A-Z of Sri Lankan English

A-Z of Sri Lankan English is an occasional alphabetical dip into the variety of English spoken in Sri Lanka, published exclusively on Groundviews. The original A-Z of Sri Lankan English was published in the travelsrilanka magazine, and can be found here.

A-Z of Sri Lankan English: O is for our people

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Boys will not always be boys! Photo credit: National Geographic The possessive pronoun “our” is deceptively simple. But who are the “we” that it refers to? The expression our people is a remarkably high-frequency term in Sri Lankan English. On a search of the Groundviews website, the phrase gets around 400 hits, compared to just 331 in the 100-million-word British National Corpus. In British English, the phrase most often refers to members of a particular organisation (“I’ll get one of our people to call you back”). With reference to nationality, it is rarely used to refer to the whole population of the country, except perhaps in a political context with nationalistic overtones – for example, an anti-immigration tirade bemoaning the plight of “our people”. More often it would be used in the context of a specific group such as Irish Catholics, the Bangladeshi community, etc. In Sri Lankan English, the expression can convey a sense of patriotism, but it is…

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A-Z of Sri Lankan English: N is for na tree and nil manel

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The national tree and the national flower were both in the news this year. In August the uprooting of the Indian willows lining Independence Avenue to be replaced by indigenous na trees as part of Colombo’s beautification programme provoked angry reactions, as reported on Groundviews here. The na tree (English name: ironwood; botanical name: mesua ferrea) is the national tree of Sri Lanka. It is a tall tree known for its pink (young) leaves and fragrant white flowers, and for its hard wood and medicinal properties. It is arguable that in the long term the indigenous na trees will be more attractive (and more appropriate) than the Indian willows, but the “wanton destruction” undertaken by the Army without any prior notice or apparent consultation, together with the nationalist symbolism of the move, was provocative and heavy-handed. There is a magnificent mature na tree in the corner of the British Council garden. The tree was recently under threat from planned redevelopment…

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A-Z of Sri Lankan English: M is for monitor lizard

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Sunimal Fernando, speaking from the audience at my presentation on Sri Lankan English at the recent conference on Language and Social Cohesion (Colombo, 17-19 October), confirmed my own conclusion, that while the “English as a Life Skill” programme continues, Sri Lankan English has been quietly dropped from the agenda. This may be welcome news to those who feel Sri Lankan English has no relevance to English language teaching in Sri Lanka, but I argued in my presentation that without a recognised “standard Sri Lankan English” as a model, there is a danger that “English our way” will mean abandoning standards altogether, which is exactly what the critics feared in the first place. One of the reasons why Sri Lankan English became sidelined (and this was also confirmed by Sunimal Fernando) was resistance from academics and ELT professionals in Jaffna, who felt that it was a Colombo-centric concept which did not take adequate account of the way English is used by…

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A-Z of Sri Lankan English: L is for link language

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The A-Z of Sri Lankan English is back after a break. These short pieces focus on different aspects of the way English is used in Sri Lanka. Collectively they provide a cross-section of the type of features that comprise Sri Lankan English, and demonstrate its unique identity as a distinct variety of English. The whole A-Z can be found here; and more on Sri Lankan English can be found here. ### When my daughter was studying at “a leading girls’ school in Colombo”, she had a subject called “Link”. She used to talk about “Link homework” and “the Link exam”, rarely referring to the subject by its other name – Tamil. “Link” had become shorthand for the slot in the timetable where Sinhala-medium girls study Tamil, and Tamil-medium girls study Sinhala. It seems odd to refer to Tamil as a “link language”. The reason for learning Tamil is to communicate with Tamil speakers, not as a “link” to anyone else….

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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 on. I deplore the habit of some writers, editors and publishers of employing French and German accents when rendering Sinhala and Tamil words in English. You might read about more important issues on Groundviews today, but this is my personal bugbear. The most common example is kadé with an acute accent, like café – cute, because a kade is sort of like a café I suppose, apart from the croissants and cappuccino. But unfortunately the é vowel in French is a different sound from the e in kade, so it doesn’t help. Why not just spell it kade? I have come across the acute accent being appropriated with the same function in words such as amudé, andé, dané, kondé, kalé, pin katé, haminé, hiramané, karadaré, and even twice in éllé… Ané deviyané! The late Nihal de Silva used the German…

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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 – especially in newspaper headlines. Here in Sri Lanka it has an additional meaning, especially in colloquial contexts, where it can also refer to being free, idle, having nothing to do, and by extension being a waster, a loafer, a useless person. Shyam Selvadurai uses the word in this sense in Funny Boy: “that servant boy was a real jobless character.” (page 134) Shehani Gomes turns it into a term of abuse in Learning to Fly: “I wouldn’t know you jobless freak!” (page 101). Elsewhere she describes an imaginary courtroom, “the few benches at the back full of unknown jobless gossips.” (page 122) Vihanga Perera takes characteristic liberties with the word in Stable Horses, talking about forwarded emails “from the joblesser quarter of acquaintances”. (page 87) The word loafer is also used rather differently in Sri Lankan English. It refers to…

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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 it?” It is usually pronounced with a rising-falling intonation (high pitch on isn’t and low pitch on it). It doesn’t add anything to the meaning of the original sentence (“It’s raining”), but it invites a response from the listener (to confirm that it really is raining, or more importantly, that he/she is actually listening). If the speaker is less sure of his/her information, then it might be pronounced with a rising intonation (low pitch on isn’t and high pitch on it). This makes it a genuine question which requires a response from the listener. Tag questions are notoriously difficult in English. They come in the present tense (don’t they? aren’t I? doesn’t it?), the past tense (didn’t you? wasn’t she? weren’t they?), with other auxiliary verbs (haven’t we? won’t she? wouldn’t you?), with modal verbs (can’t I? mustn’t you? shouldn’t…

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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 Lankan whose first language is English, and the story involved a group of people raising funds to build a Buddha statue. Halfway through I realised that he was relating the story entirely in the past perfect tense (they had gone to the temple … they had asked the monks …), and as I continued listening, I realised that he consistently used this tense throughout the story. There was no reason according to standard English grammar for using the past perfect instead of the simple past (they went to the temple … they asked the monks …). The reason he chose the past perfect tense was because he was relating a story which he had heard from someone else. In other words, he was subconsciously signalling a certain distance from the facts of the story, allowing for the possibility that his…

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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 (or goday) is rural, of the land, of the village, conjuring up traditional pastoral values such as those the President would like to be associated with. But more often in colloquial English-speaking contexts it is used with very different connotations. It can mean unrefined, unsophisticated, common, lower class with reference to people (She“s a bit gode, no?), or flashy, gaudy, tasteless, unfashionable with reference to things (wearing a gode dress). Perhaps the nearest equivalent in contemporary British English is the slang word naff. Isankya Kodithuwakku uses the word in The Banana Tree Crisis (the context is a mother observing her daughter with her hair braided and tied up with white ribbons, and wearing a half-sari and rubber slippers): “Benny, can you believe this is my daughter? Me so westernized and look at this gode girl.“ (The Banana Tree Crisis, page…

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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. They have over a thousand visitors for a month. 2. They get angry for the slightest thing. 3. Can you give this for Mohan? 4. We couldn’t sleep for the racket. 5. That was my third bath for the day. 6. I woke for the sound of the alarm. 7. He gave me a book for my birthday. 8. This area floods even for the slightest rain. 9. The A level exam has been put off for June. 10. They ripen quickly for the sun. Despite being couched in prescriptive terms (“grammatically correct”), there is no clearcut answer to the exercise. The sentences focus on the use of the preposition for. You will probably agree that no. 7 is correct, and that no. 3 is wrong (it should be: Can you give this to Mohan?). The others might cause more…

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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 Sri Lanka. Like certain other -ist words (Zionist, Islamist, Loyalist), the word is loaded with political connotations – an article of faith for some, a term of abuse for others. But it is also used in serious political discourse, for example in these quotes from Groundviews: “Sri Lanka’s pressing security interest of neutralizing Eelamist activism abroad.” (from here) “If by ‘Tamil politicians’ Mr. Dayasiri is referring only to the Eelamist elements within the TNA,” (from here) “Groups supportive of the TGTE and Eelamist propaganda are getting increasingly vocal” (from here) I remember being surprised when I first saw a Tamil children’s alphabet book with a map of Sri Lanka labelled Eelam. But of course Eelam is the original Tamil word for the whole island, now referred to as Ilangei. Both words are derived from the same origin as the Sinhala…

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A-Z of Sri Lankan English: D is for deffa

Eyebrows were raised when I included the word deffa on the mirisgala website under “new entries”. And it’s true that it is stretching the point to claim that it qualifies as standard Sri Lankan English. But perhaps it also gives us an insight into the future of SLE. Deffa (or defa) is a word that is increasingly common in internet chatrooms etc. It is an abbreviation of the English word definitely, which is used in colloquial Sinhala as an alternative to the slightly formal anivareng. From Sinhala (via Singlish?) it has re-entered colloquial Sri Lankan English with the same meaning. Here are a few examples from the internet: He will defa help you out. dudes…we can all defa chip in a bit and raise 300000 bucks… there’s deffa a chance of retrieving stuff … we’ll deffa be there! Another word which has taken a similar route is shape, which has a far wider range of meanings in current colloquial SLE…

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A-Z of Sri Lankan English: C is for cousin brother

The terms cousin brother and cousin sister are not used in standard British English. Nowadays they are used in Sri Lanka to refer to any male cousin or female cousin respectively, but the origin of the term lies in the traditional distinction between cross cousins and parallel cousins. There are many different terms in both Sinhala and Tamil for aunts and uncles and cousins, and because English does not have equivalent terms, the Sinhala/Tamil words tend to be used in Sri Lankan English as well. This is my understanding of the system, though of course there are regional variations, and different families might have their own terms for particular family members. 1. Your mother’s elder sister is your loku amma (Sinhala)/ periyamma (Tamil). Your mother’s younger sister is your punchi amma (S)/ sinnamma (T) – or affectionately, punchi (S)/ sitti (T). Your father’s elder brother is your loku thaaththa (S)/ periyappa (T), and your father’s younger brother is your baappa…

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B is for balls (and bowls)

In the article “The bowl-or-ball dilemma of rubbishing English standards” (Sunday Observer, 6/6/2010), Dilshan Boange adds his voice to the growing clamour of protest at the idea of speaking English “our way”. He recounts the anecdote of a friend who called an Indian hotel and “had to face a lingual jumble of a marginally intelligible dialogue from the hotel staffer”, concluding that the problem was that the Indian was talking English “their way”. If only everyone learnt to speak English properly, such situations would never arise. He goes on to discuss the pronunciation of the various ‘o’ sounds in English, and asks: “What happens when you ask for a ‘ball’ and are given a ‘bowl’?” It is difficult to think of an actual situation where this might happen in reality: Murali asks for the ball and Kumar throws him a bowl? Unlikely. Language is full of such potential theoretical pitfalls, but context is everything, and such misunderstandings (though they do…

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A is for Adhi Vesak

A-Z Sri Lankan English

An adhi poya is an extra poya day inserted into the Buddhist lunar calendar to ensure that it stays in sync with the western (solar) calendar. In December 2009 there were two poya days, Unduvap on the 1st and Duruthu on the 31st (much to the dismay of New Year’s Eve revellers, who weren’t officially allowed to drink alcohol until the strike of midnight!). This meant that Duruthu poya fell in December instead of January, Navam in January instead of February, and so on until Adhi Vesak on April 28th. The extra poya day means that Vesak itself will be celebrated (as always) in May. The following explanation appeared in The Island on April 28th (Adhi Vesak day) under the heading “The significance of Adhi Vesak Full Moon Poya Day” by Premasara Epasinghe: Although the recognised Vesak Full Moon Poya Day falls on Thursday 27 May 2010, there is an additional Vesak Poya called “Adhi Vesak Full Moon Poya Day”…

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About Groundviews

Located at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Groundviews is a citizen journalism website that uses a range of genres and media to highlight critical perspectives on governance, reconciliation, human rights, the arts and literature, democracy and other issues. The site has won two international awards, including the prestigious Manthan Award South Asia in 2009. The grand jury's evaluation of the site noted, "What no media dares to report, Groundviews publicly exposes. It's a new age media for a new Sri Lanka... Free media at it's very best!"

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