Personal page and articles by Michael Meyler
A-Z of Sri Lankan English: Z is for Z-score and zipperman
Image via Sri Lanka Guardian There are only two Z-words that I have come across in SLE: Z-score and zipperman....
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: Y is for y’all
Image from Neato Shop Many languages have singular and plural forms of the second person pronoun you, including Sinhala and...
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: X is for extralinguistic communication
Illustrations below by Anura Srinath You have probably seen the YouTube clips of jehanr, which include How to speak Sri...
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: W is for will and would
Will and would have a habit of changing places in Sri Lankan English. Sometimes will is used where standard British...
Continue reading »Monsoons and Intermonsoons
Photo courtesy The Telegraph The New Zealand cricketers should not be surprised that their matches are being rained on. The...
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: V is for vel festival
A Hindu vel festival is better described in pictures than words. The photos here were taken a few years ago...
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: U is for up
The verb cope up is one which divides opinion: is it acceptable Sri Lankan English, or simply an error? It...
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: T is for this thing
Original photo by Deshan Tennekoon What do you call something whose name you don’t know or can’t remember, or which...
Continue reading »A-Z of Sri Lankan English: S is for Singlish
Singlish is the term used to describe the mixture of Sinhala and English which is frequently used by bilingual speakers....
Continue reading »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...
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