{"id":111314,"date":"2021-02-03T18:03:09","date_gmt":"2021-02-04T01:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=111314"},"modified":"2021-02-03T18:03:09","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T01:03:09","slug":"what-is-the-language-of-cricket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/02\/03\/what-is-the-language-of-cricket\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the language of cricket?"},"content":{"rendered":"

C. Wijeyawickrema, LL.B., Ph.D.<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Note:<\/em><\/strong>\nThe unreasonable, unfair, arbitrary, and undemocratic (anti-poor people)\ndecision taken stealthily by the Council of Legal Education to take back law\ncollege to pre-1956 era, is nothing but one more step to try to give oxygen to\nthe NGO supported black-white plan to harm the 2,600-year-old Sinhala Buddhist\nheritage of Sinhale (Ceylon).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, there is no wonder, a collection of lawyers known\nas the Council of legal education (CLE), a kind of lawyers\u2019 trade union, wants\nto restrict lawyers from poor families populating rural areas and make legal\nservices cheaper like in India. There one can find lawyers with a table under a\nhuge tree practicing law. This reduces the gap between a lawyer and his client.\n<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gandhi once said lawyers are like barbers. They do an\nimportant social service. But how many lawyers in Ceylon today know why there\nis small pocket (pouch) back of their black coat? Clients in Roman times drop\ncoins into this pocket and the lawyer does not know who put how much. A lawyer\nonce asked my relative to pay Rs. 70K to draft a simple, half-page affidavit.\nWho is more human, a man who catches fish one by one using a fishing rod or\nthis kind of lawyer?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The black-white mind is a shameless mind. Just imagine the\nsituation covered in the essay below. When Ajantha Mendis, an army soldier,\nplayed international cricket and brought fame to Sri Lanka, a black white had\nthe nerve to write that Ajantha was an \u2018embarrassment<\/strong>\u2019\nto Sri Lankan cricket, because he could not answer in English questions asked\nby reporters.  I consider this assessment\nof Ajantha by a man of a delusional mind is in the same category of the action\nby the CLE to create lawyers made in English.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

=================<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: Island newspaper, August 2,\n2008<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bandula Abeyewardene\u2019s (BA) much\nhesitant response (Island<\/em>, 7\/23\/2008) to Daya Ranasinghe\u2019s (DR) reaction\nto BA\u2019s view on the need to teach English to cricketers, provided more evidence\nof the colonial mentality of BA. English like any other language is a tool like\na computer or a typewriter and nothing more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who is a\nblack-white? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The black-white phenomenon is found\nin former colonies, which is a state of mind. This was why Carlo Fonseka had to\nengage in a series of debates in the recent past in trying to define who is a\nblack-white. Whether one knows English (in the former French or Spanish\ncolonies those two languages) or whether one lives abroad has no direct\nconnection with it. Recently, I saw a poem written by DR about a female soldier\non guard duty, and reading it gives one goose bumps of pride and patriotism. A\nblack-white cannot pen such poems. We know the poems by the Tibetan monk S.\nMahinda who was more Sinhala than the native Sinhalayas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Mexico, a black-white is called a\ncoconut\u2014brown outside, white inside. One of the tests one can use in this\nregard, if he or she is visiting Anuradhapura from Colombo, is whether he or\nshe gets goose bumps or a chill running through the spinal code (the awesome\nfeeling) at the first sight of the Ruwanvali Maha Seya or standing on the bund\nof the Tissa Vawa. Just think of the mental state of some Marxists who called\nthe King Dutugamunu, a fool of bricks (gadol\nmodaya)<\/em> for erecting the Ruwanvali, but they take trips to see the pyramids\nin Egypt!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a tuition master in English, BA\nhas every right to promote English classes. But his mental status is summarized\nby his word “embarrassment.” Princess Diana had to take tuition to\nlearn how to speak English. The current U.S. President has trouble in speaking\nEnglish despite a Yale education. SWRD had a silver tongue but could not read\nor write in Sinhala. In USA, 40% of college students need remedial education in\nreading and writing. Humans must communicate and unlike animals they have\ndeveloped languages. Why is it that in Sri Lanka not knowing English is an\nembarrassment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In British colonies, English was the\nlanguage of the ruler and those who acted as translators became powerful and\nprivileged. The colonial master needed more people able to work in English and\na class of people evolved who learned English and embraced Christianity, the\nreligion of the master. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lord McCaulay, in the 1840s in\nIndia, formulated an education policy to create a class of Indians who were\nbrown in colour, but English in thinking and behaviour. More than Lord Nelson\nor Cecil Rhodes, it was McCaulay who helped the continuation of colonialism\nafter giving the former colonies “independence”. We have a ruling class\nin Colombo, who are remote-controlled from London or Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When language is power, it is more\nthan a communication tool. At the time of independence, only 5% of people in\nCeylon knew English. This group mostly living in Colombo or in big cities\ncontinued the white rule with minimum of changes, spatially or structurally, under\nthe colonial open economy, exporting rubber and graphite and importing pencils\nand erasers. The attempt to change this policy began only after 1956, which BA\nbrands as a mess and a sin. Poor people had no means to learn English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why people learn other languages?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only rarely, people learn languages\nfor the fun of it. They learn it if it benefits them. Taxi drivers and Colombo\nAyahs or lads at tourist sites use it. Thus, in those days people learned how\nto sign a document in English because otherwise there had to be a witness to\nhis or her non-English signature. Today people learn Japanese or Hindi for the\nmarket value of it. In USA, parents force their children to learn Chinese,\nRussian, Hindi, or Japanese and not German or French as was done in the past.\nNurses going to USA needs English as patients they meet cannot speak Sinhala.\nThat is why Tamil doctors in Colombo should know Sinhala not because of\ndiscrimination, but to earn money. If Ajantha Mendis wants to learn English or\nHindi, it will be his decision and not others. Herein lies the mental status\nproblem of BA. He should not be the person to decide or suggest it. I have no\ndoubt that Mendis tried to learn English at school, but could not be, due to\nlack of competent teachers or not being able to afford private tuition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1936 Olympics when several\nblack Americans won gold medals, Hitler said they ran fast because unlike the\nwhite athletes, blacks were closer to monkeys. The ability to become a good\ncricket player or a good dancer-drummer or a musician has nothing to do with\none\u2019s language skills. Some people learn so many languages effortlessly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the fans of Mendis want to\ncommunicate with him and Mendis also wants to communicate with them in return,\nthey will find a solution of their own. I knew a Commissioner of Marketing who\ndid not know English but used his deputy as the English link. To expect to\nstart English classes as part of training in cricket is to devalue the skill of\nthem as cricketers and to try to inject one\u2019s inferiority or superiority\ncomplexes on to otherwise innocent army-serving, village-born poor youth by a\nColombo black-white. Even in the legal field we find attempts to convert into\nEnglish medium as if that will help the legal empowerment of the poor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just like learning a language is a\nmatter of economics, leaving Sri Lanka for alternative life in another country\nis a matter of economics. Most people who live abroad did so due to economic\nreasons or due to the corrupt political system in Sri Lanka. They did not have\npastures in Sri Lanka in the first place to look for \u2018greener pastures.\u2019 They\nwere like Jinadasa in Gamperaliya who went to Sinhale looking for work. Those\nwho live outside Sri Lanka are in a better position to help Sri Lanka to help\nchange it from a corruption and criminal paradise to a land where peace and\nprosperity is possible so that those who went abroad can return with a pension\nbecause they will not be under the control of corrupt politicians or officers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opportunity versus access to opportunity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Providing equal opportunity without\nthe necessary support is meaningless as we see in Sri Lanka today. People like\nBA can talk, but even within a radius of 20 miles from Colombo there are few\nschools that have teachers qualified to teach English as a second language.\nWith a colonial drawback of laughing at a person who makes a mistake while\nspeaking in English (this does not happen in making mistakes in learning Hindi\nor French), it is much better that Mendis speaks about his cricket skill in his\nmother tongue than in broken English without making his cricket skill secondary\nto his newly acquired “talent” in English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intentionally or unknowingly BA has\ndone a disservice to village boys who have talent not blunted by an English\nbarrier. Village boys play cricket with kaduru<\/em> balls found at the edge\nof paddy fields with polpithi<\/em> bats. They will never go to Royal, St.\nThomas\u2019 or to an international school to learn cricket, because Lord McCaulay\ndid not play cricket. They say the language of science is mathematics, but the\nlanguage of cricket is not English. Fluency in English does not make one a\nworld class cricketer, but talent and skills one is born with and sharpened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

C. Wijeyawickrema, LL.B., Ph.D. Note: The unreasonable, unfair, arbitrary, and undemocratic (anti-poor people) decision taken stealthily by the Council of Legal Education to take back law college to pre-1956 era, is nothing but one more step to try to give oxygen to the NGO supported black-white plan to harm the 2,600-year-old Sinhala Buddhist heritage of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c-wijeyawickrema"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}