SRI LANKA

SRI LANKA. A country of South Asia, and member of the COMMONWEALTH. Languages: Sinhala, Tamil (both official, national languages), and English (often used in government and spoken by some 10% of the nation, including especially the Burghers). The first Europeans to visit the island were the Portuguese in 1505, who built a fort at Colombo. The Dutch forced them out in 1658, but failed to gain control of the whole island. The British defeated them in 1796 and established the colony of Ceylon in 1802, to which Tamil labourers were brought from south India to work on tea and coffee plantations. Ceylon became a Dominion of the British Empire in 1948 and the independent republic of Sri Lanka in 1972. Until about 1831, the teaching of English was in the hands of missionaries; when the government took control, there were 235 Protestant schools in the island, and until 1886 Christian schools and colleges predominated.

English in Sri Lanka

One result of the long-established tradition of such institutions was the emergence of two broad and at times hostile educated classes: an English-using and largely Christian minority and a Sinhala-educated majority, most of whom were Buddhists. Until 1948, three languages were used side by side, English, Sinhala, and Tamil. English served as the language of administration, the generally desired language of higher education, and a link language between the communities. In 1956, however, a socialist government replaced English with Sinhala, unleashing in the process social disturbance that has not yet come to an end. The Sinhala-only policy resulted in ‘the sharp cleavage between Sinhalese and Tamils, most of whom are monolingual in their own tongues and therefore have no means of communication with members of the other community’ ( Rajiva Wijesinha, An Anthology of Contemporary Sri Lankan Poetry in English, Colombo, The British Council, 1988). In recent years, a three-language policy has been proposed that provides for equality among Sinhala, Tamil, and English, and to some extent seeks to restore the position of English, whose role in the community was greatly reduced from the 1960s to the 1980s. English in Sri Lanka, sometimes referred to as Lankan English, has a range of subvarieties based on proficiency in its use and the language background of its users. In general terms, it is a subvariety of SOUTH ASIAN ENGLISH sharing many features with INDIAN ENGLISH.