You should ask yourself how the Japanese and the Koreans became “tec savy” without knowing English!

And don’t you know about the ancient history of Japan and Korea? Do you think that they aren’t proud about their history? When the British are proud about their 1000+ years of history why shouldn’t we?

Why should we elevate English over our mother tongue ?
Its all right to excel in English. But it must not be given precedence over the Sinhala/Tamil.
Some “pundits” believe superior command in English is analogues to superior intelligence 🙂

my dear laban…

the Koreans and Japanese are tec savy and industrially developed. All we idiots have is the often harked about “2500 year old culture.”

hewayalage

Why do you think people have to feel inferior about their language? Have the Korians or Japanese done that in order to “speak with the world”?

” 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.”

Here the use of the word “between” is grammatically incorrect and instead it should have been “among”! Maybe that’s also a an influence of “talking” too much of Sri Lankan English at home!

“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.”

I agree whole heartedly with the last 4 lines of your article. Most of these people eat, drink, think,dream and breath in English but due to some funny sense of patriotism will not accept that their mother tongue is indeed English. That is why, day by day this country is turning more and more into ‘Hypocrisy’ rather than a ‘Democracy.’

That part you quoted from the Constitution is a good example of what hypocrites we have become. How easy it would have been to simply state that:

18. (1) The Official Languages of Sri Lanka shall be Sinhala and Tamil and these 2 languages shall also be National Languages of Sri Lanka.

(2) English shall be the link language.

…instead of that we get the Sinhalese trying to show their dominance by saying

18. (1) The Official Language of Sri Lanka shall be Sinhala.
(2) Tamil shall also be an official language.

…this is just common sense…but there are many Sinhalese who will disagree and justify it. Sad.