A pioneer in language education

This week’s column is dedicated to W.H Samaranayake, a pioneer Sri Lankan educationist and grammarian who had made his mark in the postcolonial language education in Sri Lanka. Samaranayake’s role as a pioneer educationist in general and as a compiler of text books on English Grammar in particular marks a seminal chapter in the history of post –colonial education in Sri Lanka.

The irreparable loss and the void for educationist of W.H Samaranayake’s calibre is felt more than ever before and his singular role should be assessed against the backdrop of ill-informed present discourse on post-colonialism, post-structuralism and its myriad misinterpretations particularly in Sinhalese and erroneous applications in the fields of language education in Sri Lanka.

One of the significant aspects of his illustrious career is that W.H Samaranayake has, wittingly or unwittingly contributed to the transfer of the ownership of English from British to Sri Lankan speakers of English. The ownership of the language is claimed not by mimicry or attempting to replicate Sinhalese idiom in English writings or by superimposing Sinhalese sentence structures and tone patterns in English grammar but by using local situations and themes to teach English. Given his corpus of books on English grammar, what is clear is that he does not use Sinhalese names such as Amma, Akka, Thaththa ( despite there are English equivalents unlike today) in the local situations which he used for his books such as Practical English and English with a Smile.

Samaranayake as a pioneer educationist

Best known for his series of text books on English grammar, Practical English and English with a Smile, W.H Samaranayake was the founding principal of St. Bernadette’s College, Polgahawela. The first edition of Practical English was published in the 1940s and has been popular among teachers and students as a supplementary textbook on English grammar. Practical English was followed by English without tears in 1951. In 1952, English without tears was revised and reprinted as English with a smile. The second and the third book under the title English with a smile were published in 1954 and in 1957 respectively. The series English with a smile were prescribed texts in the syllabus of English Language education until 1965.

The books were compiled considering the practical difficulties faced by Sri Lankan students of English. A significant aspect of Practical English and the series English with a smile is that indigenous themes, situations and characters have been used to teach English grammar in an innovative and extremely interesting manner with a distinct Sri Lankan flavour within the prosody of English language. However, the fact remains that Practical English and English with a smile maintain a high degree of accuracy and standard which is on par with standard textbooks on English grammar of the day although specimen paragraphs were taken from English books written by Sri Lankans as J.M Seneviratne along with extracts from works of English writers as John Still.

Tusker Kandula

For instance, the use of passages from J.M Seneviratne’s work on the tusker kandula in the final battle of Vijithapura is one of the instances where Sri Lankan situation has been effectively used to teach English grammar.

“Here the elephant Kandula led the attack. Placing itself upon its knees and battering down stones, mortar and bricks with its tusks, it charged at the gate with a great rush. But the gate was of iron and withstood the charge. Trumpeting and roaring, the animal rushed at it again and again, and when under these repeated onslaughts the structure shook to its foundation, the enemy grew desperate.

As the elephant blowing terrifically, came tearing at the gate again, at a great pace which seemed to shake the ground near about, the enemy standing upon the towers hurled down weapons of every kind, balls of red-hot iron and molten pitch. Roaring with pain when the smoking pitch fell upon its back, Kandula dashed away to the water in the moat hard by. Into the water plunged the animal eagerly and after thus assuaging to some extent the torments, it reared itself out of the water trumpeting and stood again defiantly on firm ground”- J.M. Seneviratne.

Standards

Considering the above specimen passage, it is obvious that W.H Samaranayake has paid attention to the standard of language in selecting extracts from diverse sources for the book. He has also taken into consideration the fact that Sri Lankan students of English have been and are still influenced by native tongues such as Sinhalese and Tamil in their use of English which has now been misinterpreted as ‘unpretentious use of language’. In chapter 8 of Practical English under the title Ceylonism, the author has offered some of the common pitfalls that would be caused due to the overarching influence of native tongues on Sri Lankan users of English which would have been readily interpreted in today’s context , particularly, at some notorious literary awards as ‘unpretentious use of language’. The situation has become so pathetic that such erroneous turns of phrases as ‘Together as one’, ‘world’s media’ (meaning global media), ‘live together’ have been readily used in newspapers and journals obliterating the demarcation between correct and the incorrect English usages.

Ceylonism

In the present context, one of the useful sections of Practical English is the chapter on Ceylonism. Although over the years, more and more turns of phrases have, surely, been added to the growing body of un-English usages among contemporary users of English, it is sufficed to cite couple of examples presented in the chapter to drive home the fact that mere use of English words and prepositions would not constitute English idiom which is either fractured or absent among contemporary Sri Lankan users of English. “I did this work from home (at), I shall go and come (I must be going or I’m off), If not for you, he would have died (If it were not for you or Had it not been for you). “

The relevance of W.H Samaranayake’s work lies in the creative use of indigenous situations, themes, addressing the specific needs of Sri Lankan students of English. It is, obviously, one of the effective ways of claiming the ownership of a foreign tongue.