[lg policy] Sri Lanka: THE SINHALA LANGUAGE AFTER ‘SINHALA ONLY’

Wed Jun 1 20:42:41 UTC 2016

THE SINHALA LANGUAGE AFTER ‘SINHALA ONLY’
Posted on May 31st, 2016
*KAMALIKA PIERIS*

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’ .
http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2016/05/31/the-sinhala-language-after-sinhala-only/

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