Sri Lankan English: An Unrecognised Creole – By Randika Jayakody & Jerome Perera Source : Qld Sri Lankan Newsletter – Dæhæna – June 2023 English language ostensibly arrived in Ceylon in 1796 with the first British sailors and immediately began evolving into a new language. In order to understand this change, it is important to understand two terms. A pidgin is the result of two or more different languages meeting. This leads to the development of a new language using vocabulary, grammar, and language habits of all these languages. When this new language is transmitted to a new generation as their mother tongue, the language becomes a creole. It is within this context that I wish to introduce the concept of Sri Lankan English Creole (SLEC) to describe a type of English unique to Sri Lanka. Some unique features of SLEC that readers may recognise: SLEC completely reorganises Standard English grammar, ...
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Mind your language. It divides! – By Aubrey Joachim Nineteen Fifty-Six was a watershed moment in the history of Ceylon – now Sri Lanka, when the government of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike passed the Sinhala Only Bill as the first act of the new government of a leader who at the time could hardly speak the Sinhalese language. The Christian educated ‘silver-tongued-orator’ of Oxford had passed his senior Cambridge examinations with distinctions in English, Latin, Greek and French. No Sinhalese for this aristocratic son of Ceylon. However, at an election rally in Polonnaruwa in late 1955 Solomon West Ridgeway Dias (SWRD) Bandaranaike promised the masses ‘Sinhala – in twenty-four hours’. Thus the division began and the domino effect still goes on – wherever in the world Sri Lankans congregate. Language is defined as a means of communication between humans by way of speech, writing or gesture. It is ironic that while language ...
Mar 11, 2023
Posted by eLanka admin In
Articles, Aubrey Joachim
Tagged communication, English Language, languages, Sinhalese language, Sri Lanka
THE HORRIFIC COST OF TRANSLATING THE BIBLE FROM GREEK TO ENGLISH LANGUAGE Photo source:-Plough.Com #WILLIAM_TYNDALE ~ the man who translated the Bible into English and was burnt alive at the ridiculous young age of 42 years old, for his efforts. Nearly 500 years ago, this week, William Tyndale, fondly called ‘Father of the English Bible’ was strangled and burned at the stake after being tried and convicted of heresy and reason for translating the Bible into English. HIS OFFENSE! He translated the Greek Bible into English. That you have a Bible in a language you can read is largely due to his labours, and many of the very phrases you read in it retain the flavour of his understanding of the Greek and Hebrew. A graduate of Oxford and Cambridge, Tyndale had a powerful desire to make the Bible available even to the common people in England, in order ...
Jan 2, 2020
Posted by eLanka admin In
Articles
Tagged English Language, German city, King James Version, WILLIAM_TYNDALE
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“QUOTABLE QUOTES” – By Des Kelly Above, is something in the English Language that has always interested me. Exactly as the fact that a “song” is simply “a condensed story”, quotes, as Samuel Beckett one wrote, are simply “wise words, witty words, weird words, written and spoken by the famous and the fashionable, over the last few decades”. Always interesting, they make for quick uncluttered reading, and while I intend writing some of the best, for our members and readers of eLanka, let us start with some “truisms” below, to whet your appetite. Desmond Kelly. (Editor-in-Chief)–eLanka. Truisms -If I had a dollar for every girl that found me unattractive, they’d eventually find me attractive. -I find it ironic that the colors red, white, and blue stand for freedom, until they’re flashing behind you. -Today a man knocked on my door and asked for a small donation towards ...
Nov 1, 2019
Posted by eLanka admin In
Articles, DESMOND KELLY
Tagged English Language, Truisms
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