<div dir="ltr"><span class="">THE SINHALA LANGUAGE AFTER ‘SINHALA ONLY’</span><br>
<span class="">Posted on May 31st, 2016</span>
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<h2><span style="color:rgb(0,0,255)"><em>KAMALIKA PIERIS</em></span></h2>
<p>The Official Language Act no 33 of 1956 said that the Sinhala
language ‘shall be the one official language of Ceylon.’ The Act was to
come into effect on 1st January 1964. Sinhala had not been used as an
official language since the fall of the Udarata kingdom in 1815.
Therefore vocabulary, sentence structure and communication styles had to
be modernized. Specialists in Sinhala language took on the task with
great dedication.</p>
<p>The Official Languages Department, set up in October 1956 started
work on Sinhala glossaries. Sinhala was not a ‘new’ language. It had a
long history of usage, an existing vocabulary, a systematic grammar and
many ‘root’ words, therefore finding suitable Sinhala words took time.
Others joined in. Aelian de Silva coined the words ‘piripahaduwa’ for
refinery, ‘pirithel (petroleum), supirithel (super petrol) thekala
(three phase) and rasyuruwa (reservoir) while translating the 1951
Annual Report of the Dept of Government Electrical Undertakings.
Opponents of ‘Sinhala only’ ridiculed the activity, saying ‘universal
joint’ had been translated as ‘sarvaloka puttuwa’. M.J. Perera, head of
the Official Languages department declared that such a word did not
exist. This was a hoax.</p>
<p>The transition to Sinhala was readily supported by the bilingual
officers who were working in government departments at the time. They
made administration in Sinhala acceptable. The officers mainly came from
the ‘Buddhist schools’, such as Ananda, Nalanda and Rahula, where
Sinhala had been given prominence. Anandatissa de Alwis, being an
Anandian, declared that Ceylon was able to establish Sinhala as the
state language because of Ananda College. D.B. Dhanapala another
Anandian, also observed that In 1956, when Sinhalese became a
national language, Anandians who were well versed in Sinhalese were
present, in significant numbers in the Ceylon Civil Service, Official
Languages Department and other state departments. They were superbly
bilingual and could assist in the move from English to Sinhala.</p>
<p>Schools were teaching in the ‘mother tongue’ from 1949 and the first
batch of swabasha students were scheduled to arrive in the university in
1960. The Arts faculty was to start teaching in Sinhala in 1960 and the
science faculties in 1968. Preparation for this should have started
years before, but 1960 found the university unprepared. The Sinhala
Department of the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya rose to the occasion.
The public knows nothing of the great responsibility shouldered by this
Department in the transition from English to swabasha in the
university, said K.N.O. Dharmadasa. ‘They did yeoman service’ (Sunday
Island. 8.4.07 p 13).</p>
<p>The task facing the university and its teachers was enormous. There
were no textbooks in Sinhala, no Sinhala terminology and the lecturers
did not know Sinhala. ‘Even in the arts faculty, they faced
difficulties.’ D.E. Hettiarachchi, head of the Department of
Sinhala, created a special division in the Department, known as
‘Swabasha office’ headed by senior lecturer P.E.E. Fernando . Sinhala
lecturers sat for long hours with specialists in the different
disciplines, coining suitable Sinhala words. They were assisted by
lecturers from Sanskrit and Pali departments. Pali and Sanskrit
lecturers also had a sound knowledge of Sinhala. The resulting
glossaries were cyclostyled and distributed to the teaching staff to be
used in their lectures and tutorials. These glossaries were later
acquired by the Department of Official Languages and used as the base
for the Department‘s own glossaries. This contribution of the Sinhala
department is now forgotten, said Dharmadasa. It should be placed on
record.</p>
<p>Lecturers responded positively to the new language policy, though
they had doubts about the long term benefit of it. Some knew Sinhala and
worked hard to help the switch over to swabasha. A.V. de S Indraratne
pioneered the teaching of economics in Sinhala. His book ‘Mila niyaya’
(1961) was for long the only publication available on the Theory of
Price in Sinhala. Other lecturers ran to the Department of Sinhala to
learn Sinhala. Dharmadasa recalls a lecturer from the Medical faculty,
‘with a Kandyan name’ sitting in his ‘Sinhala for Beginners’ class which
was conducted for foreigners, so that he could teach in Sinhala. The
Sinhala Department conducted refresher courses for those who wanted to
brush up their Sinhala grammar and writing skills in preparation for the
changeover. Dharmadasa helped a senior colleague in the History
Department by translating his lecture notes from English to Sinhala.</p>
<p>The university set up a Question Paper Moderation Board which
included Sinhala lecturers. Prof. Hettiarachchi, P.E.E. Fernando and
other senior dons, went through every Sinhala medium question paper
drafted by the other Departments to ensure that the language was correct
and precise. The Department did all this with a very small staff,
helped by the senior teachers in the Sanskrit and Pali Departments.</p>
<p>The university had no intention of ever becoming a ‘Sinhala only’
university. Academics anticipated that once Sinhala was securely
established in the country, the university would revert to English.
Undergraduates were therefore taught English as a separate activity
and English terminology was included in the lectures. Textbooks were
never translated. Where necessary they wrote original works directly in
Sinhala. This took place outside the university too. G.P. Wannigama
wrote a book in Sinhala on carbon chemistry ‘which remains a landmark
features to this day’. Around 1951, Dr S.D. Ratnapala, who was
teaching the midwives and nurses at Castle Street maternity hospital
where he was resident obstetrician, wrote an excellent book in Sinhala
about pregnancy and labor, providing Sinhala terms for the technical
terms in obstetrics.</p>
<p>University education in swabasha did not lead to lowered standards,
as opponents hoped. It simply opened up higher education to a vast
group of promising, intelligent young persons, mainly rural, who
thereafter obtained post graduate degrees in prestigious universities
abroad and went on to practice their professions successfully at home
and abroad.</p>
<p>Sinhala has modernized very successfully. Sinhala now has a huge
vocabulary and a very incisive style of delivery. We only need to switch
on the television to see this. Whatever the subject under discussion,
whether fashion, cricket, health problem or outer space exploration,
the speakers express themselves fluently and clearly in a formal
Sinhala which is now the norm for both written and spoken Sinhala.
Parliamentary debates are also in Sinhala. In science, there is a
greater use of English words, such as ‘Oxygen’ instead of ‘amlakara’.
Computer science straightaway used the English terms, instead of going
for unfamiliar new Sinhala words. The value of this is obvious. The
English terms are the standard terms in this subject.</p>
<p>Dharmadasa concluded ‘In any forum in which economics, political
science, medicine or a technological subject is discussed the speakers
use the Sinhala medium with great facility and style. Sinhala technical
terms come to them with great ease and one feels proud that our language
has been able to modernize in this way, developing a corpus of words
for dealing with areas of modern knowledge’ .</p>
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