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A-Z of Sri Lankan English: P is for pre-poya

Michael Meyler — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:30:19 +0000

Photo courtesy M.A. Pushpa Kumara / EPA, via Photo Blog on MSNBC

Poya must be one of the first Sri Lankan English terms to enter the vocabulary of foreigners when they arrive in Sri Lanka. A poya day is a full moon holiday, a day when devout Buddhists go to the temple and observe sil. To non-Buddhists it is a welcome day off, but (not so welcome for some) a day when meat and alcohol are not available in shops and supermarkets, and are not supposed to be served in restaurants and hotels. Many people are critical of a system which reportedly gives Sri Lanka more public holidays than any other country, and which is seen to favour Buddhism over other religions. But most of us look forward to poya days anyway!

The day before a poya day is called pre-poya. This is a day when evening events and get-togethers are often organised – the equivalent of a Saturday night, the next day being a holiday. It is also a day when liquor stores do brisk business as people stock up for the next day.

The term pre-poya originated in the 1960s during the period when Ceylon adopted a lunar calendar. Instead of the normal Saturday-Sunday weekend, each quarter moon day was a holiday (poya), and the previous day (pre-poya) was a half-day. The days inbetween were labelled P1, P2, P3 etc. Most working weeks consisted of five days (P1 – P5), but since the lunar month is approximately 29.5 days, once every few weeks there would be an extra day (P6). This made it difficult to plan ahead; weekends were out of sync with the rest of the world; and the Roman Catholics were upset that Sunday became a normal working day.

One British diplomat recalled arriving in Colombo at this time and being greeted by a memo which began “Since there are two Thursdays in this week …”. And my correspondent Fazli Sameer recalls that the title of the contemporary Beatles song “8 days a week” became a popular source of humour! If anyone has other memories or anecdotes from this period, I would be interested to hear them.

I had always assumed that this system was introduced by Mrs Bandaranaike during the 1970s, the famous period of isolationist left-wing policies, food shortages, etc. And in researching the subject for this piece I found that several others were under the same impression. But in fact it was adopted by Dudley Senanayake’s UNP government on 6^th January 1966, and abandoned by Mrs Bandaranaike after the SLFP election victory in 1970. But the monthly full-moon poya holiday remained.

The introduction of the lunar calendar is remembered as an example of a government pandering to the Sinhala Buddhist nationalist agenda – but, compared to other examples such as SWRD’s ‘Sinhala only’ policy, a relatively harmless one. It is a distant memory now – little seems to have been written on the subject, and many younger people are not even aware that it happened.

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

Michael Meyler — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:30:36 +0000

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 also used humorously and self-deprecatingly: “Our people of course, don’t you know…” And it frequently refers not to all Sri Lankans, but to the Sinhalese, or the Tamils, or another group defined by ethnicity, religion, caste, etc. The term is sufficiently vague that exactly who it refers to might only be clear to another member of the same grouping, and thus its usage can be insidious.

The expression our boys is also used with a similar range of meanings: it can refer to the national cricket team (and in this sense, it might also be used colloquially in British English to express loyalty to a national or local sports team); it can refer to the Sri Lankan army; and it can refer to the LTTE (also “the boys”, or even “the Boys”).

I have found the phrase our people in a remarkable 17 contemporary works of fiction by 17 different authors, quoted below. These examples illustrate how the unique character of the local variety of English is in part shaped by issues such as the frequency with which certain words and expressions are used, and the accumulated weight of associations that they acquire with repeated use. Further research into how the phrase our people is used in SLE could make an interesting sociolinguistic study.

“I’ll never emigrate. I’ve seen the way our people live in foreign countries.” (Funny Boy, by Shyam Selvadurai, p.195)
“You can’t put them with our people, can you? Never know what will happen.” (When Memory Dies, by A. Sivanandan, p.367)
He wanted our people to have some pride in what they produced … (The Sandglass, by Romesh Gunesekera, p.99)
“That’s the problem with our people. They don’t know a good thing when they see it.” (The Flower Boy, by Karen Roberts, p.294)
He said our people were stupid. They didn’t know how to fight a war. (Sam’s Story, by Elmo Jayawardena, p.48)
“What is there for our people to realize? They have now got used to it.” (Out of the Darkness, by Gunadasa Amarasekara, translated by Vijita Fernando, p.141)
“Our people have occupied these regions from antiquity.” (The Road from Elephant Pass, by Nihal de Silva, p.130)
“Whatever it is I’m glad one of our people is getting it.” (At the Water’s Edge, by Pradeep Jeganathan, p.94)
“What do they know about what our people have suffered and sacrificed for Eelam?” (Distant Warriors, by Channa Wickremesekera, p.53)
“I never thought that our people could ever sink so low.” (Monsoons and Potholes, by Manuka Wijesinghe, p.356)
“I can’t understand what’s happened to our people since the tsunami.” (The Banana Tree Crisis, by Isankya Kodithuwakku, p.159)
“Our people will wake up one day to reality.” (The Sweet and Simple Kind, by Yasmine Gooneratne, p.304)
She needed it to be a secret. … That is the way with our people, you know. (The Moon in the Water, by Ameena Hussein, p.73)
“That this is only for the likes of you, safe in your Colombo 7 houses, who’ve done nothing for our people out there, …” – “Our people? Correct me if I’m wrong. Don’t you have that wonderful little thing called a British passport? How does that make you our people?” (Serendipity, by Ashok Ferrey, p.53)
“Our people will never sort this out. Maybe the Americans can help us get rid of the LTTE.” (Chinaman: the Legend of Pradeep Mathew, by Shehan Karunatilaka, p.236)
“This is what our people called Fate.” (The Whirlwind, by Ayathurai Santhan, p.19)
These were not our people. (Beggar’s Feast, by Randy Boyagoda, p.298)

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A-Z of Sri Lankan English is“an all-new, 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.

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

Michael Meyler — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 01:00:31 +0000

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 work, but a campaign by British Council staff forced a change of plans, and hopefully the forthcoming building works will leave it (and its roots) undisturbed.

Nil Manel

Earlier in the year, there was controversy over the announcement that the identity of the national flower had been usurped by a different species. The nil manel (English name: blue water lily; botanical name: nymphaea stellata or nymphaea nouchali) is one of many different species of water lily. According the Sunday Times, which reported the controversy under the headline “The great pretender”, the original is a lighter blue, while the “imposter” is a dark purple. But whatever the botanists say, if you Google nil manel, it is the purple variety that predominates.

Olu

Nelum

The olu (English name: hairy water lily; botanical name: nymphaea pubescens) is another common variety of water lily, which can be white or dark pink in colour. Not to be confused with the nelum (English name: lotus; botanical name: nelumbo nucifera). Water lilies have slimmer petals, while the nelum is the classic pink or white lotus flower, a sacred flower in Hinduism and Buddhism, and the national flower of India. The lotus is also called nelumbo in English – the word, derived from Sinhala, appears in the OED.

Meanwhile the national bird (the jungle fowl, botanical name: gallus lafayetii) has managed to keep a low profile. I wonder why countries feel the need to have a national tree, flower and bird, and not, say, a national reptile (kabaragoya?), or a national mammal (dandu lena?), or a national vegetable (any suggestions?).

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

Michael Meyler — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 01:00:55 +0000

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 all language communities, and especially by Tamil speakers. This argument was illustrated at the conference in a presentation by Sriranjini Anandakumarasamy, a lecturer at ELTC, University of Jaffna. She showed that recent English language textbooks for use in schools all over the country include a large number of Sinhala words masquerading as “Sri Lankan English”, but which are not familiar to Tamil speakers in the North, and many of which have English and/or Tamil equivalents. I would defend the inclusion of words such as thambili and gotukola in the SLE lexicon, but agree that they are not necessarily appropriate in an English-language textbook, especially if they are not matched by an equal number of Tamil words which are also commonly used in Sri Lankan English. If “English our way” means the Sinhalisation of English in Sri Lanka, then clearly something is wrong.

One of the words in the list was kabaragoya. In the context of the presentation, it is certainly arguable that this word could/should have been replaced by water monitor in the English textbook. But when I innocently asked what the Tamil word for kabaragoya is, three minutes of chaos ensued. Most of the people in the room either didn’t know, or couldn’t agree. The Tamil word for monitor lizard is udumbu, but this refers to the land monitor (thalagoya), and there does not appear to be a separate word (or at least one which is commonly used and understood) for the kabaragoya. So Tamil speakers do what speakers of all languages have always done when presented with such a gap in their lexis – they “borrow” the Sinhala word, and refer to it as a kabaragoya. But when I suggested that kabaragoya is an example of a Sinhala loanword which has entered Tamil, the idea met with some resistance.

Another presentation, by Dr Sandagomi Coperahewa of the University of Colombo, was on the subject of borrowings from Tamil to Sinhala over the centuries. (The linguistic term “borrowing” is odd in this context, because words thus appropriated are rarely returned to their original owner.) It is well established that Sinhala and Tamil are much more closely related than the traditional linguistic labels of “Indo-Aryan” and “Dravidian” imply, but even so the sheer scale of their shared vocabulary was striking. The point was also made that such borrowings tend to happen more frequently from a higher-prestige language to one with lower prestige, and the Tamil language did indeed enjoy high prestige in Sri Lanka, for example during the time of the Kandyan kings. This explains why there is resistance to the phenomenon of borrowing from language purists, who would prefer to come up with a word of their own rather than borrow one from someone else. This applies to many languages, Sinhala and French included, in an attempt to stem the unstoppable flow of unwanted English words.

As for kabaragoya, the word is well established in Sri Lankan English. It even appears in the Oxford English Dictionary, with an eccentric pronunciation which I cannot reproduce on my keyboard, but which approximates to “ka-baa-ra-goh-ya”. It is also one of “Knox’s Words” as documented by Richard Boyle, who cites 18 examples of the word in English language texts, from Robert Knox (who called it a kobberaguion in 1681) to Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family (1982). And by using the Anglicised plural kabaragoyas, Ondaatje confirms the extent to which the word has become “naturalised” into the English language.

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

Michael Meyler — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:30:04 +0000

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.

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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. Outside the school context of course, it is English which is commonly, and more logically, referred to as the link language. This is how it is defined in the Sri Lankan constitution, while Sinhala and Tamil are defined as “official languages” and “national languages”. Exactly what is meant by these terms is of course a matter of heated debate; and the constitution itself is not very helpful:

18. (1) The Official Language of Sri Lanka shall be Sinhala.

(2) Tamil shall also be an official language.
(3) English shall be the link language.
19. The National Languages of Sri Lanka shall be Sinhala and Tamil.

http://www.priu.gov.lk/Cons/1978Constitution/Chapter_04_Amd.html#3#3

But English is much more than just a “link language” in the Sri Lankan context. The term makes more sense in a country such as India or Nigeria, with hundreds of local languages, where English can function as a genuine lingua franca. Here in Sri Lanka, English is the first language of a small but significant percentage of the population, and it is widely used between people of a certain class and/or educational background, in certain social and/or professional contexts, irrespective of whether they are Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, etc. These people are mostly bilingual or trilingual, and in other situations they would tend to use Sinhala or Tamil when speaking with non-English speakers. In other words, the determining factor is social rather than communicative necessity. Which is why English is also referred to as the kaduwa – a sword, the antithesis of a “link”, a metaphor for the power wielded by those who possess it over those who don’t.

The terms vernacular and mother tongue are also used somewhat differently in Sri Lankan English. The word vernacular, meaning indigenous language (as in vernacular school), is a colonial term which is still used in the Subcontinent, more or less synonymously with the Sanskrit word swabasha. But this usage is rather outdated in the UK, where the word has come to refer to the informal everyday language of ordinary people, in contrast to more formal educated language. And the expression mother tongue usually equates with first language, but in Sri Lanka there are people whose first language is (and always has been) English, but who still refer to Sinhala or Tamil as their mother tongue. In other words, they associate the term with their ethnic identity rather than their own linguistic competence.

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A-Z of Sri Lankan English: K is for kadé

Michael Meyler — Thu, 05 May 2011 01:00:52 +0000

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 umlaut to represent the Sinhala vowel æ as in gärandiya, nända, dagäba, perahära, wäwa, and unaccountably in the English word cädjan, and of course in the title of his novel The Ginirälla Conspiracy. He also favoured the diacritic ā to represent the long vowel in māra tree and karāwa. But these conventions are used inconsistently in his books, suggesting that he himself was unconvinced (and that his editors didn’t notice?). And this leads to oddities such as Rä kadè (sic) and Nänā.

There are three reasons for my campaign against the use of these accents and diacritics:

There is no agreement on how they should be used. Different writers, editors and publishers use them differently – and often inconsistently within the same text.
They don’t help. There’s no reason why the sounds they represent should correspond with the vowels of Sinhala and Tamil.
French accents only exist in English in loanwords from French such as café, cliché, passé, pâté; attaché, resumé, entrée, fiancée; élite, château, façade, naïve; déjà vu, ménage à trois, raison d’être, tête à tête, … Even in these cases the accents tend to be dropped as the words become established in the English lexicon. The same applies to the German umlaut on words such as Doppelgänger, Führer, gemütlich and Übermensch.

So if you don’t use accents, how do you convey the 14 vowel sounds of Sinhala and Tamil with just the 5 English vowel letters? Well, you can’t. But English itself has at least 12 different vowel sounds represented by those 5 letters. For example, the humble letter a already multi-tasks for the various vowel sounds of apple, about, what, fan, acre, after, all, etc. So it shouldn’t be a problem for the same letter to represent the vowels in amma, ambul and mara.

There is a separate issue here, which is the phonetic transcription of Sinhala and Tamil words and longer passages, where distinguishing all individual sounds is necessary. Unfortunately again, there is no commonly agreed convention for doing this. Personally I use my own font (called Sinfonetic), which includes separate symbols for the 7 short and 7 long vowels of Sinhala/Tamil (using the simple convention of a line across the top to represent a long vowel). An explanation of this system can be found here, and an example of it in action can be found here (in the phonetic transcription of an extract from the children’s book Keerthihan’s Kite).

But the point of this article is not phonetic transcription, but orthography – how Sinhala and Tamil words should be spelt when they are incorporated into English-language texts. And on this, I rest my case that foreign accents and other diacritics have no place.

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A-Z of Sri Lankan English: J is for jobless

Michael Meyler — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 06:24:41 +0000

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 a person who either hangs around doing nothing (which is the meaning of the standard English term loafing around), or gallivants around having a good time but achieving very little. In both senses it suggests wasting time, not doing what you should be doing, or perhaps something more sinister.

The word is used by Carl Muller: “I have told you girls a thousand times don’t encourage every loafer on the road.” (The Jam Fruit Tree, page 12), and by Michelle de Kretser, who writes of “a loafer with a shifty, rolling gaze” (The Hamilton Case, page 258). It is also used by Nihal de Silva: “Getting off was another battle, pushing past women with shopping baskets, men with briefcases and loafers who wanted to rub themselves against Kamala.” (The Road from Elephant Pass, page 320). He also mentions “a bearded loafer” (The Far Spent Day, page 70).

Two other expressions with a similar meaning are rasthiyadu case and har’ par’ six fellow, as in this quote from The Mirror of Paradise by Asgar Hussein:

His thoughts drifted to the past, and the words “You’re just a har’ par’ six fellow” resounded in his head. A har’ par’ six fellow. That was what she had called him before destroying his relationship with her sister Daphne. The phrase “har’ par’ six fellow” was an insult used by her family to describe a worthless person. It was always uttered in a tone heavy with contempt. It came from the image of a clock at half past six, when both hands point down to give a limp appearance. (The Mirror of Paradise, page 22)

Being jobless is not the only thing for which SLE has such a rich variety of expressions. There are also numerous colourful colloquial words for eating (whack, wallop, hammer, bat, …), scolding (blackguard, give somebody beans, give somebody a shelling, …), and hitting (hammer, give somebody a pasting, give somebody a shot, I’ll give you one!, …).

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A-Z of Sri Lankan English: I is for isn’t it?

Michael Meyler — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 01:00:20 +0000

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 it?), and with a positive verb (do they? was he? have they? is there? shall we? etc.).

Most languages manage with a single tag question: n’est-ce pas? in French, nicht wahr? in German, neda? in Sinhala, tane? in Tamil. Which makes things much easier, no?

In colloquial Sri Lankan English, the most common tag question is the single word no?, pronounced with a rising pitch: “You’re sick, no?” Also very common is the invariable isn’t it?, used irrespective of the subject and tense of the original sentence, as the following examples from recent fiction illustrate. Each example is followed by the “standard” English equivalent in brackets.

“You are forgetting the presumption of innocence, isn’t it.” (The Hamilton Case, by Michelle de Kretser, p.110) (aren’t you?)

“Now changed your mind, isn’t it?” (The Banana Tree Crisis, by Isankya Kodithuwakku, p.158) (haven’t you?)

“Early birds catch all the worms, isn’t it!” (The Sweet and Simple Kind, by Yasmine Gooneratne, p.539) (don’t they?)

“We have all had a shock, isn’t it?” (Homesick, by Roshi Fernando, p.161) (haven’t we?)

A variation is the positive tag question is it?, pronounced with a rising intonation:

“Had a good time at home, is it?” (The Banana Tree Crisis, p.87) (did you?)

“Mala’s got back at last, is it?” (The Banana Tree Crisis, p.88) (has she?)

“And that somehow makes you more intelligent, is it?” (Learning to Fly, by Shehani Gomes, p.144) (does it?)

This feature is not unique to Sri Lankan English. The same disregard for the complexities of standard tag questions is found in other varieties of English, and it seems likely (and desirable) that this will become the norm for English as a medium of international communication. Even in the UK, the single multi-purpose tag question innit? is gaining currency in the colloquial language of the younger generation.

Another characteristically Sri Lankan tag question is will you? (often pronounced willu!) – not only in requests such as “Tell, will you!”, but also replacing the standard tag shall I? or shall we? as in “I’ll call later, will you!” or “We’ll meet tomorrow, will you!”

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A-Z of Sri Lankan English: H is for had

Michael Meyler — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 01:30:29 +0000

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 information might not be totally reliable. If he had been relating an incident from his own experience, he would certainly have used the simple past (we went to the temple … we asked the monks …).

The past perfect tense (had gone) has three main uses in standard English:

When describing two events in the past, to show that one event had happened before the other (When we arrived, they had already left).
In reported speech, to express a statement which was originally spoken in the past tense (She told me she had arrived at 3) – which is a logical extension of no. 1.
To desribe a hypothetical event in the past (something which never actually happened), for example in conditionals: If you had told me … (but you didn’t), or to express regrets: I wish I hadn’t said that (… but I did).

In Sri Lankan usage, the simple past tense often replaces the past perfect in no. 2 (She told me she arrived at 3) and no. 3 (If you told me …; I wish I didn’t say that) – especially in informal spoken contexts. But there are other situations where the past perfect tense tends to be used in SLE where the simple past would be the standard form in British or American English.

For example, as in the story of the monks and the Buddha statue, the past perfect tense is used to report something which the speaker did not experience firsthand, and which is therefore not being reported as absolute fact. This is common in newspaper reports where the writer is relating an incident that he/she has heard second-hand, e.g.: The robbers had escaped in a white van. This seems to me to be perfectly logical, as it is like saying The police said that the robbers had escaped in a white van or It was reported that the robbers had escaped in a white van. In other words, it is a form of reported speech (no. 2 above), but without the introductory clause The police said that… or It was reported that…, which becomes superfluous when you understand the function of the past perfect verb had escaped. But you won’t find this usage in any standard grammar book.

One reason why this use of the past perfect tense stands out in spoken contexts, is that the auxiliary verb had tends to be pronounced in full in Sri Lankan usage (they had gone, they had asked), and not contracted (they’d gone, they’d asked) as it would normally be in standard British or American pronunciation.

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A-Z of Sri Lankan English: G is for gode

Michael Meyler — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 01:30:32 +0000

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 10)

Manuka Wijesinghe lays it on thick in Monsoons and Potholes:

“Aney those goday teachers from the village don“t know how to talk proper English,“ “ Nandamalini was a goday name, and even the acquisition of English would not remove the goday mantle from a person who possessed the unfortunate karma of being named Nandamalini. Once goday, always goday. Goday was the opposite of fashionable. (Monsoons and Potholes, page 29)

Gode is pronounced as two syllables, with a long e “ the longer the better for dragging out the devastating potential of the word. It derives from the noun godaya, which means a villager, but by extension (especially seen from an urban English-speaking perspective) a peasant, a yokel, a country bumpkin. The word is used in the Sinhala expression godayata magic, which refers to someone who is impressed or baffled by something technical or sophisticated (The first time I saw a subwoofer I was like godayata magic!). The same meaning seems to be behind this quote from The Ginir“lla Conspiracy by Nihal de Silva:

Mithra grumbles about godayas not being able to appreciate modern conveniences. (The Ginir“lla Conspiracy, page 287)

There are several colloquial variations on gode “ the Anglicised form godayatic (a godayatic accent); the euphemistic alternative G (Their new house is a bit G, no?); and other variations such as geetic or G-tic (Geetic when you say “).

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A-Z of Sri Lankan English: F is for for

Michael Meyler — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 08:25:48 +0000

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 thought or disagreement. My own response is that they are all perfectly acceptable in a Sri Lankan context â€“ certainly in speaking, and arguably in writing as well. They are commonly used in Sri Lankan English, and there is no ambiguity in the meaning they convey.

But these sentences might be considered errors in British or American English, a fact which is useful for Sri Lankan speakers of English to be aware of, especially if they are planning to study in the UK or another English-speaking country, or if they are sitting for an international English exam such as IELTS. It is this kind of awareness (and the ability to adapt one’s language according to the context) which characterises the language competency of a native or near-native speaker of English.

Of course, many speakers of standard Sri Lankan English would no doubt use the “standard British/American” version of these sentences (see below), and would almost certainly recognise them as being correct, even if they would (consciously or subconsciously) choose the “â€œSri Lankan English” version in colloquial situations.

The standard British or American versions of the sentences (omitting nos. 3 and 7) would require the use of a much wider range of prepositions:

1. They have over a thousand visitors a month (or per month, or every month).
2. They get angry at the slightest thing.
4. We couldn’t sleep because of/due to the racket.
5. That was my third bath of the day.
6. I woke at/to the sound of the alarm.
8. This area floods even with the slightest rain.
9. The A level exam has been put off until June.
10. They ripen quickly in the sun.

A general observation from these examples is that the preposition for tends to be used more frequently and more flexibly in SLE than in so-called “standard” English. One possible reason for this is the influence of Sinhala and Tamil – both of which manage with around 4 common case endings (-ge, -ta, -e, -eng in Sinhala) which cover most of the common uses of at least 8 prepositions in English (in, on, at, of, to, for, from, by). This arguably makes SLE a more user-friendly variety of English, by doing away with some of the complexities of the English preposition system, but without necessarily compromising on clarity of meaning.

A-Z of Sri Lankan English is an all-new, 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.

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A-Z of Sri Lankan English: E is for Eelamist

Michael Meyler — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 01:00:26 +0000

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 name Lanka and the English name Ceylon, though which came first (Eelam or Lanka) is still a matter of dispute.

Nowadays of course Eelam (or Tamil Eelam) normally refers to the separate state in the North and East of Sri Lanka claimed by the LTTE and other separatist groups. In LTTE maps this state covered about a third of the island, including the west coast all the way down to Puttalam, and the east coast all the way down to Kataragama. Eelam was first declared a separate state in 1990 by the short-lived EPRLF administration under Varatharajah Perumal. Later it became a reality of sorts under the LTTE, with Kilinochchi as its capital.

The word Eelam is commonly used in English-language contexts, for example in the names of Tamil militant and/or political organisations such as LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), TELO (Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation), EPDP (Eelam People’s Democratic Party), EPRLF (Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front), EROS (Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students) and PLOTE (People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam). Even in Tamil, these organisations are commonly known by their English abbreviations.

The word is also used in the term Eelam War, which has become a common way to refer to the war, and especially to its different stages: Eelam War I (1983-1987), Eelam War II (1990-1995), Eelam War III (1995-2002) and Eelam War IV (2006-2009). Sri Lankan commentators often use the term Eelam War rather than the alternative Sri Lankan Civil War, which is more common in international contexts. Both terms may be seen as problematic depending on one’s point of view: Eelam War because it implicitly defines the conflict in Tamil separatist terms, and Sri Lankan Civil War because it elevates the conflict to something more than just a war on terrorism.

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

Michael Meyler — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 02:00:03 +0000

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 than it has in standard English. First of all the English word shape seems to have entered Sinhala as a verb (shape karanava), presumably derived from phrases such as in shape (= fit) and getting something into shape (= getting something organised, arranging something properly). Its meaning extended to include sorting things out, smoothing things over, winning somebody over, buttering somebody up, getting out of an awkard situation, etc. And it became a one-word expression “Shape!” meaning “Great!/perfect!/sorted!”

Finally, the word shape re-entered Sri Lankan English with the same range of uses. There was once a newspaper headline “Referee blamed for ‘shaping’ All Blacks rugby captain”. And Nihal de Silva used the term in his posthumous novel Arathi:

“It’s a business thing – a supplier has buggered me up.”
“Well, shape it, – You can always fix these things, can’t you?”
(Arathi, by Nihal de Silva, page 27)

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

Michael Meyler — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 09:11:33 +0000

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) â€“ 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 (S)/ chittappa (T).

2. Your mother’s brother (elder or younger) is your maama (in both Sinhala and Tamil). Your father’s sister (elder or younger) is your nenda (S)/ maami (T). Your maama could also be your uncle by marriage (your nenda/maami’s husband), and your nenda/maami could also be your aunt by marriage (your maama’s wife).

Note the distinction that is made between maternal aunts and paternal uncles (para 1) and paternal aunts and maternal uncles (para 2). Traditionally, you have a closer bond with your loku amma/punchi amma/loku thaaththa/baappa than you have with your nenda/maama. And this distinction applies to the next generation as well, where you have a closer relationship with those cousins who are the children of your maternal aunts and paternal uncles (your parallel cousins), than with the children of your paternal aunts and maternal uncles (your cross cousins). You might refer to your parallel cousins as ayya/akka/malli/nangi (Sinhala) or anna/akka/thambi/thangachchi (Tamil), the same terms you use for your own brothers and sisters, while your cross cousins are your massina/naena (S) or machchaan/machchaal (T).

Such distinctions are not necessarily made in most families nowadays, especially in more urban and/or westernised contexts. But one area where it still applies is when it comes to marriages between first cousins, which used to be much more common than they are today. According to custom you can marry one of your cross cousins, but not one of your parallel cousins, who are considered as your own brothers and sisters (hence the origin of the terms cousin brother and cousin sister).

There is no biological or genetic reason why a marriage between cross cousins should be preferable to a marriage between parallel cousins. And most legal systems do not make the distinction either, including Sri Lanka, where all first cousin marriages are legal. And yet it is a common custom which is found, with variations, in several cultures throughout the world, including South India.

Many of the terms mentioned above can also refer to your in-laws. Your father-in-law is your maama (S/T), and your mother-in-law is your nenda (S)/ maami (T). This is very logical when you think that if you married your cousin (cross cousin of course), then your mother’s brother (maama) would be your father-in-law, or else your father’s sister (nenda/maami) would be your mother-in-law. And since one of your own brothers or sisters might marry one of your cross cousins (are you still with me?), the term massina (S)/machchaan (T) can also refer to your brother-in-law, and the term naena (S)/ machchaal (T) can also refer to your sister-in-law.

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A-Z of Sri Lankan English isÂ an all-new, occasional alphabetical dipÂ into the variety of English spoken in Sri Lanka, published exclusively onÂ Groundviews. The original A-Z of Sri Lankan English was published in the travelsrilanka magazine, and can be found here.

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B is for balls (and bowls)

Michael Meyler — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 01:30:37 +0000

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 happen) are rare between competent speakers of the language.

There are three ‘o’ sounds in standard English pronunciation: the short ‘o’ in long, hot, wash, etc.; the long ‘o’ in ball, born, law, short and caught; and the diphthong in bowl, coat, note, go and know.

How you pronounce the first (short) ‘o’ says a lot about where you come from, both geographically and socially. Speakers of British English tend to pronounce it with the mouth quite open, though not as open as in American English. First-language speakers of Sinhala and Tamil tend to pronounce it much more closed, reflecting the way the equivalent letter is pronounced in Sinhala and Tamil. Competent speakers of “standard Sri Lankan English” are likely to make a much clearer distinction between a more closed ‘o’ in Sinhala words such as pol, and a more open ‘o’ in English words like office. This difference is the origin of the term “not pot English” – the words not and pot being pronounced with an exaggeratedly closed ‘o’ to imitate an accent that is widely perceived as socially inferior.

The pronunciation of the ‘o’ sound in bowl is equally flexible, and equally revealing. It is pronounced as a diphthong (though with considerable variations) in standard British, American and Australian Englishes. But in many others, including Geordie, Scottish, Irish, Caribbean, African and South Asian accents, it is not pronounced as a diphthong at all, but (again, with variations) as a long, closed ‘o’ similar to the long ‘o’ in ball – making ball and bowl, to all intents and purposes, homophones.

The problem from an English-teaching perspective is that there are so many words which can be confused if the two ‘o’s are pronounced the same, or almost the same: ball/bowl, bought/boat, bore/bow, born/bone, bald/bowled, to name just the ones beginning with B. As a result, English teachers tend to devote a disproportionate amount of time and energy to attempting to correct an “error” which is in fact just a natural feature of the accent of many first-language English speakers around the world, including here in Sri Lanka.

There are several variations in the way the ‘o’ sound is pronounced in Sri Lankan English. Competent speakers of standard SLE make a greater distinction between ball and bowl than first-language speakers of Sinhala and Tamil. But still, the distinction they are making is not the same as the distinction British or American speakers make between these sounds. In standard SLE pronunciation, the long ‘o’ sound in ball tends to be pronounced as a long version of the more open ‘o’ in office (similar to the standard British pronunciation of the same sound), while the ‘o’ in bowl is generally pronounced more closed (similar to the long ‘o’ in Sinhala words such as bo gaha).

Another way of looking at it is that standard SLE pronunciation has four distinct ‘o’ sounds (while standard British pronunciation manages with the three mentioned earlier):

the short, open ‘o’ in English words like hot and office
the long, open ‘o’ in English words like ball and born
the short, closed ‘o’ in Sinhala and Tamil words like pol and boru (which are also part of the Sri Lankan English lexicon)
the long, closed ‘o’ in Sinhala and Tamil words such as poya and thosai, and in English words such as bowl and bone.

In fact, the only Sri Lankans who naturally pronounce the bowl diphthong the way it is pronounced in the UK are those who have spent a considerable part of their formative years in the UK themselves. Anyone else who talks like that (or tries to) here in Sri Lanka is ridiculed for talking with a “polkatu” accent, simply because it sounds so alien to the natural Sri Lankan way of speaking.

There is one situation where I have started hearing the ‘o’ diphthong (or a variation on it) regularly here in Sri Lanka. It’s when someone answers the phone and says “Hellou”. You immediately know two things about your interlocutor: 1) he/she probably doesn’t speak English very well, and 2) he/she has followed a Telephone Skills Course. Call centres train people to talk like this, in the name of the Orwellian term”accent neutralisation”, which in reality means training people to speak with a British or American accent. And the same insistence on the artificial ‘o’ diphthong is alive and well in the elocution industry – English language schools purporting to teach standard British pronunciation, but in fact teaching a parody of an outdated perception of a colonial-era accent. It certainly doesn’t sound like any accent I have heard in contemporary Britain.

In his article in the Sunday Observer, Dilshan Boange claims, “Shakespearean grammar would befuddle us today, but the words are pronounced the same.” This is nonsense. Modern UK and US accents are vastly different, yet both evolved from the way the language was spoken in Shakespeare’s time. He also claims that unless everyone learns to speak the same way, there will be a state of what he calls “lingual anarchy”. If this was the case the UK would long ago have broken up into hundreds of linguistic fiefdoms unable to communicate with each other. In the US the people in North Utah laugh at the South Utah accent, and no doubt vice-versa. This is not lingual anarchy, it is linguistic diversity, and it should be celebrated. Even if you don’t like it, it is here to stay.

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A is for Adhi Vesak

Michael Meyler — Sun, 16 May 2010 09:26:20 +0000

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 1^st and Duruthu on the 31^st (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 28^th. The extra poya day means that Vesak itself will be celebrated (as always) in May.

The following explanation appeared in The Island on April 28^th (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” on Wednesday 28 April 2010. This Adhi Poya occurs once in 3 years, due to the change of planentary movements. There are 365 days in an year. According to astrology and Nekath, they calculate a year usually as 360 days. The planets namely Iru, Chandra, Angaharu, Buda, Brahaspathi, Sikuru, Senasuru, Rahu and Khetu, rotate round the Sun. Sometimes the course of the planetary movements change. According to astrological calculations, this leads to an additional month. That’s the reason, according to this year’s Sinhala calendar, Adhi Vesak Full Moon Poya dawns, in April 2010.”

This is of course nonsense. The fact that there are occasionally two poya days in one calendar month has absolutely nothing to do with the planets – and anyway, it’s news to me that “sometimes the course of the planetary movements change”! It is simply because the lunar month, which is approximately 29.5 days (the time it takes the moon to orbit the Earth), does not correspond with the solar year of approximately 365.25 days (the time it takes the Earth to orbit the sun). 365.25 / 29.5 = roughly 12.38. So while most years will include 12 poya days – one per calendar month – once every three years or so there will be a 13^th. The last time this happened was in 2007, when May 31^st was designated Adhi Poson poya day.

The Muslim lunar calendar, which is also used in Sri Lanka to determine the dates of Muslim holidays such as Ramazan and Hadji, does not have a system like this to keep it in line with the solar year. Which is why Muslim holidays “slip” by a few days every year – Id-Ul-Fitr (Ramazan festival day) fell on 21^st September 2009, but will be on 10^th September 2010.

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