was read well over 22,000 times from 1 – 9 September, when content and debates around the 18th Amendment to the constitution reached their peak. Over 170 comments were featured in the…
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…
Michael Meyler is an innocent Britisher going about being innocent with respect to language and language politics, he would have us believe. He is good hearted and generous. This is why, we…
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…
my teacher talks of a sri lankan english-poem ii (a responsive thing) by sumathy ooo, how sad that thing called a sri lankan-thing who thinging this thing of of englees or inglisss…
This letter was published in the . Dear Sir, I am writing in response to Malinda Seneviratne’s article “Language standards: whose version of our reality should we inhabit?” (, 20 June 2010)….
In the article “The bowl-or-ball dilemma of rubbishing English standards” (6/6/2010), Dilshan Boange adds his voice to the growing clamour of protest at the idea of speaking English “our way”. He recounts…
[Editor’s note: The following article is a riposte to Malinda Seneviratne’s article, published in the Sunday Observer on the 23rd of May 2010.] One of the points I made in my article…
An adhipoya 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…
In the two and a half years since I published my book, , I have followed the ongoing debate on the subject with interest. The good news is that there is a…
I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve had that question asked from me over the years. Ironically enough, in these days of ‘peace’ I’ve had it asked of me…
In Jumma: The last bastion of the boys, (, 26 March 2010) Nazeeya Faarooq wrote: “…most of the Jumma sermons are totally irrelevant. Firstly they are given in a language they don’t…
I have always had a fascination for Sri Lankan English. In fact, Sri Lankans use English the way the British used Ceylonese in subjugating them to their will. Now that the good…
Some months ago, I arrived in Colombo on a trip to London from the Far East with Sri Lankan Airline. When the transit is more than eight hours, they put you in…
Ameena Hussein is one of Sri Lanka’s best known English authors. She is also one half of the Perera Hussein Publishing House, that since 2003 has published some of the best new…
