Why English?
Posted on December 20th, 2022

.Lakmal Seneviratna

Almost 100% of the people living in Sri Lanka can converse either in Sinhala or in Tamil or both.

I have lived in the lovely country,Wales which has a much smaller population than us about three million people.

It is just over hundred miles away from London.

For the majority of people living in Wales, English is their first and only language.

This was not always so.

Only a couple of centuries ago, Welsh was the language of most of Wales.

However Welsh was introduced in the national curriculum and from 1999 on wards Welsh became compulsory for school children.

This should open the eyes of those clamouring to introduce English as the medium of education for our children across the country.

There seems a campaign in English media by the interested parties to reintroduce English medium for our children.

A  non Sinhalese  female principal of school yesteryear uses her influence in this regard.

Don’t be surprised then if you find a couple of centuries later most of our population would only speak English!

The efforts of Wales today with such a small population living just across English borders  to safeguard their mother tongue is quite praiseworthy.

For an outsider like me it looks quite unnecessary as there is no any visible advantages seen shifting to Welsh medium but a hindarance.

Road signs have come up in Welsh and there is a long term approach to achieving a million Welsh speakers by 2050.

In short we have to safeguard and protect our Sinhala which is one of the most ancient languages as much as or more like Wales.

At a time when the country is facing difficulties to providing basic necesasities how can it afford to sustain an educational system based on providing good English teachers 

rightthrough out the country?

The poor rural children are going to be vastly discriminated with the city based children enjoying the luxury of English teachers.

From my personal point of view I’ve had whole of my primary and secondary education in Sinhala and Sinhala has been our only medium of comminucation at home.

However  it had not been a barrier at all to be employed & work successfully today in the UK.

.Lakmal Seneviratna

Comments

A Reader says;

you may have had no barrier at all to be employed and work successfully in the UK, but in reality, proficiency in the English language is required as a basic qualification to get a job in England. Even Sri Lankan doctors coming for their higher medical qualifications are required to sit for an English proficiency examination before their placement in the hospitals.

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