A pedagogic survey :

Changing facets of English in Sri Lanka

By Ranga CHANDRARATHNE

In the conclusion, Siromi Fernando states, “There is inconsistency in the following rules in all the dialects. There has also been sociological change in the description of the users of the dialects. Apart from this, features of one dialect have begun to occur in other dialects as well. Hence since there are some confused patterns in the dialects at present, although the general characteristics of each dialect can be described, it is difficult to define clear rules. ”

Siromi Fernando’s contribution is noteworthy given the fact that she has quite candidly explained the actual position with regard to the existence of diverse varieties of Sri Lankan Standard English and that a clear distinction can hardly be made among those varieties.

The entire discourse on Sri Lankan English or the homespun varieties of English raises pertinent issues such as for whom these varieties of English developed, and how the distinct purpose such varieties would serve particularly in the domain of international relations and commerce. It is also highly polemical whether these varieties of English are acceptable to the population at large and the power wielders of the society. What is obvious is that such varieties of English may contribute to the growing body of world Englishes and would be of importance from pedagogic perspectives and perhaps, to maintain English as a potent class indicator as stated by Thiru Kandiah.

The academic publication English in Sri Lanka,: Ceylon English, Lankan English, Sri Lankan English is one of the seminal publications to emerge from Sri Lankan academia on the evolution of English in Sri Lanka and its myriads usages in diverse domains such as governance, education and in day-to-day life.

The book, consisting of 21 papers, is edited by Prof. Siromi Fernando, Prof. Manique Gunasekera and Prof. Arjuna Parakrama, and is a publication by SLELTA (Sri Lanka English Language Teachers’ Association).

The primary motive of the book as stated in the introduction is to ‘provide documentary evidence of the existence of systemic and rule-governed varieties of English in Sri Lanka, as well as to record that the recognition and study of these varieties has a distinguished disciplinary study. ” .

The publication offers, among other things, rich reference materials for teachers, academics and the readers to identify and study diverse varieties in Sri Lanka and their functionalities in different domains.

The book is divided into five sections under the titles, 1. History and Development of English in Sri Lanka, 2. English: Education & Literature, 3. Sri Lankan English Phonology, Morphology & Vocabulary, 4. Language Choices, Functions & Policies and 5. Standards & Dialects of Sri Lankan English.

Evolution of English in Sri Lanka

Prof. Siromi Fernando

Prof. Manique Gunasekera

Prof. Arjuna Parakrama

In the essay entitled ‘Ceylon English’, H. A. Passe observes a home-grown variety of English in Sri Lanka which he describes as ‘Ceylon English’. This is, perhaps, one of the earliest instances of the recognition of a variety of English other than British English which was bequeathed to Sri Lanka during the British occupation of the island for over 200 years.

Passe states, “ There has grown up in Ceylon a form of English with a distinct flavour of its own in regard to pronunciation and intonation, and in the case of most people, idiom, grammar, and vocabulary as well.

The explanation of this form of English would include the investigation (i) of social and educational background of those who taught English to the Ceylonese; (ii) of the extent to which the sounds of Sinhalese and Tamil have influenced the pronunciation of Ceylon English; (iii) of the prevalence of ‘translation errors’, i.e idiom and grammatical usages imported from Sinhalese and Tamil into Ceylonese English; (iv) of the extent to which words from the indigenous languages, and from Indian languages and Portuguese and Dutch, are commonly used in this form of English. ”

However, Passe observes there is ‘a negligible minority who for special reason can speak and write Standard English’.

He observes different users of English , who use ‘a very mixed and impure form of English’. The variety of English that he recommends is the one ‘used by English-educated Ceylonese’. “ But there is a kind of English used by English-educated Ceylonese, chiefly those in whose families English has been used as the only or the first language for several generations (including Burghers, Sinhalese and Tamils), in which the sounds vary but slightly from those of Standard English –no more than a northern-born educated Englishman’s might, in which the melodies or tunes are not markedly different from those of Standard English, and from which local idiom and grammar are practically absent.

This form of English is thus unobjectionable and can be taught, provided there is a carefully selection and training of teachers in modern methods of teaching English as a foreign language.”

It is interesting to note some of the translation errors that Passe has pointed out in his paper may be still relevant to the contemporary users of English in Sri Lanka.

“Cookwoman (Kussi amma) , In Ceylon, ‘cook’ is usually refers to a male (Kokiya), and a female cook is designated cookwoman or cookie.

At this moment the cookwoman returned from the boutique. Columnist

In England, ‘cook’ is used for a person of either sex, but more often refers to a woman, a male cook being a ‘chef’.

Junction (Handiya): cross roads

Boutiques, markets and small shops are usually to be found at a ‘junction’ or a meeting place of roads, in Ceylon. It is a centre of life and activity to which people go to meet friends, to gossip, to buy and sell. Hence one often hears, ‘You can get this at the junction’, ‘ I am going to the junction for a few minutes ( mama handiyata tikak gohilla enava)…

Man (Miniha)

In C.E. man is used colloquially in a sense similar to English ‘ my dear fellow’, ‘I can tell you ’, ‘old fellow’. With the C. E. use maybe compared with Eng. ‘man’ as an impatient or lively vocative’ ‘Nonsense, man!’, ‘ Hurry up, man!’, ‘ Man alive’. ”

In as early as 1979, Doric de Souza has clearly identified the ‘Targets and Standards’ that Sri Lankans should adaopt considering English from a utilitarian point of view. He concludes his paper entitled ‘Targets and Standards’ making a pertinent point; “I ignore, also, though I am wrong in doing so, the fact that English is a status symbol in Sri Lanka and that it serves as a social barrier. This is unfortunate but true.

..Here we must distinguish between the standards of written English (of a utilitarian character as defined above) and spoken English.

Standards of English in utilitarian written English are uniform and universal- I ignore the small variants in orthography, grammar, syntax and vocabulary that occur with American English, because generally speaking, a formal letter or a work of academic exposition can be read without difficulty by people in anywhere in the English speaking world.

We should enforce the standards of written English without permitting any local variants, which do not in fact occur in the fields I have referred to.

Spoken English is another matter. Our English speaking elite in Sri Lanka have evolved their own pronunciation which differs on one side from British or American and from local “sub-standard” English. ”

English as a tool of power and potent class indicator

In his paper entitled “ Kaduva” : Power and the English Language Weapon in Sri Lanka”, Prof. Thiru Kandiah, among other things, describes the dominant attitude towards English entertained particularly by Sinhalese and Tamils with a low degree of proficiency in English. For them, English is not merely a language but a potent class weapon and class indicator. At a time English speaking natives were branded as ‘English speaking classes.

Kandiah observes that although English is thought to be a second language, for the “English speaking class it is the first language and the power that it accompanied allowed them to fill the top positions in the administration which has been a virtual heirloom for them, “… As would be expected, therefore, whatever concessions may have been made to the native languages in the country at large, the position of English was jealously guarded at these higher levels.

No doubt, there was an immediate practical reason for this: the bilingual elite who manned those higher level positions had always carried on their activities in English, and they now found that they could not perform at all effectively at these levels but in that language.

The main factor was, however, power. It was the English language that had raised these people to their position of power, and it was the English language that, by separating them as a social class from the rest of the people of the country, ensured that they would remain in these positions to the exclusion of the latter.

The point is that since English functioned as something very different from a utilitarian secondary language at these levels, as in fact, a badge of privilege, the ordinary people, to whom English could at best be nothing more than just a utilitarian second language but something of a social accomplishment too had access to these levels.

This ensured, incidentally, that it would be they who would provide, in a self-perpetuating manner, the personnel to fill the positions at these levels.”

Privilege of language

Arjuna Parakrama’s paper entitled ‘Some thoughts on the language of Privilege & the Privilege of Language’ represents the current discourse on standards and de-hegemonising standards of English in Sri Lankan academia.

Citing the largely failed year 11 English text book English Every Day and some letters and answer scripts by students, Parakrama seeks to propose his thesis that teachers or standard bearers should reverse their privileged role.

He states; “ Here we come full cycle, then, to the point at which our aim- as teachers of the standard bearers of the torch etc.- is to destabilize, broaden this standard towards the creation of a situation where the Rules and Tools are, in fact and not fiction.

Theirs (our students, the subaltern majority, the marginal, third worlder, woman, worker). To learn (or rather unlearn) to read persistent errors as resistance with our without demonstrable intention, and to respect its radical difference. Ours was the privilege, as linguists, teachers, codifiers, standard bearers and so on to confer the privilege of language on these other Calibans so that their profit on’t was to curse us in it.

Diverse domains

Let the roles be revered: Let us learn their (version of) language to earn the right to the privilege of ours. Otherwise, we are simply acting out the words of Wittgenstein: a crack is showing in the system, and we’re trying to stuff it with straw, but to quieten our consciousness that we’re using only the best straw. ”

One of the principal domains in which English is extensively used is in the sphere of Higher Education and at universities. In the paper entitled ‘English in the University’, E.F.C. Ludowyk explains in no uncertain terms that the standard of English, particularly, of English graduates produced by the system of Universities is ‘For those who wish to read English standard can be no other than that demanded of the undergraduate in English in any English or European University’.

However, Ludowyk admits that the standards of English can vary or as he terms, ‘drop in the standards inevitable’. He observes, “In the meantime with a drop in standards inevitable- standards in the level of English attained by the candidates at the Preliminary examination- the University may have to undertake courses of a general kind in the reading and understanding of English for the benefit of all those who wish to follow university courses.

For those who wish to read English the standard can be no other than that demanded of the undergraduate in English in any English or European University.

For him too, as for the rest, there will be need to study how words behave and how our attitudes are influenced by their behaviour. Not in the hope of twenty or thirty years ago when semantics was the new “science” which was going to save the world, but with the chastened feeling that if the way the world has been going in the last twenty five years has taught university faculties anything, it should have made clear that there is much to be said for the kind of education which encourages a skeptical distrust of mass appeal in the name of race, religion or even humanity.”

In a paper entitled “Influence of English on Sinhalese Literature”, Martin Wickramasinghe, explores the overarching influence of English literature and language on Sinhalese literature in general and on the evolution of Sinhalese novel in particular.

Quoting Ananda Coomaraswamy, Wickramasinghe points out those Sinhalese writers should derive inspiration from world literature readily available in English and in turn enriching contemporary Sinhalese literature rather than becoming mere admirers of Western literature.

“The danger is not that the future Sinhalese writers will fail, because of their narrow nationalism, to assimilate Western culture through the medium of English; but that they will become lavish admirers and imitators of Western literature instead of trying to seek inspiration from every source and developing their own independent creative genius.

This requires not nationalism but critical ability or insight to probe the genuine core of Eastern and Western cultures. Beneath seeming differences there is a core of unity in all cultures. Unless we develop our critical insight to understand this core we are in danger of becoming either narrow nationalists or superficial cosmopolitans.

….Says Ananda Coomaraswamy, “We must beware; for there are two possible, and very different, contingencies that can follow from cultural contacts of East and West.

Language without metaphor

One can , like Jawaharlal Nehru, and his own words, ‘become a queer mixture of East and West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere,’ or being still oneself ‘in place’ anywhere, and ‘at home’ everywhere..in the profoundest sense, a citizen of the world.”

One of the interesting and though provoking paper is ‘A language without metaphor: A note on the English Language in Ceylon’ by Godfrey Gunatilleke. Gunatilleke points out, among other things, that English in Ceylon has limitations when it comes to describing authentic native experiences or cannot be used as an all purpose language due to a lack of metaphor to describe Sri Lankan experiences. He points out that in Sri Lanka; English is a language without metaphor.

“It would be difficult to imagine vernaculars in Ceylon becoming as lifeless and as thin as the English spoken by our English-educated middle-class. In fact, the Sinhalese spoken by our middle-class is with few exceptions very little different from its English. In the few Sinhalese dramas produced by certain members of the Ceylon University Staff, such as Kapuwa Kapothi, or Pabhavati, where an intelligent response was expected, it is significant that the middle-class situations chosen were naturally comic ones…the difficulty would arise only if one attempts to use a contemporary colloquial idiom….The best we can hope for is the ready commerce and interaction of the English of the English-educated community and the vernacular, through an intelligent bilingual community; that is , a group which could think in English and the vernacular alike and bring into the natural stream of the vernacular the attitudes and ways of thinking of the English-educated till the terms of reference form a part of normal discourse.

Then the English spoken here would in turn benefit from such as close association.” Though it is sad, this scenario has not yet happened in Sri Lanka despite the fact English has been in use for over 200 years.

Standard of language

One of the cardinal issues that the contributors deal with in the publication is ‘standard languages’ or ‘language standards’ besides hegemonising and de-hegemonising different variants of English that are in contemporary use.

Although Manique Gunesekera and Arjuna Parakrama identify one or two main dialects of Standard Sri Lankan English, Siromi Fernando has identified four dialects of Standard Sri Lankan English and that there is overlapping of the characteristics of diverse dialects among one another to such a degree virtually obliterating the clear distinction among them.

Citing Einar Haugen’s seminal paper “ Dialect, Language, Nation”, Siromi Fernando explains at length the notion of a standard of language; Haugen has stated in defining standards,“ …a standard language, if it is not be dismissed as dead, must have a body of users. Acceptance of the norm, even by a small but an influential group, is part of the life of the language. Any learning requires the expenditure of time and effort, and it must somehow contribute to the wellbeing of the learners if they are not to shirk their lessons.

A standard language that is the instrument of authority, such as government, can offer its users material rewards in the form of power and position…The kind of significance attributed to language in this context has little to do with its value as an instrument of thought or persuasion. It is primarily symbolic, a matter of prestige ( or lack of it) that attaches to specific forms or varieties of language by virtue of identifying the social status of their users..Mastery of the standard language will naturally have a higher value if it admits one to the councils of mighty …in our industrialised and democratic age there are obvious reasons for the rapid spread of standard languages and for their importance in the school system of every nation.”

In the conclusion, Siromi Fernando states, “There is inconsistency in the following rules in all the dialects. There has also been sociological change in the description of the users of the dialects. Apart from this, features of one dialect have begun to occur in other dialects as well.

Hence since there are some confused patterns in the dialects at present, although the general characteristics of each dialect can be described, it is difficult to define clear rules. ”

Siromi Fernando’s contribution is noteworthy given the fact that she has quite candidly explained the actual position with regard to the existence of diverse varieties of Sri Lankan Standard English and that a clear distinction can hardly be made among those varieties.

The entire discourse on Sri Lankan English or the homespun varieties of English raises pertinent issues such as for whom these varieties of English developed and the distinct purpose for such varieties would serve, particularly in the domain of international relations and commerce. It is also highly polemical whether these varieties of English are acceptable to the population at large and the power wielders of the society. What is obvious is that such varieties of English may contribute to the growing body of world Englishes and would be of importance from pedagogic perspectives and perhaps, to maintain English as a potent class indicator as stated by Thiru Kandiah.

What is striking is whether the ‘standard’ Sri Lankan varieties of Englishes have fulfilled the requirements according to the classic definition of ‘a standard language’ apart from their indefinable nature. There has been an attempt to compile a bibliography on Sri Lankan English.