Much Ado about Nothing

Much Ado about Nothing?
By
Rohana R. Wasala
(First published in The Island in two parts on 2nd & 3rd July 2010)

As an ordinary citizen and an English language teaching (ELT) professional with some experience, I have no quarrel with the notion of Sri Lankan English/es or the idea of a standard form of it being advocated for teaching in our country, provided that the two basic questions of what Sri Lankan English is, and why it should be promoted are answered to the satisfaction of all the stakeholders (students, teachers, parents, authorities, and the general public), and the move supported on a principled basis. Unless and until this is done the current debate will prove to be much ado about nothing.

It is not that these questions have already been dealt with by those competent to do so; what is identified by linguists as Sri Lankan English is even being codified it is claimed. However, apparently, it is only now that public discussion of the matter with a real sense of seriousness is taking shape. This is the time that the future course of the whole exercise (i.e. the implementation of the Standard Sri Lankan English proposal) is to be charted.

My sincere wish is not to tread on the toes of scholars who are known to have done much painstaking research in the field, or challenge their conclusions, but to explain, for what it’s worth, a commonsense opinion that I have had for a long time regarding the matter, something that may have been implicit in my earlier articles about ELT in Sri Lanka.

If the language of the writings of the scholars should be taken as exemplifying the Standard Sri Lankan English that they are advocating as a model – and I believe it should - , then those who fear that Sri Lankan English is “broken English” or a “substandard” variety will definitely come round to supporting their idea, and stop raising objections. The reason is that the English employed in the writings of the researchers represents a specimen of what used to be, and still is, popularly perceived as “Standard English”. This is also why I am tempted to believe that adherents of that variety (for which other names could be suggested such as international English, English English, global English, supranational English, etc) need not fear that the adoption of Sri Lankan English will be tantamount to an unwarranted adulteration of English for our children.

Although I cannot claim to have a complete understanding of what Sri Lankan English (SLE) specifically consists of in the experts’ view, my assumption is that it cannot be significantly different from what used to be taught in Sri Lankan schools in the past in terms of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. (The so-called “elocution English”, by the way, was rarely part of the language fare placed before our children in the past, except perhaps in a few urban schools .) As to the multiplicity of acceptable SLE dialects, one might say that it is impossible to accommodate all of them in any basic language teaching context where a single identifiable “standard” must perforce be the basis of instruction, and where the extremely unhelpful, chaotic “anything goes” linguistic permissiveness should be avoided. It is clear that there’s no reason to worry on this score.

An English language aficionado of an earlier generation than mine (a “master” of English, a so-called “compound” bilingual, but engaged in another discipline) in a casual discussion with me some time ago about what possibly might be termed Sri Lankan English, piqued by my sympathy for a “newfangled” idea that he strongly disapproved of, condemning the deviations from “the Standard” that he suspected SLE involved, asked me how I would describe the English I was taught as a kid at school in the 1960s (While my interlocutor was a product of English medium education, I learned my English as a second language at a later time); it was obvious to me that he expected me to say “Standard (British) English”. But I said “Sri Lankan English (!) although probably it was not identified as such at that time”. And I went on to explain to him what I meant by that answer.


What else could you expect us to learn from our teachers who were our compatriots except Sri Lankan English? True, they most probably believed that they were using British English; but they used it as Sri Lankans, infusing typically Sri Lankan elements such as a characteristic Sinhalese or Tamil accent in pronunciation, colloquial coinages reflecting the local social and linguistic backgrounds, or even slightly modified grammatical features into their English, thereby unconsciously turning the supposed “British English” into a form of “Sri Lankan English”, but experienced no difficulty in being well received both among their own people and outsiders who similarly used “Standard” English.


However, our teachers didn’t make an issue of this involuntary “Sri Lankanness” of their English; they helped us to speak English “our way” without saying so, and also to avoid what were condemned at that time as “Ceylonisms” – identified as errors which were due to sheer ignorance or negligence. But when we had an occasional opportunity to listen to native British or American speakers of English, we were able to understand them without difficulty; they understood what we said to them in “our” English. When we encountered other foreigners who had learnt English as a foreign or second language like us, again we were able to carry on a conversation with them in English quite easily. We understood without being taught that different people from around the world, and even within the country, spoke English differently, but that English was English whoever spoke it in whatever way they found it natural for themselves; but we never thought about English in terms of varieties (and this didn’t harm our learning English). We grasped instinctively that English is one language, though spoken in different ways.

Much later in life we realized that what we had been taught was actually a local version of British English, which could have been described as Sri Lankan English. And it was not considered inferior to the “real” thing, but identical with it in grammar and vocabulary with a negligibly few naturally inevitable deviations. As to formal written English, we expected to find no difference between “our” English and “their” English.

Of course, at that time, as we still do perhaps, we had an insignificant minority of locals – members of the “Kultur clique” as we heard them nicknamed - who put on a “posh” accent. This we knew to be fake, and we reserved the deepest contempt for the accent and the people who stupidly flaunted it as a mark of prestige which they arrogated to themselves. We even discovered, in a few cases at least, that they didn’t know enough “good” English to go with their “posh” accent! Once, in the first half of the 70s decade, we heard about how a high official of the country’s educational establishment, a left-leaning academic from the university, dealt with a female English teacher (a Sinhalese and one of the “posh” crowd) who had come to him to complain about being denied success at her final exam at the training college because, as she assumed, she had failed in the compulsory elementary Sinhala language paper. She angrily referred to her successful colleagues, the hoi polloi, who, in her opinion, didn’t know good English, but knew their Sinhala, and passed the exam: “Un Sinhala dannawa ne!” (They know their Sinhala!) she said. The Sinhalese pronoun “un” was in this context an insulting equivalent of the English pronoun “they”. The official quipped: “Un dekama dannawa!” (They know both!). This might be an apocryphal story, but it was an indication of the already diminished prestige of the so-called English speaking elite and their English about forty years ago. (I wonder why we should be talking so much about the alleged “hegemony” of this class over ELT in Sri Lanka today.)

We considered it a great achievement for us to be able to converse with an English speaking tourist, especially a native English speaker, if we got a chance for that kind of experience as we occasionally did! It represented for us encouraging proof of our proficiency in the language. (Many present-day youngsters learning English, particularly from rural areas, display the same attitude, which I have had the opportunity to observe; they like to talk in English with foreigners because, in such a situation, they feel compelled to use English as the only medium of communication available, and also least worried about making “mistakes” unlike in the presence of their own teachers. It is not that they want to speak like native speakers; but they seem to believe, like their parents probably, that what the British or Americans speak is “real” English, the origin of the English language they are actually trying to learn.)

I think today’s young Sri Lankans, including the English teachers among them, are almost totally impervious to the servile “colonial mentality” which some of their counterparts in the pre-1956 era were guilty of, in contexts involving English. I have a hunch that to talk about elitism, hegemony, etc is just flogging a dead horse! It is more a case of students, teachers, and parents (who are aware enough of the controversy) being concerned that what is going to be foisted on them (as they see it) is something that will sound a mere lingo to the outside world, though there’s no doubt that such an attitude is unwarranted.


Since a language is a thing that constantly changes in the hands of its users in response to numerous conditions such as the nature of the purposes for which it is used and the contexts in which it is used, both defining and clinging on to a standard are wellnigh impossible tasks. This is true of all human languages including global English/es and Sri Lankan English/es. A language is a tool that changes as we use it, which makes both teaching and learning it problematic, especially a foreign language like English (We shouldn’t forget that English is a foreign language to the vast majority of our people, although it is sometimes claimed to be an indigenous language based on the 10% (?) or so of the population who have any proficiency in the language). Since ELT matters touch the destiny of the whole population, concern should be shown when what is deemed to be commonly acceptable to this minority as a standard dialect is recommended for all to follow.

The reason for saying this is bound up with the basic question “Why should we teach/learn this particular brand of English?”. First, there’s the need to justify the teaching/learning of English. Justifying the English language cause is the easiest task in this context. In spite of the fact that English is still identified by the majority as something that came from outside in unfortunate circumstances that subjected a proud nation to political subjugation, national humiliation, economic exploitation, and cultural subversion, its utilitarian value for us has always been appreciated since Independence. We still court English despite the inglorious history of its association with Sri Lanka because of its utility. But in what way is English useful to us? Is English needed for general domestic communication? No, we have Sinhala and Tamil for that; there are minority communities with their own native tongues such as Malay, Bengali, Vedda language, etc. A minority use English as their mother tongue. The majority of those who learn English do so to use it as a second language in the academia, in work-related situations, in business, law, politics, and so on. Some may use English as their first language in such contexts (if the term “first language” is taken to mean the language that one functions in). Such situations do not exclude a choice between English and a local language, even though a sound enough education is unthinkable without English. In addition to this, there is a sphere that leaves us with no option other than English as an adequate linguistic medium: international communication that affects every aspect of our country’s existence. In the highly globalized world of today, we are obliged to possess an effective medium through which to interact with other nations in every conceivable area of activity, be it politics, trade, diplomacy, education, research, technology, justice, communications, entertainment, sport, or anything else.

Someone might say, not every Sri Lankan is going to or is required to communicate with the outside world. Well, I am sure that at least in one area every Sri Lankan will be compelled to take part in international communication. This area is the world of information, the dotcom world. And, through which language will it be most convenient for us Sri Lankans to access this world? English, of course. This needs no arguing.

If, in ELT, we are compelled to decide on the type of English we must teach our young in order that they will be best equipped to profitably access the treasure-house of world knowledge through the computer, should it be a variety of the language that naturally alienates them from that world, or one that will integrate them into the global community of English language users? Obviously, the latter.

Sri Lankan English would be more relevant in contexts of day-to-day informal communication within the country, and in the production of creative literature than in the academia, and other domains such as international diplomacy, media, trade etc where an educated, formal, scientific, regionally unmarked form of English is demanded. For most Sri Lankans, the latter forms the main motive for learning English. And much of the English they must learn lies beyond the borders of Sri Lanka, as it were.

It is a fact that the English that we must teach our children lies more outside the country than inside. There’s an ever expanding world of knowledge, science, technology, literature, and the rest beyond our tiny island which is accessible to our children, whether they be in urban or rural areas, through the Web, provided the necessary facilities are supplied. Literature both scientific and creative generated in other languages gets constantly translated into English. And nothing but English is the gateway to this world. The English we teach our children should enable them to access and utilize this great resource not only for gaining knowledge about various subjects, and sharing information with their counterparts beyond our borders, but also for enhancing their mastery of the language itself. The Internet offers the richest, most easily accessible, and the least expensive resource for help with English, once the basic facilities are provided; there are so many free English teaching/learning websites (along with commercial ones for those who can afford them); teachers must be trained to find these for their students.

Professor J. Donald Bowen of the US (FORUM, 1977) refers to four useful criteria that should be considered when determining the degree of importance of a variant of an international language like English that is offered as a model for language instruction. He considers the relative importance of a variety as a key factor that affects its choice as an appropriate standard. The four criteria are: the number of its speakers, the quality of the literary tradition established in the particular variant, the amount of non-literary creativity expressed in research and development, and the function of the variety. Only a very small percentage of the Sri Lankan population speak any English; there’s not much to talk about a highly developed literary tradition, to which context perhaps Sri Lankan English would be most relevant; research publications, if any, are required to be in a formal academic register usually addressed to an international audience, leaving little room for regional dialectal features to be prominent; in terms of function Sri Lankan English could be important in informal conversational situations, but the real value of English for Sri Lankans lies in its being a vehicle of knowledge and global communication, which domains demand as regionally unmarked a form of English as possible.

So, my opinion is that we should leave such fine distinctions as those between British English, American English, Indian English, and Sri Lankan English to be the concern of linguists, language experts, and course designers. It will be a futile exercise to ask the students or parents or even the average young English teachers that we have today to express their opinion about the choice of “Sri Lankan English” as our standard, because we can’t expect them to be generally well informed about the relative merits of various varieties of English. When I say that those two basic questions (what’s SLE and why?) should be explicitly answered, I may appear to be contradicting myself. What I am suggesting is that by doing so the course designers will be removing the misgivings that have arisen in the minds of those concerned about the usefulness of promoting what is described as “Sri Lankan English”, instead of just “English”.

The popular wish among the English language learners and their parents is for the former to be taught English, not what they tend to view suspiciously as a devalued form of English called Sri Lankan English, however mistaken they may be from the experts’ point of view.

Let’s ensure that our teachers master the kind of English that the advocates of SLE themselves write (their speech can only correspond to this); let’s give them a good pedagogical training, and compile appropriate textbooks and other materials, incorporating sections that encourage the learners to draw on the Internet for autonomous learning. Let experts talk about varieties among themselves, but let us teach our children just “English”. I am sure this will not involve any changes to what is already being done, but perhaps an appropriate shift of focus from linguistics to applied linguistics.


Concluded