(Read Part 1of the post...) You must have already seen the advertisements on TV, featuring several well-known Sri Lankan personalities talking about speaking English our way. They said that they didn’t know much English at the beginning of their respective carriers, but the circumstances led them to use the little English they knew and they were not embarrassed about using it their way.
These advertisements, sponsored by the Presidential Task Force seriously signal a paradigm shift towards the speaking, learning and teaching English in Sri Lanka. This of course, is an initiative that should have started long before, but we extend our appreciation to the authorities who had the presence of mind to launch this programme even at this juncture.
Establishing Sri Lankan identity in English language
We only have to have a look at our neighbor India and learn how they have a foreign language as part of their day-to-day life and, especially as part of their native culture. They speak English with a thick Indian accent and even have created a variation of their own called ‘Indian English.’ Almost all the Sri Lankan university students, who take English as a subject in their degree course, refer books written in Indian English to better understand Hemingway or Shakespeare.
A Sri Lankan variety of English has evolved over the years and it is high time that we codified Sri Lankan English with its typical characteristics in its phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. The presidential task force has looked into the possibilities of codifying such essential features to facilitate and enhance the use of Sri Lankan English in order to ensure public convenience in communication.
The new Sri Lankan ideology of English that reflects the spirit of `Mahinda Chinthana' and defines the position of the Presidential Initiative sees English for its utility value and not for its social worth, English as a skill for employment and a vehicle for reaching out to the external world of knowledge and learning,
English as a straight and simple tool of communication stripped of its historical baggage, English as a common property resource to be owned by all, - ' English as a Life Skill' similar to other natural life skills such as the skills to ride a motor-cycle or drive a car or use a computer. "
Teach English Asian way
The title seems suspicious and dubious. Also controversial. Yet, we are gonna do it. Not the American way, nor the British way but Indian way this time. Sure we are optimistic. Well, we can be happy about a couple of things this time.
One, we should be happy that we are a nation who is open to others’ ideas. (Yet we must remember not to let go of what is our own.) Two, we must be happy that teaching English in the island has always been either the American or the British way and it has never come from somewhere near the Asian shores till date. So now it is coming as an Asian way, Indian way, which is within our reach. And we can rely on Indian way because India has reached better targets in teaching English to her children than us. And ultimately we can evolve this approach to establish our own Sri Lankan way of teaching and learning English.
In a section titled "From an Anglo-Centric Past to an Asian-Centric Future-English will soon be a South Asian Language" the note outlines the vision of the Road Map and it states further, "We South Asians must speak English the South Asian Way. 20 years from now, South Asian English will be the dominant form of English in the world.
A neutral South Asian accent with which increasing number of us speak English even today will be the dominant English accent in the world. Thirty 30 years from now the majority of English speakers will be having fun at the expense of the British accent and the British pronunciation of English words still the hallmark of Sri Lankans, unpardonable from a South Asian perspective."
Related posts:
- Speak English our way – A leap forward in progressive direction – Part 1
- Mind your (own) English accent – The facts and myth
32 comments:
You have no what so idea where accents come from. It has nothing to do with politics or Mahinda Chinthanaya. In very early childhood, our brain picks up range of vowels from words we heard and brain create circuits for that. Once we got older, it is really hard to alter those basic brain circuits. Indian speaks secondary languages with a thick accent not because of any political reasons, because their brain unable to process other sounds. They can’t pronounce the word Z because their mother-languages do not contain that sound; therefore brain goes to closest circuit – Ju, so the Zoo tern in to Juu – (that is for hearing and speaking both). Sri Lankans are deferent. I guess we have rather deferent vowel set in our brain. Saying we should speak the way Indian do is ludicrous, Impossible, and stupid. I don’t know why some are so threatened by accents.
This video talk a lot about this topic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcb8nT0QC6o
This is completely stupid. We should emulate Singapore's "Speak Proper English" campaign, not bloody Indians who export taxi drivers to the world.
We learn English to communicate with the world. For that we need to learn the brand of English that is understood by the world, not the kind that's ridiculed and looked down upon. We want to sound like the educated cosmopolitan people that we are, not construct a lowly pidgin language similar to Indian English.
We're Sri Lankans, not bloody Indians. We should be a part of ASEAN, not bloody SAARC. Fuck India and their English. I'm sure that people who support this idea are either complete hypocrites or have never been outside Sri Lanka.
http://www.goodenglish.org.sg/
Hahaha...well well. I suppose this kind of drivel is to be expected from a site backed by the intellectual lightweight/racist Patali Champika Ranawaka.
Sam, Bardo,Benevolant,,,, Ha ha menna kalu suddo tika danmama naliyanna patan aragena..... U guys not only spk english, u have endorsed Anglican culture for petty economic gains,,,, Gonna is U;r good old days,,, This is new Sri Lanka freed from terrorism and neo-colonialism,,, !!!
Go and fly kites with U'r western masters !!! or live here as true Sri Lankan's .
Sam, Bardo,
I think U are so upsat and lost in facts in the post. I can not see anywhere saying Sri Lankan's should use Indian accent. It only says that we should adapt Indian/Asian approach in teaching english. This post further says
"The presidential task force has looked into the possibilities of codifying such essential features to facilitate and enhance the use of Sri Lankan English in order to ensure public convenience in communication.".......
"And ultimately we can evolve this approach to establish our own Sri Lankan way of teaching and learning English....."
DO NOT BEAT AROUND THE BUSH. REALITY IS U GUYS ARE SO UPSET THAT U ARE GONNA LOOSE UNDUE SOCIAL ADVANTAGE ENJOYED SINCE SO CALLED INDEPENDANCE ON ! !!!
Let queen of England save you,,, or try to be real Sri Lankan's by now..
Either u adapt or will be get vanish,,, Not too late yet...
This is the second coming of 1956. Just as village kids were beginning to get the chance to learn English through the public school system, the great Bandaranaikes practically put a stop to that with the Language Act. But they sent their own offspring to European universities without batting an eyelid.
This will have a similar effect. Everyone knows that hordes of affluent children go abroad for higher education at present, and learn superb English as well in the process. Those who are not lucky enough to afford that type of thing are being exhorted to confine themselves to "ispeaking Englis". What better way there is to keep them in their right place and ensure that they will never be able to compete with the high and mighty.
Supun and Anon,
No need of any language if you could not maintain a decent discussion. By insulting me or anyone personally, you cannot prove anything except your parent’s failures as parents and your teacher’s failures as teachers.
Anon, I agree education need a revelation not only on English, but on every other subject too. What is so call Indian/Asian approach? Just by adding words geographically closer to us, you cannot change education. Every country in Asia have deferent educational methods and Singapore been the world best Education system so far. Stop playing with our children for political reasons. Our parents even haven’t thought about internet when we were born. A kid enter school today retire at 2075. Stop screwing with them because of your suffer from untreatable inferiority complex.
I agree with FiV. This is another approach to provide middle class poor quality education while upper class educated in private school or abroad. Let’s give common people glass and say those are Asian and those are ours and love it or vanish, and give rich people diamond. This is worst than murder.
We all know which political stream is the agents of colonial masters and Western capitalists. When the progressive political stream is moving this country forward by empowering Sri Lankans,, these comprador agents come up with hilarious hair split logic for their self defense.
Anon,
No need of any language if you could not maintain a decent discussion. By insulting me or anyone personally, you cannot prove anything except your parent’s failures as parents and your teacher’s failures as teachers.
When Sam has nothing to argue with the content he always fall out with comments :-) Hik Hik,,,,
Even these terms "comprador agents", "progressive political stream" smack of the 50s, 60s and early 70s. The only difference is that the first one was then used to refer to those who promoted learning English at all; and the second to refer to those who urged the people to just disregard it. All the while the elite users of these terms made sure that their children got the best of English. That was hypocrisy at its best!
Today these vested interests know that it won't quite work that way. Even the village masses are now well aware of the necessity of English. The evidence comes from among them. Some of their own guys have failed to obtain gainful employment even with a university education simply because of their lack of English.
Therefore the elite has come up with a smarter way to do it over again. Now they say, with their tongue in cheek perhaps, "Of course it's important to learn English, but why bother to do it the Western way. After all, the Western countries are always plotting to bring down our country from its current lofty position, so we'll just limit ourselves to what we use here."
It would be another thing if they were asking the masses to start using English with what they already know and then work their way up. But no, they are saying that it's enough to learn Sri Lankan (broken?) English and there's no need to go beyond that.
It would do well for anyone remotely interested in following this advice to find out what kind of English the main instigators of these programmes - not their henchmen like the writer of this blog - are teaching to their own kids. It's not so difficult, just try to find out where these privileged children are getting their education and you'll see the standard of English they are getting - and also realize the hypocrisy behind it all.
Kapila,
Arguments only can be maintain by discoursing facts, not by bulling and personal insults as you and rest do around here. You may able to do that in the primary school but not in adult life.
I presented facts in my first reply with research results. Have anyone reply to those? Instead you jump up on me with personal insults. That is alright, because I know not everybody fortunate enough to have good parents.
How you going eliminate “comprador agents” by teaching our kids Indian version of English? If you want to win over someone, you have to be better than them at it. Our Cricket team didn’t win the world-cup by learning to play Elle. They learn Cricket, and they learn it better than everyone else. Susanthika didn’t got her a medal by learning to walk.
This horrible idea only will make those “comprador agents” superior, because they had chance to be educated in schools such as Thurston Collage as our president did, or Thomas Collage and England like his sons did – His rugby playing sons didn’t went to a Maha Vidyalaya in Hambanthota– only I did. None of his sons speak bastardized English. Then why should not my child have right to learn proper English? Please enlighten me? (or insult me, as nationalists usually do around here.)
Sam,
You have hit the nail right on the head!
interesting
Interesting arguments.
Difficult to post here.
Making less emphasis on accent and more importance on learning and speaking the language itself make village students more interesting and less fear in learning English. This is vell known to all anglo-comprador kalu sudda community in colombo. They are really really feared now that majority is gonna speak english and these english speaking ordinary charaters are gonna loose their SOCIAL STATUS !!!!
Way to go, Sam and fiv.
Some people just don't seem to get it, no matter what others say. They keep parroting this comprador nonsense.
West want those english speaking people to adapt their culture and politics as well. Those who follow this are called compradors. They try to cash in by helping Western masters to opress common people. In the contrary the new endeavor of the government is to empower rural childran to learn english as a life skill not to endorse them to adapt western culture. Its simple, There is nothing fuzzy. Its a PROGRESSIVE step for common people and IRRITATING step for anglo-elite society in Colombo 7.
This is hilarious. The pseudo-patriots (i.e. the idiots who think that patriotism is blindly following whatever MR and his band of thieves say) have their knickers in a twist. Listen up fools, those of us who have criticised this article and the purported plan do so BECAUSE we want everyone and their kids to learn English, not because we don't. However, we want them to learn proper English and not the disgusting Indian type (and go around saying 'chaclate' and 'vaat is this' etc). You idiots are so busy falling over yourselves to criticise us for daring to disagree with the charlatan behind this blog, that you don't even realise that we are arguing for the same thing as you. Fools.
English Sri Lankan way for whom?. Should you require English to communicate to international audiences, then you must express yourself like late Kadiragamar or Paltha Kohona who by the way learned his language skills while living in Australia, UK and US. In my opinion SL presenters to international media, rank lowest among South Asia.
Empowering common people with English language as a life skill is one thing. That is "Speak english our way" program is all about. It make people to ease in learning english so that majority acquire that skill. We can have seperate linguistic programms for top deplomats and people communicate with international commuity. It does not mean all the people should speack in British accent,,, which is artificial and mockery. Peple in Colombo 7 are just immitating British accent bcs they have inferirior mentality of being under dogs of British colonial masters and later their local agents for long. The people in the villages does not have that mentality ]. They are Sri Lankans in their inner self as well.
Great post. Gonna is the time of petty party politics of UNP-SLFP .
Its now real battle between two cultures and policies indigenous Sri Lankans and comprador lumpant society in Colombo.
THIS IS NEW INDEPENDENT SRI LANKA
OK, OK, I think this has gone far enough. So we had better agree to disagree and go our own separate ways.
Those of us who want our children to learn standard English will teach them that (They are not going to ban it, are they?) and the others can happily follow whatever norm they want.
In a way it's good for our own kids. There will be far less competition for them to face in the future than there would be otherwise. I only pity the other children who will end up with pidgin English as a result of the wrong choices their parents are making today. It must be their bad karma.
Anon @ 6.56.
Colombo 07 people speak with a British accent? Really? Do you live in a village reading leftist propaganda sheets to actually believe that? If you'd ever met anyone from Colombo 07 you'd know that the English they speak is very much Sri Lankan, with a lot of 'What men', 'I say', 'Ado', 'machang' and 'bugger' thrown in. Hardly British isn't it? You fools just parrot the standard line. There is no conspiracy you idiot. Read my last comment.
I think fiv has proposed a logical end to all this, though it is a sad one.
fiv,
Yes u can teach U'r children so called good british accent,, But it will no longer be a point of prestige. All others will start speaking english and they will use it just as a tool and not as a BIG ego thing as you think,,,,
Common people need english for mere gather information and communication with others and to communicate with any other nation than UK and USA this is good enough,,,'
So u guys keep on communicate with U'r good english with U'r colonial masters,,, we all have lot to do with from China to Brazil and Russia to Japan,,, :-)
For us World is not Britain ,,,,
Come out of U'r hole.
Anon @ 20.43
So you're saying you'd prefer your child to learn broken English or Indian English than good English? I don't know where you guys brought this reference to a 'British accent' or 'British English' because as far as I know the British in general don't speak good English. Good English is NOT synonymous with British English. Maybe this clarification will jolt you out of your post-colonial insecurity, which is making you blind to the argument that some of us are making here; that we can easily teach our children proper English (again note that this doesn't refer to British English) without resorting to a dumbed down version which will impede them in the long run.
I agree with fiv, let’s stop as it is. This guy has few flash cards with “British accent”, and names of few countries written on them and he keeps on throwing those flash cards, without whatsoever logic behind them – like a typical politician without intellectual honesty.
Even in Britain people speak English with multiple accents, just like Sinhala in south or in Colombo. Accent is nothing to care about, noting to build our national policies around. Even Bernard Shaw or Samuel Beckett did not speak in British accent. Not even Oscar Wilde!
I said so many times Indians or Japanese speak their secondary languages in the way they do because their brain could not process those vowels otherwise. But Sinhala been a language with deferent set of vowels, we CAN process English differently – we can process most of languages differently than Japanese does – have you heard a Japanese speak Sinhala, while Sri Lankans can pronounce near perfect Japanese. If our kids are capable of doing BETTER, why don’t we give them the proper OPPORTUNITY instead treating them like PERCENTS and saying utterly stupid things such as “that IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR COMMON PEOPLE”. I don’t think even Marie Antoinette would stupid enough to say something horrible like that.
Promoting English is not a bad idea, and math or science too. Education is always a good idea. Japanese developed the way they do not because their working-class did not speak English but because they promote science and art (creativity in general) in their schools. Education system in Japan is a deferent story. Rest of the county list written on this guy’s flash cards depends on their natural recourses including unskilled labor. If you want to look at other countries, looks Jordan or Singapore. See how they do handle their education.
The ultimate result of this stupid policy is more private schools and more demand for it and downfall of government schools, which already in the process.
I'm not a Kalu Sudda or a "lumpent" comprador agent, whatever that might be. All I want is for all Sri Lankans to learn proper English, instead of an Indian style pidgin.
We've got a language of our own, i.e. Sinhala. I'm proud to be able to speak and write excellent Sinhalese. This is my language, I don't want anyone else to corrupt it.
English is not our language. It's a foreign language that we use to communicate with the rest of the world, and occasionally between ourselves. If we want to be like Singapore, let's follow Singapore's "Speak Good English" campaign.
I know that a lot of people get laughed at when they try to learn English, and that's the reason for this resentment towards "Kalu Suddas". There will always be an elite social group in Sri Lanka who differentiate themselves by speaking good English. If you want to break their stranglehold on power, the only way to do that is by learning to speak and write English better than they can.
Anon,
As The Benevolent Dictator and Sam have also pointed out, where on earth did you get the idea that we wanted our children to have a British accent. All we want is that they learn English as it is considered to be the standard on the international level.
We don't want them to speak like Prince Charles. But we would like them to be able to speak like Mr. Lukshman Kadiragamar did when he was interviewed on HARDtalk; We would like them to speak like Dr. Dayan Jayatilleke did when he defended Sri Lanka in Geneva. These people were able to serve their country so well because they had, coupled with dedication, excellent English at their command.
Even if you only want to deal with non-Western countries, you should never forget that most of them are making efforts to teach better English to their children. Singapore is a case in point as Bardo Flanks has pointed out.
It would do well remember that, even in India that some guys here want to adopt as a standard, more and more educated people speak very good English, unlike their porters, taxi drivers and touts. If you have not heard someone like Amitabh Bachchan speak in English, you should. We only stand to lose as a nation if we promote Indian common man's English here rather than what is used by people like Mr. Bachchan.
As Bardo also says, if we accept now that we have to learn english, why go for an inferior variety when you have the chance to learn, with equal effort, what is accepted by international standards.
One more thing I would like to point out is that I don't think any of the people who have commented here live in Colombo 7. Whatever hard feelings some of you seem to harbour against those who do, had better be aired at a forum where they could hear your voice. They are not likely to take part in a debate like this as this topic hardly affects them or their children.
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