{"id":130790,"date":"2022-12-20T18:33:21","date_gmt":"2022-12-21T01:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=130790"},"modified":"2022-12-20T18:55:34","modified_gmt":"2022-12-21T01:55:34","slug":"why-english-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2022\/12\/20\/why-english-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Why English?"},"content":{"rendered":"

.Lakmal Seneviratna<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Almost 100% of the people living in Sri Lanka can converse either in Sinhala or in Tamil or both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have lived in the lovely country,Wales which has a much smaller population than us about three million people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is just over hundred miles away from London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the majority of people living in Wales, English is their first and only language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was not always so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only a couple of centuries ago, Welsh was the language of most of Wales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However Welsh was introduced in the national curriculum and from 1999 on wards Welsh became compulsory for school children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This should open the eyes of those clamouring to introduce English as the medium of education for our children across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There seems a campaign in English media by the interested parties to reintroduce English medium for our children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A  non Sinhalese  female principal of school yesteryear uses her influence in this regard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t be surprised then if you find a couple of centuries later most of our population would only speak English!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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

Road signs have come up in Welsh and there is a long term approach to achieving a million Welsh speakers by 2050.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

rightthrough out the country?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poor rural children are going to be vastly discriminated with the city based children enjoying the luxury of English teachers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However  it had not been a barrier at all to be employed & work successfully today in the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.Lakmal Seneviratna<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comments<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A Reader says;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

.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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130790","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=130790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130790\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}