Personal page and articles by Michael Meyler
A-Z of Sri Lankan English: R is for rubber slippers
Image courtesy Odel They’re called thongs in Australia, jandals in New Zealand, Hawaii chappals in India and Pakistan. According to...
Continue reading »Trilingual bus signboards
“The private transport services ministry has made it compulsory for all buses to display name boards in Sinhala, Tamil and...
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: Q is for quazi
Equality before the law? I’m no lawyer, but I have always wondered how this fundamental principle is possible in a...
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: P is for pre-poya
Photo courtesy M.A. Pushpa Kumara / EPA, via Photo Blog on MSNBC Poya must be one of the first Sri Lankan...
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: O is for our people
Boys will not always be boys! Photo credit: National Geographic The possessive pronoun “our” is deceptively simple. But who are...
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: N is for na tree and nil manel
The national tree and the national flower were both in the news this year. In August the uprooting of the...
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: M is for monitor lizard
Sunimal Fernando, speaking from the audience at my presentation on Sri Lankan English at the recent conference on Language and...
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: L is for link language
The A-Z of Sri Lankan English is back after a break. These short pieces focus on different aspects of the...
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: K is for kadé
I normally try to stay on the right side of the descriptive-prescriptive divide, but today I’ve got my prescriptive hat...
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: J is for jobless
In the UK and the US, being jobless is simply another word for being unemployed, not having a job –...
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: I is for isn’t it?
A tag question (or question tag) is a short question tagged onto the end of a sentence: “It’s raining, isn’t...
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: H is for had
I recently listened to someone telling a story in the course of an informal conversation. The speaker was a Sri...
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: G is for gode
Mahinda Rajapaksa makes no bones about his goday origins“ (Daily News 12/02/2010) The basic meaning of the Sinhala word gode...
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: F is for for
Before reading on, try this short test. Which of the following sentences do you consider to be grammatically correct? 1....
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: E is for Eelamist
The word Eelamist (as adjective or noun) refers to a person or organisation which supports the Tamil separatist cause in...
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