Role of English in Asian contexts: the Sri Lankan case

Role of English and Asian languages in globalised contexts: The Sri Lankan case Subhashinie Punchihetti, PhD University of Sri Jayawardenapura, Sri Lanka Abstract. In Sri Lanka where people speak Sinhala and Tamil, two native languages dating back to pre-historic times, English plays a predominant role. Introduced to the island through British Colonisation in the 19 th century, English however lost its official language status after Sri Lanka gained independence in 1948. English is therefore less wide-spread in the country than Sinhala and Tamil and is also much less used by common Sri Lankans. Nevertheless, the prestigious position English holds in the Sri Lankan society surpasses considerably that of the two native languages. What has led to this situation? Our objective in this paper is to answer this question through a detailed study of the politico-geographical and sociohistorical setting of the present globalised, multilingual Sri Lanka. Keywords: Sri Lanka, English, Sinhala, Tamil, globalised context 1. Introduction: the issue at stake What role does English play in Sri Lanka, a South-Asian nation with native speakers of ancient, full-fledged languages like Sinhala & Tamil? Sinhala, in spite of being geographically more or less isolated, is nevertheless spoken by some 14 to 15 million people in the country of its birth; Tamil, on the other hand is spoken by a relatively less number of people in the island (4 to 5 million), but has, unlike Sinhala, more than 74 millions of native speakers around the globe; particularly in the neighbouring South India (62 millions). Despite the fact that these two native languages are still widely used by the greater majority of the Sri Lankans, in today’s society, both languages seem to have lost the prestigious place they once held in their speakers’ mind. In the 6 decade old postcolonial contemporary Sri Lanka, English seems to still retain its colonial crown to the detriment of the local languages: that is to say, although English does not, theoretically, hold any official status in Sri Lanka today, it is nevertheless considered to be “the” language of prestige by the Sri Lankan society at large; those who speak it as well as those who do not. In this paper, our aim is to examine the reasons for this situation: could the prestigious status the English language enjoys in Sri Lanka be traced back to the globalisation of the world and English becoming world’s number 1 link language? Or could there be any other reason(s) which could have implicitly and/or explicitly contributed to the development of the present linguistic setting in Sri Lanka? In an attempt to answer these questions, we will first take a look at the historical origins of the multilingual setting in Sri Lanka, with special focus on the 3 languages that dominate the island’s linguistic forefront at present: English, Sinhala and Tamil. We will then proceed to briefly compare the structural composition of these 3 languages. Thereafter, we will study how these 3 languages co-existed in the common geographical, political, social and multilingual context of the old Sri Lanka and to what extent it continues to form the linguistic identity of the present Sri Lankan society. In writing this paper, we primarily based our ideas on the information collected from several bibliographical sources of socio-historical importance. To support the statistical components, we referred to several Sri Lankan and international websites which provide statistical information on Sri Lanka (cf. References). 2. Historical origins of Sri Lanka’s multilingual setting Despite being an island, Sri Lanka (formerly known as Ceylon) has, in its long documented history, never really been isolated from the rest of the world; the island is situated at an important naval route with India lying just a few miles away to the north-east. According to historical sources, foreigners from different countries, at times from as far away countries as China and Egypt, came there as traders, travellers, missionaries, etc. since thousands of years. These foreigners had obviously had their own first languages. However, the fact that none of those foreign languages had been adopted by the then indigenous people of the country shows that, despite the constant interactions of the passing-by foreigners with the locals, the former did not make a significant influence on the Sri Lankan linguistic setting of the olden days. Despite the foreigners’ comings and goings, the locals of the day seemed to have preserved their linguistic identity, that is to say, their own vernacular language(s). For example, although many Arabic traders who visited the island between 8th to 15th centuries did get married to local women and settled down there and had also handed down their religion to their children (i.e. Sri Lankan Muslims/Moors), they did not manage to impose their language, Arabic, even on their own descendants. Thus, Arabic has never been a native language of the Ceylonese. The descendants of Arabs had instead adopted as their mother tongue a dialect of Tamil (the language of their Tamil mothers) mixed with the Arabic of their fathers’; thus the Moors in Sri Lanka are also considered to be speakers of Tamil although theirs is not exactly the Tamil of the Tamils. 2.1. Historical origins of Sinhala The first language which did take root in the Sri Lankan soil due to foreign arrival and influence was Sinhala and it had established itself in the island presumably in the pre-historic era of the 6th century B.C. According to Mahavamsa (Geiger, 1912), Old Sinhala is believed to have been born as a result of the intermingling of the Indian prakrits (contemporary but more vernacular versions of the prestigious ancient Indian language Sanskrit) with the indigenous languages used by the islanders of that era. This language forming process has begun apparently around 543 B.C., after the arrival of prince Vijaya and his entourage from Bengal. Unlike some other ancient languages, Sinhala had the distinctive advantage of securing an equally long history of its written form, thanks mainly to the introduction of Buddhism to the island three centuries later. Although the language of the Buddhist monks and scriptures was Pali (an Indian prakrit), they let the Buddhist scriptures in Sri Lanka be written down in the local language so that it would reach the wider population of the island. According to the chronicles, the Buddhist monks thus initiated, established and maintained the local lay education system, enriching the local language with their own and thus allowing Sinhala to become a fully-developed language even by the beginning of the Christian era. 2.2. Historical origins of Tamil However, religious messengers, traders and travellers were not the only foreigners who had an interest in the small island Sri Lanka. It also attracted invaders, the near and the far alike. Before the invasion of the island by Westerners in the early 16th century, Sri Lanka had already been subjected to constant attacks by Dravidian speaking South Indian kings: from around 8th to 13th centuries A.D. Given the close geographical proximity between South India and Sri Lanka, it is quite plausible that Tamil people from India had already come and settled down in Sri Lanka prior to these Dravidian invasions. Nevertheless, to go by the island’s historical chronicles, their presence in the island had not been clearly attested until as late as the 11th century A.D. This could possibly be due to the insignificance these Dravidians had in numbers and in influence on the island’s history; at least until such times as the South Indian invaders brought more and more Dravidians to Sri Lanka after the 8th century. Constant Dravidian invasions led, on the one hand, to the expansion of Tamil settlements in the country, and on the other hand and as a consequence, to Tamil, another ancient language, being used as the second major local language in the island. In addition to these early Dravidian settlers of the 8th-13th centuries A.D., who are today identified as ‘Sri Lankan Tamils’, more Indian Tamils were later brought to Sri Lanka by the English to work in the tea estates in the hill-country. They are today identified as ‘Indian Tamils’ because, in spite of residing in the island for generations, they remained citizens of India. Thus the present Sri Lankan Tamil speakers consist of three clearly identifiable ‘ethnic’ groups: Sri Lankan Tamils; Indian Tamils; Sri Lankan Moors of Arabic and Tamil origins. 2.3. Historical origins of English English was introduced to Sri Lanka very much later, in the late 19th century, through colonisation. During the one and half centuries the British ruled Sri Lanka, English was the official language of the island. Nevertheless, since Sri Lanka obtained its independence, English has lost its official language status in the country. Still, in a nation where people are divided along numerous racial, social and linguistic lines, English, the language of the former rulers, has retained its glory in the hearts and minds of, if not all, most Sri Lankans. At the very least, English is still the second language at school of all Sri Lankan pupils, be they Sinhalese or Tamil speakers. English is not a native tongue of the Sri Lankans. However, for some present-day youngsters of Sinhala, Tamil or Moor ethnic origins, who receive their entire school education in English and whose parents encourage them further to speak it at home too, English (not necessarily the standard British English though) has really become their first language. Nevertheless, the number of L1 speakers of English in Sri Lanka is, as at present, statistically very much insignificant. 3. Structural composition of the three languages in question When we consider the proximity certain European languages like French, Italian and Spanish share with each other, Sinhala, Tamil and English can be identified as three very distinctive language systems: each of these languages has its own alphabet; a specific phonological system; patterns of ordering words and their own rich vocabulary built over the course of their more or less long existence; however, English, the continuously evolving world number 1 language seems to have at its disposal a much more up-to-date vocabulary than those of the much older but quite localised Sinhala and Tamil languages. 4. Geographical setting and mutual impact All the 3 languages we deal with here have originated in 3 specific countries and cultures. It is however true that the places of origin of the languages and cultures of Tamil (South India) and Sinhala (Sri Lanka) lie in closer proximity to each other than either of them to the land of the English. Could this reason and the longer duration of their co-existence in Sri Lanka have led to a greater mutual influence between Sinhala and Tamil, than between them and English? Going by our knowledge of the three languages, we could state that this has apparently not been the case. According to historical evidence, in spite of their close geographical proximity, the Sri Lankan Sinhala and the South Indian Dravidian communities have rarely intermingled; particularly during the past half a millennia of co-existence of the 2 communities in this island. Sri Lankan history attests to many a case of the island coming under attacks of the South Indian Tamil kings between the 8th to 13th centuries and how the Sinhalese chased them off every time. Even in Sri Lanka today, except perhaps in the capital Colombo and in the hill-country where Sinhalese and Indian Tamils live together, large concentrations of Sri Lankan Tamils and Sinhalese do not live together; however this split could also be attributed to the three-decade long Tamil separatist war that considerably divided the two ethnic groups until it was militarily curbed two years ago. Although there is no doubt that both Tamils and Sinhalese have influenced each other’s culture and language in many ways, it is probably much less than one would expect, especially since the colonisation of the island by the English. Another very probable reason for this lack of greater mutual impact between Sinhala and Tamil languages could also be attributed to their supposed origins. While Tamil is believed to be an offspring of the Dravidian language family, Sinhala, like English, is supposed to have had its roots in the Indo-European language family; while Sinhala is a descendant of the Indo-Aryan branch of the language family, English is a Germanic language sprouted from the European branch. 5. Languages and politics The colonial rule that the English thrust upon the country by invading the island in 1815, made the Sinhalese react to the British (in spite of the considerable initial resistance they put up against them) in a more submissive way than they did with the Dravidian invaders. While the British conquered the whole country, South Indians attackers were never let occupy the whole country at any given time. With the British, it was a case of irrevocable subjugation and acceptance of the Whites as the undisputed conquerors of the island. Such was the reaction of most natives at the ultimate conquest of the country by the British, and thereafter; those who were ambitious and anxious to get into the good books of their new colonial masters and obtain their favours accepted this fatality more readily. They converted themselves to the religion of their masters’ and bore English names, gaining thus access to the English medium schools of the rulers and ended up being recruited by the British administration as petty officers to help the masters rule the common Sri Lankans. Certain more wealthy and fortunate others managed also to enter British universities to pursue higher education and come back to engage in local politics. This was the English speaking elite of Sri Lankan origin to whom the British transferred the power when they finally left the country in 1948. However, the country they left was far more divided on ethnic lines than it ever was before their arrival. The English, like other empire builders of the yester year and today had adopted the principle of ‘divide and rule’ in governing the island. During their rule, the colonial masters had favoured the minority ethnic groups over the majority, in order to breed hostile feelings among each other and prevent them from rising up against the Whites. In fact, one of the accusations the Sinhalese level against the Tamils is that the latter obtained more than their due share of favours from the British by siding with them during the colonial era. Tamils on the other hand accuse the Sinhalese of redressing such injustices after obtaining independence. They saw it as an injustice to deprive them of many of the privileges they had earlier enjoyed under the British. The greater majority of the people in both the Sinhalese and other communities did not however obtain special privileges from the British because they did not give up their vernacular languages during the colonial rule. After gaining independence they now wished that their languages be brought back to the foreground and justice would be done by them. Sinhalese politicians of the majority ethnic group managed to obtain this in 1956 much to the displeasure of many a Tamil politician who claimed equal rights for their minority ethnic group too. This tug-of-war between Sinhalese and Tamil politicians over what was their due slowly gave birth to hard Tamil separatist feelings culminating finally as Tamil separate terrorism in 1970s. As already mentioned, these suspicious, hostile feelings of each other prevented Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils from uniting as one nation after the departure of the British. They continued to live in separate parts of the country. Since the south of the country has always been a stronghold of the Sinhalese, the Sri Lankan Tamils who lived mainly in the country’s north tried to claim it their homeland in early 1980s and chased the Sinhalese and the Muslims away from where they had lived for ages. Such secessionist moves separated Sri Lankan ethnic groups further and further apart and led to any day-to-day communication between Sinhalese and Tamils being considered as undesired. During the Tamil separatists’ war for a separate homeland within the island, both communities made it a point to use the country’s no more official but so called ‘link language’, English, to present their cases at political negotiation tables. In fact, since the formal school education system had been introduced to Sri Lanka by the Whites, the 2nd language of the Sri Lankan school children had stopped being that of their Sinhala/Tamil compatriots. It was to be English. Thus, even those children who did not attend prestigious English medium British schools were nevertheless obliged to learn English, the language of their colonial rulers’, as their 2nd language. 6. Sri Lankan bilinguals and multilinguals This was a marked change in the Sri Lankan language education system because, in the days prior to the arrival of the Whites, the education of the local population included the learning of other Asian languages (like Sanskrit, Pali and Tamil). Thus the bi- or multi-linguals in Sri Lanka during that period managed to speak each other’s languages either as a result of scholarly learning or as a result of the relative harmony in which they lived intermingled with each other. English or any other Western language was not on their curriculum until the arrival of the Whites in the island thousands of years later. However, in Sri Lanka today, most Sinhala bilinguals are essentially Sinhala-English bilinguals. Although some of the Colombo and hill-country Tamils who do not speak English have learnt to speak a smatter of Sinhalese through their frequent association with the Sinhalese, Tamils living separated from the Sinhalese do no more speak Sinhala like they did in the olden days. They too are today either monolinguals of their mother tongue or Tamil-English bilinguals. In fact, during the past 3 decades the Sri Lankan Sinhala-Tamil-English multilinguals were almost exclusively Moors; the reason for this development was the fact that the Moors have for mother tongue a dialect of Tamil, and that, over the past decades, they continued to co-exist amongst Sinhalese, speaking the latter’s language while learning English as the second languages at school. It was only a year or so ago that the present government introduced Sinhala and Tamil as compulsory second languages of the Sri Lankan school children, in addition to English. 7. The place of English in the Sri Lankan context and the reasons for its dominance over local languages Thus we could understand how, in the absence of ethnic harmony between its citizens, the second language of all Sri Lankans, ‘the link language’ English, has come to play a major role in the Sri Lankan society. Still, it would be a serious misconception to think that the ethnic disharmony was the only or even the major cause of the prestigious place the English language enjoys in Sri Lanka. Surprising as it may, it is also erroneous to think that almost all Sri Lankans are fluent bilinguals of Sinhala/Tamil and English. In fact, in spite of learning English as their second language at school, only 5-10% of the Sri Lankan population or less is believed to be capable of communicating in English in the present Sri Lanka. However, despite their lack of fluency in English and the considerably insignificant number of English speakers they have in their midst, the Sri Lankan community, consisting of more than 74% of Sinhala mother tongue speakers and more than 20% of Tamil mother tongue speakers, places English in an extremely high pedestal. One should realise that for almost all of them, English is not their mother tongue. In the strictest sense of the word, it is not even their second language: most of them do not use English as a second language per se because it is not, at least as things are at present, the ‘link language’ of the majority of the Sri Lankans belonging to different linguistic groups: the past 3 decades that separated Sri Lankan ethnic groups from one another, hardly saw them interacting with people other than those of their own ethnic (Sinhala-Sinhala or Tamil-Tamil) or linguistic group (Sinhala-Sinhala/Moors or Tamil/Tamil/ Moors). The only exception to this was the officials and professionals who were requested to be conversant in those languages for professional purposes. Still, Sri Lankans in general refuse also to consider English as ‘a foreign’ language like French, Hindi or Japanese. This is very much understandable given that Sri Lanka had experienced English in a considerably different way than it did any of the other foreign languages. In fact, more than the superficially assigned role of the link language, English’s role in Sri Lanka has been that of the ‘prestigious and dominant’ language. Apart from its use as a real ‘link language’ when dealing with foreigners, the use of English as the link language at local gatherings is today much more a superfluous, prestige-maintaining gesture than an absolute necessity. English adds glamour and class to such events which are generally organised by people sharing the same mother tongue (generally Sinhalese) or at least those who already share another link language other than English (for ex., Sinhalese, Muslims and Tamils working together in the capital are generally more or less capable of communicating in Sinhala). Thus the role of English in Sri Lanka is still undoubtedly that of being a symbol of the ‘high class’. It is synonymous with social class, power and education (associated however to a lesser and lesser degree with the rich because of the ever-increasing class of non English-speaking nouveauxriches). English is a symbol of prestige in Sri Lanka, which many Sri Lankans use to show that they belong to ‘a special class of people’ distinct from the average. This could easily be shown by citing two simple examples: first, it is not uncommon for Sri Lankans, who share the same mother tongue but who are also conversant in English, to overlook their common mother tongue and talk in English, especially in the presence of other people. This practice is very common in private companies, among high officials of the state, in classy social circles and even in certain educational institutes considered to be ‘prestigious’. This clearly shows that the role of English in such cases is not that of a ‘link language’ (it is quite possible that both speakers speak their mother tongue much better and more easily than they speak English) but more of a status symbol. The same could be said of persons who opt to talk in English to people who share their mother tongue in order to obtain a better service. Surprising as it may seem to non Sri Lankans, this tactic often helps Sri Lankans to get more respect and a better service from their service providers than in the case where they would use their common mother tongue to request the same service. Once again, this clearly shows that the use of English in Sri Lanka is more about a symbol of social standing than that of a link language per se. The cause of this apparently ridiculous behaviour of the Sri Lankans could be traced back to the period of English colonisation of the island. Unlike the Portuguese and the Dutch who also invaded Ceylon, the English managed to invade the whole island and subjugate its people for over 150 years. Moreover, right throughout their rule, the English succeeded in using their language to separate people of different ethnic groups into different social classes; and at their departure, it is this class of English speaking Sri Lankans who obtained the power of ruling the country. This reality has implicitly survived in the Sri Lankan society to this date, inciting many in the modern society to strive to master the prestigious language at any cost. 8. Conclusion It is true that English, since the colonial days, has also become the world’s number 1 language allowing people, who are conversant in it, many academic and professional opportunities around the globe. English is today the language of the leaders, language of ITC, business, fashion, so on and so forth. It is obvious that a person who plans to work in the international arena of the more and more globalising world today should absolutely master this world no. 1 link language. But, as we have tried to show in this paper, the prestigious status English has in Sri Lanka could not be explained only by attributing it simply to English’s global significance. In Sri Lanka, English has a further utility than serving as a mere link language: as things are, its more pressing task seems to be that of helping the upper social class of Sri Lanka to demarcate themselves from the average commoner. On the other hand however, English could also help the less privileged to climb the social ladder in order to reach that high society. That is what has made many Sri Lankans, even those who formerly belonged to middle or lower middle social classes, to send their children today to schools where the medium of instruction is strictly English. The same reason makes certain others oblige their children to learn and use English as their 1st language even at home, even at the cost of never properly mastering their own native language! 9. References J. W. Gair. Sinhala, an indo-Aryan Isolate. In: B.C. Lust (ed.).Studies in South Asian Linguistics: Sinhala and other South-Asian Languages. Oxford University Press. 1991, pp. 3-12. [2] W. Geiger. Mahavamsa- the great chronicle of Ceylon. Buddhist Cultural Centre, Sri Lanka. 1912. [3] W.G. kularatna. Education in Sri Lanka under the British rule. Sara Prakashana, Sri Lanka, 2002. [4] S. Punchihetti. L’enseignement/apprentissage de la grammaire française aux singhalais au Sri Lanka et le rôle de l’anglais. Masters degree dissertation, Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier, France, 2002. [5] www.gov.lk; http://www.priu.gov.lk/cons/1978constitution/Chapter_04_Amd.html [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lanka; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/languages_of_Sri_Lanka; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankan_English [7] http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5249.htm;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/theworld-factbook/geos/ce.htm [8] www.lankalibrary.lk [1]