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English Today Article
English Today Article
English Today Article
doi:10.1017/S0266078409990447
English Today 100, Vol. 25, No. 4 (December 2009). Printed in the United Kingdom © 2009 Cambridge University Press 55
Gunesekera’s book The Post-Colonial Identity of more memorably known as ‘SLICE’ – the Sri
Sri Lankan English (Katha Publishers 2004), Lankan component of the International Corpus
which, together with my dictionary, are the of English. Work has been ongoing for a num-
only books currently available on the subject in ber of years, and is currently being undertaken
Sri Lanka. This is in striking contrast to India, at the University of Giessen in Germany. The
where research on Indian English dates back to 400,000-word written component of the cor-
Hobson Jobson in the 19th century, and pus is expected to be completed this year. This
numerous books and dictionaries are available. will be a valuable source of empirical data for
My edition of the Oxford Advanced Learners’ researchers. Unfortunately, though, the spo-
Dictionary (OUP 1996) even comes with a 42- ken component of a further 600,000 words is
page Indian English supplement. likely to take much longer to complete.
My impression is that in recent years there
has been increasing awareness of Sri Lankan
Sri Lankan English: the regional
English in academic circles. But there is still a
context
lot of resistance to the concept elsewhere –
both internal resistance among speakers of SLE Sri Lankan English belongs to the family of
themselves, and external resistance from the South Asian Englishes, of which Indian English
rest of the English-speaking world. In Sri Lanka is the best known and most established exam-
the term ‘Sri Lankan English’ still carries con- ple – although Indian English itself is of course
notations of ‘broken English’, something sub- hugely diverse. Indian English and Sri Lankan
standard and inferior. Many speakers of SLE English have much in common, as both vari-
do not like to be told that is what they speak, eties evolved from the English of the British
and most learners of the language aspire to colonials of the nineteenth century, and much
speak ‘British English’ and nothing less! Unfor- common vocabulary developed to describe the
tunately, this attitude is exacerbated by the common flora and fauna of the two countries,
fact that many teachers (both local and for- as well as their shared religious and cultural
eign) tend to share the same view. aspects. Both varieties include a number of
Outside Sri Lanka, there is virtually nothing words of Tamil origin, and many others
to show that SLE even exists. Many people are derived from Sanskrit roots.
ignorant of the fact that there are a significant One might expect Indian and Sri Lankan
number of people in Sri Lanka who actually English to be almost identical. And indeed that
speak English as their first language, and where is the assumption of much that has been writ-
this is acknowledged, it is generally assumed ten on the subject of World Englishes. There is
to be some sort of sub-variety of Indian English. a tendency to think of Sri Lankan English as
Part of the problem has always been the lack of being just a sub-variety of Indian English, an
documented evidence showing that SLE exists, impression encouraged by the relative lack of
and identifying the features that define it. documentary evidence of SLE as an indepen-
The question of attitudes and awareness is dent variety. Anyone who is familiar with both
particularly relevant in the field of education. varieties will be aware that this is not the case.
Dinali Fernando, one of the editors of my dic- In fact it seems to me that in the years since
tionary, is the author of an unpublished study independence there has been remarkably little
titled ‘Sri Lankan English in the Sri Lankan cross-fertilization between the two, and Sri
classroom: a study of teachers’ awareness of Lankan English has forged its own quite inde-
their own variety’, in which she shows that pendent identity. However, this may change
while Sri Lankan teachers of English are gener- with the increasing economic power of India,
ally positive in their attitude towards SLE, they as the popularity of Indian satellite TV chan-
remain relatively unaware of what exactly it nels is starting to expose Sri Lankans to more
consists of, and how it differs from standard Indian English.
English. Another difference that is worth mentioning
My hope is that my dictionary of Sri Lankan is the linguistic context in which English exists
English may help to raise awareness of the fea- in India and Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is essentially
tures of SLE among teachers, learners and a trilingual country. Apart from a very small
users of English in Sri Lanka. Probably the next minority (e.g. speakers of Sri Lankan Malay)
significant step will be the completion of the most people speak one, two or three lan-
written component of ICE-SL – previously and guages, and that is all they are ever likely to