#102, Research Paper: ‘History of Bilingualism in Sri Lankan Context’ by Thirunavukkarasu Karunakaran

ELTWeekly Vol. 3 Issue#102 | October 17 | ISSN 0975-3036

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1.0 Introduction

This paper deals with the key aspects of Bilingual History in Sri Lankan context. The history of bilingualism began in Sri Lanka with arrival of British and English was made as the official language in order to make the administration easy and those who were proficient in English got the privilege of enjoying the prestigious positions in the British regime. Consequently, people were coerced to acquire English in order to find good job and this pave the way to the people to adapt bilingualism in the country. Therefore, this paper captures the broad history of bilingualism and its implications in Sri Lanka.

1.1 English and Bilingualism in Sri Lanka

Before English was introduced to Sri Lanka as official language in 1976, Dutch and vernaculars, Sinhala and Tamil, were in use. The British regime displaced Dutch and vernaculars and declared English as the official language. It is very difficult to assess to what extent the Portuguese was used in Sri Lanka. As per  records available now, both Portuguese and Dutch had an entrenched idea of expanding their business and military to a larger extent and that was why their interest in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) was in terms of commercial and military aspects (Pieris,1914). To have a strong military hold in Sri Lanka, Portuguese advocated intermarriages with Sinhalese and Tamils, but they could experiment this idea only with the people who were deprived of basic rights. This implies that at least a section of the Ceylon society might have been bilinguals. In the case of Dutch rule, they could not retain their language in Sri Lanka, after they had been defeated by the British forces.  Dutch was almost extinct and the descendants of Dutch have converted themselves to Portuguese (Tennent, 1950). By the end of nineteenth century, the use of Portuguese and Dutch disappeared but Tamil, Sinhala and English borrowed many words from these two languages.

Though the people borrowed many words from Dutch and Portuguese,  They did not adapt their way of life. Later on, after the arrival of British in Sri Lanka, multiracial non-European population adopted English as their mother tongue which was used in their domestic and social intercourse and entertainment (Fernando, 1977). These multiracial population comprised Sinhala, Tamils, Moors and the Malays (Moors came to Sri Lanka from Dutch and Portuguese and are Muslims and some of them speak Tamil as their mother tongue and some others speak Sinhala as their mother tongue. The Sri Lankan Malays settled in Sri Lanka during Dutch and British regime from Malaysia and other parts of Asia). English was adopted as the first language mostly by anglicized upper–class members of Sinhala and Tamil communities and they spoke in English since their childhood. And the vernaculars, Sinhala and Tamil, were reserved to talk to the members of older generation, to Buddhist and Hindu clergymen and to the members of middle and lower-class sections. The less anglicized members of the middle class group and lower middle class commonly learnt English at much later period and might have understood the inevitable use of vernaculars with their parents and siblings, when they used to interact with them. During the colonial era, women were not allowed to participate in the societal activities and as a result, almost all the women in Ceylon were monolinguals who only confined themselves to vernaculars. But, they achieved a limited command in English to comprehend. However, irrespective of the degree of Anglicization, English and vernaculars (Sinhala and Tamil) were used in domestic as well as social interactions among the members of the middle class.

There were many reasons for Sri Lankans to acquire English. In pre-British Sri Lanka, in certain parts of the country, the occupation of the individuals was determined by the caste which was also judged their positions in the social hierarchy (Leach, 1960). For a person, to change his position in the hierarchy was difficult in the feudal system. In the colonial period, cultivation was the most acceptable occupation and cultivator (vellalar) caste was placed on the top in the society and it was the largest caste. The other castes like fishermen (karaiyar), washermen (Vannan),carpenter (Thatchan) and drum beater (Pariayan) were considered to be by and large lower to cultivators who used to decide the positions of the other castes in the hierarchy. By convention, cultivators were placed on top in the hierarchy. The British colonial rule formed a new bureaucracy along with the extension of secular education with a view to recruiting local labour force in the British administrative mechanism. English was declared as the language of commerce, administration and secondary and tertiary education. The knowledge of English enhanced the materialistic advantages of Lankans. Specifically, non-cultivators benefited immensely by the introduction of secular education by the British rule and got employment opportunities in the Government. Herein, the caste system was converted to a class system in terms of education, employment in Government and commercial aspects. There was a transition in the middle class society of Sri Lanka in the British regime. Under the British, the middle class consisted of a mixture of all ranks from almost all the castes and was distinguished from the rest of the population because of their adoption of English in the domestic and commercial communication. These people adapted the anglicized British way of life style

Christianity came to Sri Lanka in the form of Catholicism in the sixteenth century and Portuguese was able to get a larger number of converts particularly from the fisher folk. The religious practice of Roman Catholics carried on in the vernaculars, as it is done now. For this, the Portuguese parish priest was strangely urged to learn the vernaculars, Tamil and Sinhala. Nevertheless, there was a sizable bilingual population and the Roman Catholic clergymen started to fulfill their religious duties in the vernaculars and English in the nineteenth century. The middle class consisting of Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims was not literate in English. The clergymen in all these three religions conducted their religious duties in vernaculars. Tamil was used in the religious practices of Hindus and Muslims; Buddhism in Sinhala. However, the text of Buddhism is in Pali, a Prakrit of Sanskrit spoken by the Buddha. Hindu texts still are accessed only through Sanskrit. In the case of Muslims, Koran continues to be read in Arabic till to date.

It was quite apparent that the Sri Lankan middle class people learnt English enthusiastically to gain social and economic advantages. They were very proud of saying that they were not proficient in the vernaculars once they started to use English in their day-to-day domestic as well as social affairs. Anglicized middle class population dissociated themselves from the local culture and confined themselves more to the culture and life style followed by the British people. English being considered as a prestigious language was reserved for administrative, professional and intellectual realms. As far as less anglicized middle class population is concerned, they generally picked up English at primary school sometime as late as high school. Many of them had been to vernacular school and spoke vernaculars for a longer period. Usually, the females of middle class had only a little proficiency in English, so that they functioned as ‘receiver bilinguals’ (Haas, 1953). According to Haas, ‘receiver bilinguals’ are persons who understand two languages but speak only one.

1.2 The Domain Shift in the Use of Tamil and Sinhala

The appreciation for nationalism grew very forcefully and the people got the right of universal adult franchise in 1931. At last, in 1948 escalation of awareness for self-determination culminated in independence. After the independence, those who were in power made some rash decisions which caused conflicts between the races. In particular, in 1956 English was dethroned from its position as official language and Sinhala was enthroned as official language. As a result of this, English was displaced from the medium of instruction and in its place the vernaculars were introduced as media of instruction in the schools. This led to the diminishing number of bilingual speakers of Sinhala-English and Tamil-English in the island. After 1956, there was a new order in the domains and the role English played was changed. English was completely abandoned and Sinhala was accepted as the language of administration, law and judiciary. In Pre-Independence Sri Lanka, Sinhala and Tamil were the media of instruction only in primary vernacular schools. English was the medium of instruction in the secondary and tertiary education. With the change of medium of instruction in the schools, textbooks also got transformed to vernaculars. Though English was spoken by many Sri Lankans, the necessity to write a textbook in English was very minimal. After 1956, at the tertiary level only, English was used as medium of education, and certain disciplines like, Law, Medicine and Engineering were taught in English.  The other subjects like Social Sciences and Humanities were mostly taught in vernaculars.   The policy of adopting a language as medium of instruction for a particular course was left to the discretion of the university, as the universities were autonomous. However, English was used more and more in the oral instruction and written examination, the number of  textbooks in English was very less. After switching from English to vernaculars, the teachers and the students found it difficult to carry on, especially at the secondary and tertiary levels of education. This made them realize the situation which demanded for the working knowledge of English. Consequently, a new group of bilinguals came up and it was not only from middle class but from all sections of the country. Among the new group of bilinguals, both ‘receiver bilinguals’ and ‘sender bilinguals’ were seen (Haas, 1953). Receiver Bilinguals are those who can comprehend two languages but can speak one language and sender bilinguals are those who can comprehend and speak two languages (Haas, 1953).

In the case of employment, English plays a crucial role for the most prestigious professions like lawyers, doctors, engineers and accountants. For these professions, English is very essential. In the domain of commerce also, English functions as the effective tool particularly in import and export trade. Though Tamil and Sinhala are official languages now, the correspondence between interdepartmental and intra-departmental correspondence is being done in English. The notable thing in present day Sri Lanka is that Tamil and Sinhala occupy almost all the realms held by English alone. But, English continues to be the deciding factor of the people who have high aspirations about social and professional values and who tend to learn English at any cost. Even now, a sizable middle class population learns English for the sake of career prospects. In 1987, English was designated as a link language in the country (13^th Amendment, 1987 cited Constitution of Sri Lanka, 2003). As a result of this, in all public realms, it has equal importance with Sinhala and Tamil. Due to the development in English Language Teaching, three major types of bilinguals emerged in Sri Lanka. The three types of bilinguals are characterized on the basis of character of their English, the degree of Sinhala and Tamil influence on English and the realms in which they use the language. Kachru (1966) proposed three measuring units like ‘zero, central and ambilingual’ to rate the bilinguals on the basis of their proficiency in English (1966). This scale of measurement is termed as the cline of bilingualism by him which resembles the ideas presented by Weinreich (1953): the degree of bilingualism is measured based on the degree of structural interference from the mother tongue at the phonic, grammatical and lexical levels. Fernando (1977) categorizes the bilinguals in Sri Lanka into three groups based on Kachru’s theory of Cline bilingualism (1966).

1.2.1 Group I

The bilinguals belonging to this group lead a highly anglicized life style and use a virtually uniform variety of English irrespective of their racial origin. These bilinguals are generally members of the legal, medical and educational professions, civil servants, commercial executives etc. on the top and middle class of the social scale. At the lower end, clerks, nurses, stenographs etc. use a variety of English which is very much accepted as standard variety. According to Fernando (1977: 349), the use of English by this group has many distinctive factors, especially at the phonological level and she lists the phonological characteristics of this group:

Substitution of pure vowels for English (Received pronunciation) diphthongs in words such as, boat, road ,material, criterion, etc. instead of boʊt, roʊd matiəriəl, kraitiəriən one hasbo;t,ro:d,matiriəl,kraitiriən

Failure to distinguish between labio-dental voiced fricative/v/ and labio velar semi-vowel/w/ in initial position. Sinhala and Tamil bilinguals of this group do not distinguish between the initial sounds of vine and wine. Some would also substitute Sinhala labial/v/ for English labio –dental /v/ in medial and final position.

Substitution of the half open front vowel/ɜ/ for the close-to half-close unrounded front vowel/ı/ in the final syllable of words such as marriage, carriage etc. initial syllables, however, show the Standard English /ı/ e.g ridge, bridge, etc.

Substitution of schwa/ə/ for/ı/ in the past participle forms of verbs such as mated, fitted, and dated. This substitution would also occur in the plurals of roses, busses, badges, etc. and the simple present third person singular forms, such as catches, hisses, flashes.

In the speech of Group I bilinguals, the influence of lexical features of mother tongue was seen. Those who adopted English found that English lacked the means of articulating certain norms of their culture, relationship and elements. Some social formulae were adapted in English. For instance, I’ll go and come (Tamil -po:du va:ran) (Sinhala- maŋ gihilla ennaŋ) in the British English is used to express the same idea in the usual form: Cheerio, Good –bye.

The older bilinguals adopted English as their first language along with anglicized way of life and were very much comfortable in British ways of life. Because of this, they were treated as aliens in their own land. Many Sri Lankan writings come from this group of bilinguals who were between the British ways of life and typical life styles of Lankans. Generally, in the speech of Lankan English speakers, many vernacular forms, certain phonological characteristics, syntactic features, words and idioms got assimilated with their English (Gunesekera, 2005). Indeed, they invented new words to refer to certain local objects and customs which directly don’t have Standard English equivalents (Fernando, 1977 and Gunesekera, 2005). So far as the Sri Lankan bilinguals of Group I are concerned, the socio-cultural dignity of the dominant language and accentuation in the bilingual group matters a lot.  Their social and cultural dignity is very much associated with English and their acculturation to British life style has changed their attitudes and thoughts. Therefore, when they write novel and fictions, they use  British Standard English as transferred by their colonial masters. So, their writing would be as natural as the natives’ use of English. Although these bilingual writers are well-versed with the distinctive grammatical features and words, they never use them, when they are entailed in creative writing for some purpose. An appeal has been made for the use of Sri Lankan English in writing by those who want to express their local experience very effectively using the images they perceive in their day to day life. Sri Lankan English is being seen as the base form of Standard English with its own norms which is nowadays profusely used by almost all the younger generation throughout the island (Gunesekera, 2005).  Now, the creative writers use Sri Lankan English in their literary and academic writings to a larger extent and it is well acclaimed by the Sri Lankan society without any resistance (Gunesekera, 2005).

1.2.2 Group II

Fernanado’s categorization of Group II bilinguals is based generally on the lower-middle or working class. These bilinguals treat English more as a foreign language. The English pronunciation of this group is very much different from the native speakers and also from the Group I bilinguals. This is because of late acquisition of English language; these bilinguals usually do not use English in their domestic and social intercourse (Fernando, 1977). But, this categorization is no longer present in present day Sri Lanka, because Sri Lankan English is widely accepted with its own characteristics and norms (Gunesekera, 2005).The English passed on to older people by colonial masters is almost extinct. The majority of Sri Lankans use the Sri Lankan English in the intercourses in all domains in the country. Fernando (1977:352) lists the features that differentiate Group II bilinguals  from those of Group I.

1) Substitution of the half-open back rounded vowel/ɔ/for the long pure vowel /o:/ of the Group I bilinguals. Bo:t, ro:d become bɔt and rɔd

2) Substitution of the short pure vowel/o/for the short open back rounded vowel/ɒ/ of the Group I bilingual in nɒt.pɒtetc.

These two substitutions have the result that Group II bilinguals will reverse the forms ‘hall’ and ‘hole’ from the standpoint of the Group I bilinguals;

Hall hɔl-ho:l

Hole Ho:l-hɔl

3) Substitution of the voiceless bilabial stop /p/ for the voiceless bilabial fricative/F/ of Sri Lankan English and vice versa in English words which use these sounds. Sinhala has no /f/ phoneme and speakers of Sri Lankan English (Group I) use a bilabial fricative as the closest substitute to the Standard English labio-dental fricative. The same type of reversal noted in (2)between ‘hall’ and ‘hole’ then takes place between words like pan and fan in the speech of these group two bilinguals.

Those who were born after independence, though they acquire English from Group I, come closer to Group II bilinguals, since their medium of instruction is in vernaculars. The younger bilinguals of Group I and the bilinguals of Group II used almost identical pronunciation. The older bilinguals used the vernacular with monolinguals. When they spoke to monolinguals in vernaculars, they used to resort to code-switching. As the influence of English on vernaculars has been accepted, the receiver bilinguals or monolinguals hardly have problems in understanding the switches of codes used by the older generation. For instance, loan words like car, train, plane, ship etc. are naturally intelligible. The Tamil inflectional suffixes go with the loan words as in carila (by car),busila (by bus), trainila (by train) etc. These were easy for monolinguals and bilinguals and receiver bilinguals to comprehend the meaning from the discourse.

Many lexical items are transferred from English to Sinhala and Tamil and this is very much present in the present day Sinhala and Tamil speech. Many English words got infused with Sinhala. This type of bilingualism is humorously termed as Singlish which is similar to Tanglish (Karunakaran, 2008) spoken in Chennai. As the medium of education of many younger bilinguals is vernacular, they tend to discuss topics in the vernaculars, Sinhala and Tamil. Younger bilinguals irrespective of their groups are educated in the vernaculars and were drawn in the direction of writings in English available adequately and writings in vernaculars which are very much limited. In the case of Tamil writings, there was a huge influx of textbooks and literature from India. As a result, Tamil students got more chances to read the Tamil textbooks than those of Sinhala students. Because of constant reading in English, they gradually acquired high proficiency in English. This resulted in the fluency of two languages which is what Kachru (1966) called cline bilingualism. The major reason for the use of Singlish according to Fernando (1977:354) is as follows:

The other major reason for the use of Singlish is the absence of what Weinreich (1953) has termed ‘interlocutory constraints.’  When these younger bilinguals speak among themselves forms can be freely transferred from one language to another without the interlocutors paying the penalty of mutual intelligibility. This was not the case with their linguistically less proficient parents and older siblings the majority of whom had, perforce, to avoid ragged switching and who because they generally spoke Sinhala to monolinguals avoid extensive lexical transfer from English as well.

In the speech of Singlish, lexical transfers are present by and large which comprise loan words and loan translations which have entered from English into vernaculars by way of code –switching and borrowings. The Singlish also consisted of some peculiar words which are used in place of Sinhala equivalents. In this regard, a lot of new coinage is used in freelance writing. The following expressions indicate the effective use of transfer of English words in Sinhala

To pass (samartə venəva)

Wife(pavala no:na)

Husband(miniha,mahettəya)  (Fernando,1977:354)

It is apparent that similar lexical transfers take place in Tamil also, but the degree of transfer from English to Sinhala is higher than transfer of English words to Tamil. In Tamil, English words like uncle and aunt are used directly and the Tamil equivalents for uncle and aunt are ma:ma and ma:mi respectively. Therefore, interference from the vernacular is a salient feature of the bilinguals of current Group I and II than those of older bilinguals.  The mutual interference between English and vernaculars is very much transparent in the parlance of younger bilinguals and the congruity between their English and that of the older group is a matter of degree than a variety. The dominance of English on Sinhala is very strong than that of Sinhala on English. The younger bilinguals have propensity to insert English words more in their normal discourse. Sinhala-English bilinguals use many English words very often in their day-to-day communication when they speak in Sinhala. Indeed, the use of English words is very much present in the formal Sinhala speech.  Those words have been accepted as part of Sri Lankan English. Generally, Singlish projects  high proportion of Sinhala phrases and sentences as English ones, that is to say, Singlish is a sub- variety of Sinhala, but not a sub- variety of English (Fernando, 1977 and Gunesekera, 2005).

1.2.3 Group III

The bilinguals whose proficiency level is low belong to this category (Fernanado, 1977). Generally, in this group the people from low –middle class or working class are stakeholders. They use English in very limited domains and are usually the receiver bilinguals who study English in the school, where English is a compulsory subject in the school curriculum. The notable feature in this regard is that English language programs are administered with equal efficiency but the students come from heterogeneous English backgrounds. Inefficiency in teaching, poor planning, lack of exposure to language outside the school make the students perform low in English and such students belong to this group. Usually, the group three bilinguals do not have working knowledge in English and they are placed in zero end as per the Kachru’s cline bilingual theory (Kachru, 1966). These bilinguals opt for the jobs in the public service, such as bus conductor, postman, taxi driver etc. In fact, a small number of bilinguals of this group enter the university where they learn English by reading textbooks all of which are only available in English. And they enhance their proficiency moving towards Group I or Group II. By this situation, we could arrive at a decision that majority of bilinguals in Sri Lanka now are of Group III bilinguals and they can receive the message but can’t respond. The phonological characteristics of this group are same as Group II. But in the case of grammar, Group III bilinguals deviate at large from the Standard English because of the domination of their mother tongue.

Almost in all areas in Sri Lanka, standard British English is no longer used. The Group I and Group II bilinguals use a variety of English in which the flavour of vernaculars can be seen. On the other hand, the bilinguals of Group III use a kind of English stigmaticized with influence of vernaculars, Sinhala and Tamil. Among the bilinguals of the category, no code switching is used, but they transfer some lexical items from English to vernaculars. For example, the lexical items like to marry, to pass, to run, etc. are transferred from English to vernaculars, when they talk to each other.

1.3 The influence of English on Vernaculars

Sinhala and Tamil are in use for more than two thousand years in Sri Lanka. Each language has its own distinctive features.  More number of literary works are available in Tamil, as it has been in close proximity to Tamil Nadu. Many Tamil scholars from Tamil Nadu contributed to produce immense Tamil literature and they shared their intellectuality with Tamil scholars in Sri Lanka. But in the case of Sinhala, a limited amount of literary work has been done, because Sri Lanka had been under colonial rule for several hundred years. SoonaAfter independence,  Sinhala writers produced a huge amount of literary works in English.  More number of textbooks, fiction, short stories, novels etc. are produced in Sinhala abundantly. In post-independent Sri Lanka, a number of acts were passed in the parliament and the most historic constitution crowned Sinhala as the only official language which paved a way to write more in Sinhala modeling the English writings. In post-independent Sri Lanka, the new group of Sinhala intellectuals followed the literary styles of British writers when engaged in literary work. In consequence to this, the impact on English is great on Sinhala. What could be observed in Tamil literary works is that they use a kind of genre established by the literary writers of Tamil Nadu, so that Tamils in Sri Lanka followed that style. However, in the present day Sri Lanka, the Tamil writers also adopt the styles of Englishmen particularly in fictions, poems, novels and short stories. A lot of English borrowings are used in Tamil writings now. In Tamil writings, the influence of English is very high than ever before. In sum, both English and Tamil writings have a lot of lexical borrowings and new hybrid words and new coinages derived from English a are found in all these groups of bilinguals.

English still functions as a powerful tool in Sri Lanka, as it is the linguistic key that opens many gates to see the world clearly and discerningly. And it rightly placed the people into different classes in terms of the levels of proficiency: elitists’ English, mediocre English and  layman English  Even now, those who are placed at the top in society are considered to be elites and enjoy more privileges, because they have a greater command in English. So, English still acts as the marker of identity in Sri Lanka. This noble feature of English is marked by Fernanado saying that “it is a ritual act which symbolizes not a person’s status in the society but also by emotional and intellectual separateness in the wider context of the purely indigenous culture-its initiations and its relationships” (Fernando, 1977:359).

1.4  Multilingualism and The Malays of Sri Lanka

The formation of the community of Malays in Sri Lanka was done by Western colonialism. People in the Colonized region displaced from one place to another. The Dutch and British in their East Indian dealings moved large number of Malay people from their native lands in Southeast Asian Malays to other places which were under their rule. In this way, more sizable community from Indonesia and Malaysia settled in Sri Lanka by various means of deportation (Lim, Lisa and Umberto Ansaldo,2006a). The Malay community settled in the district of Slave Island during Portuguese rule and the bulk of Sri Lankan Malays (SLM) were banished due to various reasons. Of those people, many of them were political dissident groups, slaves and soldiers who were exiled during the Dutch rule and importation of slaves and soldiers for the garrison in British rule made a way for those Malays to settle in Sri Lanka (Hussainmiya, 1986). Though they are called homogeneously Sri Lankan Malays, their origins are different covering an area from Northern Malaysia to some provinces in Indonesia. During the Dutch rule, political exiles and convicts were deported to Sri Lanka from different parts of Indonesian archipelago and from some other counties like Java, Borneo, the Moluku and Goa (Hussainmiya, 1987, 1990). Ethnic label ‘Malay’ was attached to this community by the British, as they found the people of this community speaking in Malay language. This ethnic label still exists in the island. Over the century of their existence in Sri Lanka in the multicultural and multilingual environment with majority of Sinhala-speaking Sinhalese and a significant Tamil speaking Tamil and Muslims, their distinct identity has emerged as Sri Lankan Malays in consequence of colonialism (Hussainmiya, 1987). They maintained their religious practices in the Muslim tradition, but other aspects of culture became similar to those of Malay. Their satirical practices are much similar to Sri Lankan one (Saldin, 2003).

The Malay Diaspora of early days in Sri Lanka would have spoken many different languages like Javanese, Amonese, Indonesian, Malay etc. A kind of Malay- based contact variety like Buzzar-Malay had been a lingua franca of the traders from southern China to northwest India and this variety of Malay borrowed words from other languages too (Hussaimiya,1990). Due to the inter-ethnic communication, a pidgin Malay evolved and this derives a blanket term, ‘Vehicular Malay’ and pidgin Malay was used to cover the general colloquial Malay variety of inter-ethnic communication (Hussainmiya, 1990). The colloquial Malay varieties would have been in contact with two languages: colloquial Sinhala, the dominant language of the population in Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan Tamil spoken by other traders and plantation workers. The Sri Lankan Malay developed imbibing both languages together and is a unique variety spoken in Sri Lanka now.

The restructured variety of Sri Lankan Malay clearly shows the linguistic repertoire of the Malays in Sri Lanka and the significant feature of multilingualism. The SLM community has always been the most multilingual of all. All the communities co-exist in Sri Lanka, though the there has been an issue of ethnic crisis between Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils. Under the Dutch and British colonial rule, Many Sri Lankan Malays were given position to act as intermediaries between colonies and locals and were fluent in all the languages necessary to communicate with all parties concerned. A small scale survey of the Malay conducted by Lim & Ansaldo (2006a) indicates that they are still clearly multilingual in Sri Lanka. About 66% people speak at least four languages: SLM, English, Sinhalese and Tamil and  34%  can’t speak Tamil but proficient in other languages (Lim & Ansaldo, 2006a). The linguistic repertoire and communicative practices and socioeconomic status of Sri Lankan Malays differ from one community of SLM to the other in terms of the region where they live. Although SLM seems to have comprised perhaps five different varieties, there is still overt identity and separateness for each of these communities. This has been the case since the colonial rule where the diaspora Malays were testified for being a close knit community where relationships between the Malay ethnicities as well as the different social extractions were present by way of the rank of army and by way of common religious practices (Ricklefs, 1974). Nevertheless, the various communities encounter a sort of jeopardy on the basis of their locality and network.

1.5 SLM and Post Colonial Policy

As a language of minority group in Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan Malay has never been used for public intercourse in the island. Because of the recent language policies which don’t support the maintenance of minority languages except Tamil, Sinhala and English, there is visible decrease in linguistic vitality in SLM (Lim & Ansaldo, 2006a). In the cosmopolitan Colombo community, many parents and grant parents make conscious decisions to speak to their children in English at home so as to give them resources identified as requisite for communication and advancement internationally. Because of this, the Colombo SLM community has shifted to English from SLM in the home domain. Consequently, the linguistic vitality of SLM is also seen in the older and middle generations. Younger generation is not at all using Malay. This places the SLM in the fifth position in the island after Tamil, Sinhala, English and Arabic (Lim & Ansaldo 2006a). As such, SLM is no longer a home language for the younger generation of Sri Lankan Malays. Eventually, younger generation needs to comply with new politics of language of post colonial Sri Lanka (Lim & Ansaldo 2006a).  In the linguistic repertoire of SLM, Sinhala has been a dominant capital language which made them enjoy lot of privileges as they enjoyed in the colonial period. For Sri Lankan Malays, multilingualism is very much pivotal to progress academically and professionally.

1.6 Conclusion

In this paper, the impact of bilingualism in pre  and post independent Sri Lanka has been discussed in detail. The history of bilingualism Sri Lanka has shown us  how English influenced jobs, culture, attitude and perceptions of the people. English was instrumental to promote bilingualism and a catalyst to get better life during the colonial period and even now with high proficiency in English, people accomplished their goals easily. This paper has vividly captured remarkable changes that English has made in different domains of the country.

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