Sri Lankan English

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Sri Lankan English (SLE) is the English language as spoken in Sri Lanka.

The earliest English speakers in present-day Sri Lanka date back to the days of the British Empire, the era of Royal Navy dominance, and the British colonial presence in South Asia.

An SLE consultant for the Oxford English Dictionary and author of Knox's Words notes that British readers first encountered loan words from Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon) in a book published in 1681 entitled An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon in the East Indies. Words from that book became used internationally: the best known is Buddha but others include betel leaf, bo tree, puja, rattan, rillow, Vedda, and wanderoo.

SLE became more indigenous in the mid-19th century. In addition to the usual terms for flora and fauna, new idioms, referred to as Ceylonisms, emerged.

After independence in 1948, English was no longer an official language of Sri Lanka, but it remained in use across the island's ethnic groups. It evolved to incorporate more Sinhala vocabulary and grammatical conventions such as the use of "no?" as a tag question at the end of a sentence.

In spite of English's long history in Sri Lanka, 21st century Sri Lankans academicians debate about the legitimacy of SLE as a separate dialect.

A significant difference between British English and standard Sri Lankan English is its use of particular tenses. Many educated Sri Lankans would use past perfect tense to talk about things that happened at a fixed time in the recent past instead of past simple. Many Sri Lankans still use words such as frock (to scold) and the question form 'to whom' which are not familiar to modern British English speakers. Another example of typical Sri Lankan English is posing questions by changing the intonation, e.g. "you are hungry?"

[edit] Trivia

Anaconda and serendipity are words with Sri Lanka connections, though they are not loan words. Another distinctive feature of Sri Lankan English is the uniqueness of its pronunciation. Most of the people belonging to the middle class and the upper middle class still speak with British RP as a result of the colonial influences while there is a up coming group of ENGLISH USERS for whom English is the second language. They invented Sri Lankan English with the influence of their mother tongue. However there are people who still believe that Sri Lankans should speak standard British English.

Speakers of Sri Lankan English are often incapable of producing certain sounds such as /ou/, /ei/ and the two different pronunciations of the sound /th/ and use, the same sound for both /v/ and /w/ as they do not bite their lower lip for /v/ or round their lips for /w/.

There are certain nouns added to English by Sri Lankans and therefore an Englishman coming to Sri Lanka for the first time would not know what Shorteats (snacks) or string hoppers (a typical Sri Lankan food). If you read a daily newspaper, you may find a number of typical Sri Lankan Usages, which are not accepted in standard British English:

“... lots of equipments..."

      information system
      education minister

[edit] External links and sources

• A brief history of Sri Lankan English from the Oxford English Dictionary website
• An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon in the East Indies, from Project Gutenberg
• A review of Knox's Words, from the Sri Lankan newspaper Sunday Observer
• Another review of Knox's Words, from a fellow author's personal website
• Our British heritage, another Sunday Observer article