Archive for the ‘Language’

Shakespeare – Is he “Wellington’s Lieutenant?”

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Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty via The Guardian Among the many twists and turns of history, few can be more contrived than that which led to the establishment of Shakespeare’s tongue as a second or link language in a little island thousands of miles from England where Englishmen have scarcely set foot in Shakespeare’s lifetime (1564 – 1612).  Of that ambiguous legacy, I am one of the beneficiaries. This may explain, at least in good part, why the majority of the English speaking minority of Sri Lankans are still drawn to the drama of Shakespeare or assessments of it. When I decided to go public with these personal musings on Shakespeare, I was acutely conscious of the fact that nearly everything I have to say may sound familiar and unoriginal to the informed reader. I took heart, however, from the fact that Shakespeare, Polonius’ dictum notwithstanding, was both a lender and, more important, a copious borrower.  Shakespeare, whatever else he may be,…

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ABC, Gordon Weiss and authoress Niromi de Soyza

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Like many people I used to think that such agencies as the BBC and ABC provided balanced reviews and were relatively unbiased. No more. Further confirmation: a recent panel presentation by ABC in March 2013, entitled “Continuing Genocide in Sri Lanka” and anchored by Jane Hutcheon, exposed in blatant nudity the lop-sided perspectives within Aunty ABC. The presentation was timed to coincide with the UNHCR sessions in Geneva where the USA was sponsoring a resolution censuring Sri Lanka. No problem with that. But this was a serious ABC review dependent on two questionable “experts,” namely, Gordon Weiss and authoress Niromi de Soyza aka Subhodini Mariatta Anandarajah – known as Subha among her pals. When Australia has a bevy of possible commentators, from Ameer Ali to Rohan Bastin, Serge de Silva-Ranasinghe, Shanaka Jayasekera, Laksiri Jayasuirya, Noel Nadesan and Suri Ratnapala to choose from, their selections on this occasion indicated partisanship. Weiss has authored The Cage based on his experiences within an…

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Colonizing Childhood and Zionist Pedagogy: Interview With Prof. Nurit Peled-Elhanan

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Nurit Peled-Elhanan is a professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, peace educator and activist and co-laureate along with late Prof. Izzat Gazzawi of the 2001 Sakharov Prize for Human Rights and the Freedom of Speech awarded by the European parliament. Peled-Elhanan has translated Albert Memmi‘s Le Racisme (1982) and Marguerite Duras‘ Écrire (1993) into Hebrew. In 1997, her daughter Smadar, aged 13, was killed in a suicide bomb attack in Jerusalem. “Terrorist attacks like this are the direct consequence of the oppression, slavery, humiliation and state of siege imposed on the Palestinians”, she told reporters in the aftermath of Smadar’s death. She and her family work with the Palestinian and Israeli Bereaved Families for Peace. Professor Peled has critically dissected the ideological content of Israeli schoolbooks for the past five years. She considers children as victims of Israel’s militaristic, settler-colonial culture. Her radical views have exacted a professional cost. “University professors have stopped inviting me…

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A simple experiment to highlight ingrained racism in Sri Lanka

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When Etisalat dreams of a Sri Lanka where everyone is connected, it’s clearly thinking only of the Sinhalese. Why else would the company’s website feature, so prominently, a Lion to depict ‘everyone’ in Sri Lanka? In popular media, corporate marketing and government output, there are numerous other examples of a racism so deeply internalised and ingrained in Sri Lanka that even when flagged, it is dismissed as unimportant or at best, of marginal and passing interest. As we tweeted, @30streetstudio @etisalatsl It’s this that’s most worrying about #srilanka – ingrained racism, so normalised it is, to most, invisible. #lka — Groundviews (@groundviews) February 13, 2013   Another particularly revealing example from Government recently came in the form of the Police spokesperson’s comments over an ill-thought out and executed census of vehicular traffic coming into Colombo. As reported in Ceylon Today, the forms handed out to motorists in light vehicles were only in Sinhala, raising the ire of the Government’s own…

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In conversation with Nayomi Munaweera

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The Los Angeles Review calls Nayomi Munaweera‘s first novel, Island of a Thousand Mirrors, “gripping, astonishing and utterly gorgeous”. At the head of their lane, a buss on its knees, front tires exploded, haemorrhages thrusting, pushing passengers. At the far side, a particularly jovial mob gather. Reaching high above their heads the men pull a woman out of the small side window. They catch her sari pall, pull, jumping and climbing on each other’s shoulders. Mala has stopped in the street, turned to salt… She sees the woman’s open mouth, her arms flailing in this most exposed and air-bound uncertainty between the bus and the men. A long streak of red bisects her forehead, and then like a cork out of a bottle the woman is dislodged. She falls into the circle of men, streaming to earth, sari fluttering like a parachute. A roar of delight drowns the woman’s screams. The, again, the sound of gushing petrol. And finally Mala…

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A-Z of Sri Lankan English: Y is for y’all

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Image from Neato Shop Many languages have singular and plural forms of the second person pronoun you, including Sinhala and Tamil. English doesn’t, except in certain dialects: yous or youse is heard mainly in Scotland, Ireland and Australia; and y’all is common in the US, as in the expression “Y’all have a nice day!” Y’all is also common in colloquial Sri Lankan English (“When did y’all come?”), as well as the possessive form y’all’s (“Where are y’all’s books?”). The all is just a plural marker, so it could just mean some of you, not necessarily all of you, which becomes y’all all, or all of y’all, as in these quotes: “So y’all all came together? Like going on a pilgrimage?” (Monsoons and Potholes, by Manuka Wijesinghe, page 22) “Ah? Then what’re all’f y’all doing here?” (A Cause Untrue, by David Blacker, page 557) I often see this contraction of you all spelt as you’ll (“Nice to hear that you’ll enjoyed…

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The Tamil Factor: A Semantic Approach

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The Tamil factor is best viewed in terms of its impact on language, culture and social institutions in the country.  It is more interesting and rewarding when seen in this perspective than in its political dimension, and less controversial too. One of the Sinhalese terms that has interested me is ‘walauwa’ which refers both to a place as well as to a social institution.  It comes from the Tamil word ‘valavu’ which denotes a compound or garden, and, by implication, a large house with aristocratic connotations.  My dear friend, the late Mr. Wimaladharma Ellepola lived in his ancestral residence, the Maha Walauwa, Matale and my father’s dear friend, the late Mr. S. Kathiravetpillai, Attorney-at-Law and M.P. Kopay, lived in his ancestral residence, the Maha Valavu, Kopay, thereby metaphorically fusing the nobility of Kandy and Jaffna in a single lofty tradition of semantic and architectural unity in diversity.  The acme of walauwas in the Sinhala social stratum is the ‘wasala walauwa’. …

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  • 2 Jan, 2013
  • 0 Comment
  • Colombo,
    Language

A-Z of Sri Lankan English: X is for extralinguistic communication

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Illustrations below by Anura Srinath You have probably seen the YouTube clips of jehanr, which include How to speak Sri Lankan, Shit Sri Lankan mothers say, Apple iYo, etc. Whatever you think about the humour, one of the things he does well is to capture (and of course to caricature) some of the extralinguistic features of Sri Lankan communication. These include exclamations such as aiyo!, ane!, ado!, sha!, chickay!, as well as gestures, facial expressions, body language, etc. The accompanying drawings by Anura Srinath show some common examples of Sri Lankan gestures and body language: greeting with the palms held together; giving money with the right hand while the fingers of the left hand touch the right wrist or forearm; beckoning with a downward flick of the fingers of the right hand (sometimes accompanied by a distinctive chirping sound made between the lips, or a light clap of the hands, but rarely with a raised voice); and worshipping a parent,…

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Writing to Reconcile in Sri Lanka

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Image courtesy Green College I interviewed over email the award-winning author Shyam Selvadurai on a new initiative called Write to Reconcile, of which he is Project Director. Groundviews featured an in-depth interview with Shyam in mid-2011, when he was the curator of the Galle Literary Festival. Write to Reconcile is his brainchild, and I was curious to find out what drove him to think of it, and the challenges around doing this kind of work in a country post-war, but very far removed from a just peace. ### What gave rise to this idea? I first began to think of the project during the last Galle Literary Festival. While I enjoyed many aspects of my job as Festival Curator, the thing I enjoyed most this year was taking the children’s author and story teller, Jeeva Ragunath, to Jaffna to do storytelling workshops there. The response of both students and teachers there really moved me and made me want to do something…

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Reflections on ‘Widows’ and ‘Unearthed’

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Work and travel kept me from writing about two significant theatre productions in the past month. Ariel Dorfman’s ‘Widows’ directed by Feroze Kamardeen and produced by Sirraj Abdul Hameed was staged at the Wendt from 23-25 of November. ‘Unearthed’, billed as a site-specific theatre and dance journey through a private home, was directed by Ruhanie Perera (from Floating Space Theatre Company) and Sally E. Dean, performed on 1st and 2nd December in Kotte and produced by Iromi Perera and Silke Arnold. The staging of ‘Widows’ can be appreciated through two distinct lenses – the text in the context of post-war Sri Lanka, and the actual performance on stage. A review by Charles Isherwood in the New York Times of a production in 2008 in the New York Times ends by noting that though, “many have suffered (and continue to suffer)…cruel treatment”,  ‘Widows’ “signally fails to bring the horror of it home.” Karmardeen’s production doesn’t fare any better in communicating the…

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Still Counting the Dead: A welcome first step

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Still Counting the Dead: Survivors of Sri Lanka’s Hidden War, by Frances Harrison, Portobello Books, 246 pp, £ 14.99 “We used to be a very proud people”1 – Uma, The Teacher I Few years ago, during a very wintery January weekend, at a Copenhagen hotel, I was scrambling to prepare a last minute Power Point presentation for a conference themed, violent conflict and health. The reason was one of the Mullivaaykkaal survivors had agreed to speak at the conference’s public symposium as an eyewitness of Vanni war (witnesses from Iraq and South Sudan also spoke at the symposium). The presentation was meant to aid the witness while speaking at the symposium. I was planning for a very brief video or photographic presentation followed by few slides with texts, therefore I was looking for pictures and videos both in my computer and online. Suddenly I remembered about this particular video, which I watched back in May 2009. I managed to get the…

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A-Z of Sri Lankan English: W is for will and would

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Will and would have a habit of changing places in Sri Lankan English. Sometimes will is used where standard British or American English would prefer would (“I knew the car will be there”), and sometimes it’s the other way round (“We would inform you as soon as we hear”). The former (will for would) tends to happen in reported speech where the main verb is in the past tense (“He said he will be late”), and in conditional sentences where the verb in the if clause is in the past tense (“She’ll come if you asked her”). In both cases, the sequence of tenses in standard grammar means that an English teacher is likely to underline the word will with a red pen. But the following quotes from contemporary fiction suggest that the “error” is a common one: … and I knew the paddy field will soon come into view … (Bringing Tony Home, by Tissa Abeysekara, page 44) It…

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Being small, thinking Big: Publishing for the International Market

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Original photo courtesy Tarika Wickremeratne Being small, thinking Big: Publishing for the International Market from the perspective of an independent small publisher concentrating on fiction) Sri Lanka, like many countries of the Asia-pacific region, has long been an exotic destination for travelers in search of the unusual, and as can be expected, there are quite a few stories set in or about Sri Lanka.   From the famous 14th century Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta, to the equally famous science fiction visionary Arthur C. Clarke, writers from many nations have passed through or taken up residence in Sri Lanka, weaving her indelibly into their writings. Although hugely popular, these tales were always from an outsider’s perspective, leaving the local reader vaguely dissatisfied at perceived factual discrepancies or inaccuracies and until recently there were very few Sri Lankan stories told with the authenticity or genuineness of a home-grown Sri Lankan voice. With a view to changing all of that, and giving the Sri Lankan…

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Monsoons and Intermonsoons

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Photo courtesy The Telegraph The New Zealand cricketers should not be surprised that their matches are being rained on. The following is from an article titled “The Language of Climate in Sri Lanka” (Daily News 28/04/09):  “In an article published a few years ago (Daily News, Thursday 4th December 2003) we found the schedules and venues of the Test cricket matches for a decade were out of sync with the climate. Most of our test matches had been scheduled at the start of the Maha season – a time to make a good muddy field.” I recently met the author of this article, Lareef Zubair, who explained that a large part of the problem is the public perception of the word monsoon. The word is redolent of darkening skies, torrential rain and tropical lushness. I myself have often wondered why there was no classic monsoon rain during the so-called monsoon, and why the heaviest rain always seemed to be referred…

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Invitation to prospective writers: A Sri Lankan Anthology of Hint Fiction

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Photo courtesy The Blue Bookcase Around two months ago, I picked up on a whim Hint Fiction edited by Robert Swartwood. Swartwood’s definition of hint fiction is ‘a story of 25 words or fewer that suggests a larger, more complex story’. As the book’s blurb on Amazon notes, “The stories in this collection run the gamut from playful to tragic, conservative to experimental, but they all have one thing in common: they are no more than 25 words long. Robert Swartwood was inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s possibly apocryphal six-word story—”For Sale: baby shoes, never worn”—to foster the writing of these incredibly short-short stories. He termed them “hint fiction” because the few chosen words suggest a larger, more complex chain of events. Spare and evocative, these stories prove that a brilliantly honed narrative can be as startling and powerful as a story of traditional length. The 125 gemlike stories in this collection come from such best-selling and award-winning authors as Joyce Carol…

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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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