Prof. JB launches Sinhala Vade Mecum

Reviewed by Kalakeerthi Edwin Ariyadasa

Every language is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined. - Oliver Wendall Holmes

Prof. J.B. Disanayaka, cherishes the Sinhala language, with a proprietary ardour. His keen zeal for Sinhala and its ups and downs, is not at all a learned posturing. It is a deep-sealed fervour and in a manner of speaking - very much a built-in segment of his inner being.

When I go on in this vein, someone may very well take me up: "How can you be so downright about his passion for the health of the Sinhala language?"

I am ready to respond.

Over the years, we have been intimate friends and colleagues. At public academic and private levels, these close ties have been doubly strengthened. We have been co-academics, pursuing common scholarly goals. In many of these contexts, I have experienced the polemical vigour with which he approaches language-related snarls.

He is disciplined to take any harm done to language as a personal offence against him - as it were; Highly impressed by this facet of his personality, I interpreted his two initials "J.B", as standing for Jana Basa. This interpretation makes it seem, that he inherited the enthusiasm for language by birth itself.

But, I am straying from my present focus. My primary purpose here is to produce fresh and stunning evidence, to prove extensively J.B.'s admirable commitment to the prim and proper use of Sinhala. This "fresh and stunning" evidence, arrives in the form of a five-part publication to teach clean and healthy use of Sinhala, to our children.

The series is titled Akuru Mihira (The Delight of Letters) - a phrase turned out by Sybil Wettasinghe, who possesses a permanent visa to enter the hearts and minds of children everywhere. The conventional visuals that occur in our mind, when we talk about "books to teach letters to children" are of those thin colourful pamphlets which clichetically make the children utter A for Apple and B for Bat.

In overwhelming contrast to that kind of simplistic Hodi Potha (Alphabet Book), J.B's work for the children, is a veritable scholarly tome, that invariably converts teachers, parents, guardians and the children themselves into language pundits almost without their knowing it.

This five-part volume is in effect, an epic in juvenile language training. In the introductory notes to parents and teachers, author Prof. J.B. Disanayaka elaborates in telling details, the psychological transformation that is essential, to embed proper language use in the child-mind.

These instructions are an invaluable guidance to parents and teachers to imbibe the proper philosophy of teaching language to young ones.

The exercises provided to enlighten the child indicate the author's profound awareness to bring about language training without unduly taxing the delicate child-mind. Scholars and educated adults looking at this series, will invariably be persuaded to appreciate the high quality of creativity that has been invested in this five-part volume.

The constructive effort J.B. has so assiduously lavished upon this series, would have sufficed even to bring an epic poem into being. One could view this work as a highly entertaining anthology of folk creations.

In his admirable preoccupation with the need to instil the rhythm of the language into the incipient soul, he has composed thousand of phrases and lines. All this painstaking endeavour makes me think that "patience" should be his middle-name. If a child goes through this series, he will grow up to be an adept in our language culture. He will resonate to the proper and rhythmic use of language. Such a child will never stoop to the offence of subjecting language to harsh and wicked uses.

My considered view of the matter is schools, educational institutes and homes should have this work as a wider publication. All must have the access to it. It could even be a secular Sutta - a sermon or a discourse - out of which adults could recite excerpts for the serene joy and emotion of all those at home. After Prof. J.B. Disanayaka's Akuru Mihira, the teaching of Sinhala to our children will never be the same again. This work will eventually assume leadership in language teaching books in Sinhala.I am personally delighted and enthusiastic, that a generation brought up on the language nourishment supplied by Akuru Mihira, will never offend language by treating it haphazardly and harshly.

I cannot help but suggest that even university lecturers could do well to dip into this work surreptitiously and sneakingly at least to get their alphabet-related nomenclature right.

I must express my gratitude to Sybil Wettasinghe for her linear sketches, which make J.B's theories dance whimsically, to the utter delight of the child and perhaps also the adult reader.