of monolinguals who spoke no English at home were able to grasp them and speak just as well as their English educators/tutors?

Are we to imagine that they automatically produced the 'f' sound, the 'z' and upper 'O' vowel of English (not found in their native Sinhala) at the mere sight of their educators? No that would be something out of the fiction/novel genre Magic realism. We can correctly assume that they were 'corrected' in the course of their learning. The phonological paucities in Sinhala were overcome through correction. A disability was averted.

Why was the English learnt by speakers of Sinhala back in the colonial days more akin to standard British English than the cockney of England? It was the quality and caliber of the educators. Trinity's legendry Rev. A. G Fraiser was an upper class Briton of an aristocratic lineage whose father was the Lt. Governor of Bengal at the time.

So yes it was the class of people who attended schools the like of Eton and Harrow with privileged education who took on the role of English educators here in Sri Lanka, from whose tutelage stemmed the first generations that produced a segment of speakers of a localized English.

And from them stemmed Standard Sri Lankan English. Not the equivalent of Queen 's English nor Oxford English but one of our own which mind you did not weigh itself down with pronunciation inabilities to produce sounds that were outside the Sinhala spectrum. They speak the two variations of the O vowel and the 'f' and 'z' and what characterizes Standard SLE as we know it.

The present day monolingual Sinhala speaking rural youth want to grasp this phonology that can be accomplished with effort. But had they been taught that at school level maybe they would have overcome it at a tender age.

It seems that the Swabasha policy of the 50s created extremism in what was thought to be patriotic by discarding emphasis on learning English though the late S.W.R.D Bandaranaike never mooted the abolishment of English language education.

Now would be the time to rectify it in this day and age where much can be achieved with the use of modern ICT and techniques employing audio visual material aided teaching.

Surely it doesn't seem absurd to suggest that video clips demonstrating the accurate pronunciation of the elusive upper 'O' vowel, the 'z' sound and also the 'f' sound and how not to confuse it with the use of the 'p' sound which is a common error amongst some.

Seeing video clips of competent speakers of Standard SLE (which of course would have to be Sri Lankan nationals) would surely be a feeling of empowerment to the young learners in schools. And it is certainly far more laudable and productive than having our youth picking up pseudo accents from call center training programmes.

Because the thing is in their youth (though maybe not in their childhood) learners from rural backgrounds who had not the opportunity to grow up in a familial setting of Sinhala/Tamil - English bilingual use have (and this is a fact) the desire to achieve certain phonological competency that has eluded them.

Yes they are eager and very keen, but in their early or mid twenties have little opportunity to do so. Why not let present learners have the benefit of developing it in kindergarten or which ever grade suitable, in their formative years? Surely the investment the government can make towards devising these methods can't be of the cost a nuclear or space programme!

To correct a learner in the process of learning is not criminal. But who am I to make these pronouncements? I wish to state for the record that I am a private citizen and not one who is institutionally backed in my views or statements. No I am not a specialist on the subject and do not purport to be one. But I wish to state for the record that I am a Sinhala-English natural bilingual born and bred in Sri Lanka.