Be sure over 80% of the general public will say no,Keep away Buddhist monks from politics.Teach them Lord Buddha’s Buddhism.Buddhism is based and devised very clearly on Humanism.Buddhism is Humanism.
So my mission is to make Humanism a compulsory subject in all the schools in Srilanka from 2016.
My next question is I am a legal citizen of Sri Lanka,I have all the rights to become a president of Sri Lanka.
But it is not possible in Srilanka.The constitution restricts.But If I become a citizen of America I have the rights to become a president of America.
How is our democracy ?

Dear Dr. Meyler:

You certainly did not write a dictionary of Sri Lankan English. If you think you did, it shows a problem in how you define Sri Lankan English.

But you did write something which I really appreciate but it is a collection of Lankanisms (a back-formation from Hector Passe’s Ceylonisms.) I can positively look at your publication as a development of Pasee’s concept. If you name your book as a Dictionary of Sri Lankan English, it’s critical implicature is that you portray Sri Lankan English as a collection of linguistic vulgarisms, even if you do not mean it. 🙂

No doubt we are in need of a Dictionary of Contemporary Sri Lankan English but I am sorry it need not come from you, but from a body of English academics and practitioners who can conduct extensive research on the Contemporary English usage in Sri Lanka based on a corpus of authentic Sri Lankan English. In simple terms, those who seek to institutionalise and standardise Lankan English (which in fact is a good thing) should come up with such an extensive lexicon of the language as it is used in Sri Lanka by Sri Lankans.

As far as I am concerned, the Standard Variety of Sri Lankan English that academics like Kandaiah (1981) and Gunasekara (2005) speaks of is a more prestigious variety of English, which can be seen as a direct descendant of the so called Queen’s English. So it’s another form of ‘snooty’ English. Many Sri Lankans who are highly proficient users/ native speakers of English use this variety and the SSLE speaking community include many professionals and scholars. The accent of SSLE is closer in many ways to the RP at segmental level but when it comes to tone and intonation and certain articulations, it differs because it has become Lankan its flavour.

So Standard Sri Lankan English deserves to be a standard of its own, and is in fact a clearly understood variety. Its development is similar to that of what is known as Estuary English in the UK.

I would like to repeat myself: the most disappointing thing about your lexicon is the picture it paints of Sri Lankan English: a collection of odd linguistic vulgarisms and archaisms which makes it difficult for foreigners to understand the English Language Spoken in Sri Lanka. Whatever said and done and intended, this publication clearly implies that Sri Lankan English is interesting but still inferior to British English (Sadly this is what I felt and many people concerned feel)

Therefore, my opinion (which is not advice) is: if you think of coming up with a second edition of your work, the title needs to be reworded, something like:
A Collection of Lankanisms in English: a foreigner’s guide. would do very well,

or you can be more creative to call it ‘ Kadu Hatan’ ( I am referring to the role of English as ‘Kaduwa’ in Sri Lanka.

I am afraid, I don’t mean to hurt you or disappoint you and I apologise in advance for any hard feelings arising from this letter.

Cheers and good luck.
Rusiru

the subsequent black-white comment (referring to political convictions) flowed from that qualification. sorry if i offended anyone. i wish people were more attentive.

much love to the person who called me a nincompoop. the person implies i am not of ‘good breeding’. well, i never made the claim…and if he/she is well bred, how wonderful! since i have been called a nincompoop, uncouth etc..i will try to be better. i wonder if anyone engaging in such name-calling can be considered to have been well bred. maybe some well-bred person will enlighten me. i know, a lot of people don’t like me, but consider my an absolute fool….humour me…and educate me.

the issue is NOT meyler, as someone pointed out. meyler was turned into puppet by Sunimal Fernando, i am quite sure against his (meyler’s) wishes. my issue is with the English Our Way programme. My purpose was to get Sunimal out of his closet. He has come out. meyler offered himself as ‘bait’ when he wrote the first article, unconsciously, i am sure. he mentioned me in that piece. and he made some really naive comments about things he has no clue about (the language-use in english theatre in Sri Lanka — and didn’t respond to my objections on this matter, but never mind that). I used meyler (thanks michael), and sunimal bit.

i have no personal issues with anyone on this forum. would be glad to meet and chat over a cup of tea anywhere in sri lanka. any time.

cheers.

Oh la la! I had no idea you were a university don. In that case I offer my humble apologies. But then, one can claim to be anything when writing under a pseudonym. I admit it was foolish of me to ask in the first place.

That’s not quite what I mean. I’m saying that Sri Lankans shouldn’t speak English as they do on BBC because it is out of place. They should feel free to allow their own cultural context to inform their usage of English. And yes, I agree with you that Standard Sri Lankan English is not that much different from Standard English elsewhere in that it is comprehensible to global audiences.

I agree also with the rest of what you said, and have made those same points here in my two previous posts.

With regard to the expression “come and go”, I am not suggesting that one should cling to it. My point was simply that if it enters common usage, it could one day be deemed standard usage in Sri Lanka.

Let me make a correction–I didn’t mean to imply that everyone who has expressed an opinion here is vilifying somebody. Of course they aren’t. But I’m old enough (and old-fashioned enough) to take exception to Malinda Seneviratne’s article in which he uses the f-word very thinly disguised. In a post here he (Malinda) says people who use pseudonyms and attack him are cowards. I think I’m expressing dissent, not “attacking” him, but even expressing dissent with him is something I hesitate to do, if his response is to throw the f-word and worse at me in a public forum. If this is cowardice, yes, I’m a coward. But I’d like to think that I’m not afraid of constructive criticism. Unfortunately what I’m seeing is not constructive criticism, its downright disgusting name-calling. Whatever happened to respectful debates and disagreements?

What have I done to try and improve standards of English? I have taught ESL for 20 years to university undergraduates, a group that desperately needs functional English skills. Does this make me sound patronizing? You be the judge, Mr De Silva!

You’re absolutely right in that we Sri Lankans don’t necessarily have to speak English as they do on BBC. In fact, the Oxford English dictionary – that foremost authority on British English – admitted some time back that the centre of gravity of the English language is now in America (although other sources say RP carries prestige even there). And the rest of the English-speaking world has contributed immensely to the enrichment of this international medium of communication. The readiness of English to absorb new usage, and to borrow from other languages it comes into contact with, has perhaps been the greatest factor in its richness today. So good dictionaries update themselves regularly to reflect this reality.

However, for a new expression to be recognized as mainstream usage even at the informal level, it should first come to be used by a considerable proportion of those who are proficient in it. That’s why patterns like ‘I ain’t got nothin” just occupy a twilight zone despite them being used by some native speakers. So good dictionaries categorize usage with terms like ‘informal,’ ‘slang,”non-standard,”vulgar’ etc.

Therefore, when it comes to Sri Lankan English too, we need to clarify what can be considered standard SLE and what is just sub-standard. I think Michael Meyler himself has pointed this out. There are Sri Lankan forms – like our replacing English diphthongs with monophthongs, and saying ‘no?’ in place of question tags in informal settings – that have been adopted by almost everybody here, while others – like saying ‘p’ for ‘f’ or vice versa – are generally avoided by the educated speakers of English in this country. It’s also worth noting that the kind of English used by our best speakers doesn’t deviate so much from what would be considered ‘good English’ anywhere in the world.

I don’t see much chance of expressions like ‘I will go and come’ – whether they are grammatically correct or not – entering mainstream usage here as even today’s youngsters who don’t know much English are familiar with ‘See you’ and ‘Bye’, which they abundantly use instead. Ditto for ‘Border catch and go,’ which is hardly heard today. Trying to hang on to them because somebody has used them is just like clinging to Colonial-era British English.

@Not Confused

Not all of us here are vilifying each other. People like me also see MM’s book as something positive rather than negative, though, by the author’s own admission, what’s included in it shouldn’t all be seen as part of standard Sri Lankan English. What he has done is to chronicle Sri Lankan usage on the basis of ‘It has been used’ rather than ‘It should be used’.

Your exhortation to do something to improve standards here is good, but doesn’t it sound a bit patronizing? Well, I’m writing a blog to help Sri Lankans with their English (http://ingirisi.blogspot.com/), and I’m interested in knowing what you’re doing to that effect.

I am now putting this on hold until the passions subside.

I do have more funny and pithy Sri Lankan phrases which tickle me no end.

Currently Wimal Werawansa is holding forth and drawing attention to the media.

I’ll be back.

Some people are obviously confused, like Reeza, who went from defending MS and criticising MM, to the exact opposite position. Reeza, have you looked through MM’s Dictionary? Read his introduction? If you have, you will see that he is not trying to tell us how to speak, or what type of English to speak. He is merely pointing out interesting things in the language we speak, in contrast to British English. I am grateful for this, because it reinforces to me even more strongly that the English I speak, as a Sri Lankan, is not British English, thank God. I am happy that someone has pointed this out to me because we can now truly say that we have a unique Sri Lankan identity, not only because of our language, but because of the English we speak. Why can’t we be content with this?

Of course there will be sub-standard varieties and dialects of Sri Lankan English, as there are of American English and British English. But this can;t be avoided. And let me tell all you paranoid people out there–one Britisher who wrote a Dictionary can’t create or destroy standards for us–it is we, the speakers, who do that. So all of you who want to uphold standards for Sri Lankan English, if you think you are good speakers and you have good standards, stop throwing brickbats at a book, and go out into our schools and do some volunteer English teaching, MS included. This will have a more productive and positive outcome on maintaining standards than vilifying each other in public forums, and showing the international community including Britain and America, that we are still confused about who we are and what we speak, 50+ years after Independence. Shame on us!

English dictionaries are constantly updated to reflect customary usage of new words and idioms and new meanings of older words. Language is a social form, and it is accepted that English usage changes with the times, even in its birthplace. This doesn’t mean that the language is becoming inferior. Dictionaries acknowledge shifts in language usage, but also set standards and dictate usage. It would be a shame if only the English are allowed to update the language but its far larger number of global users are kept out of the game.

I don’t know why there’s an assumption that SL English is inferior. It’s simply Sri Lankan–neither inferior nor superior to BBC English. There’s nothing ungrammatical in “We will go and come”. (The English too have a structurally similar expression, “come and go”.) If repeated often enough by large numbers of people, “go and come” will become standard usage.

Jaffna Tamil is different from Tamil spoken in India. How come we don’t insist that Jaffna Tamils stick to the standards of the parent language?