{"id":55172,"date":"2016-05-31T22:29:28","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T04:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=55172"},"modified":"2016-05-31T07:49:19","modified_gmt":"2016-05-31T14:49:19","slug":"the-sinhala-language-after-sinhala-only","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/05\/31\/the-sinhala-language-after-sinhala-only\/","title":{"rendered":"THE SINHALA LANGUAGE AFTER \u2018SINHALA ONLY\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The Official Language Act no 33 of 1956\u00a0\u00a0 said that the Sinhala language \u2018shall be the one official language of Ceylon.\u2019\u00a0 The Act was to come into effect on 1st January 1964.\u00a0 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>\n

The Official Languages Department, set up in October 1956 started work on Sinhala glossaries. Sinhala was not a \u2018new\u2019 language.\u00a0 It had a long history of usage, an existing vocabulary, a systematic grammar and many \u2018root\u2019 words, therefore finding suitable Sinhala words took time. Others joined in. Aelian de Silva coined the words \u2018piripahaduwa\u2019 for refinery, \u2018pirithel (petroleum), supirithel (super petrol) thekala (three phase)\u00a0 and rasyuruwa (reservoir) while translating the 1951 Annual Report of the Dept of Government Electrical Undertakings. Opponents of \u2018Sinhala only\u2019 ridiculed the activity, saying \u2018universal joint\u2019 had been translated as \u2018sarvaloka puttuwa\u2019. M.J. Perera, head of the Official Languages department declared that such a word did not exist. This was a hoax.<\/p>\n

The transition to Sinhala was readily\u00a0\u00a0 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 \u2018Buddhist schools\u2019,\u00a0\u00a0 such as Ananda, Nalanda and Rahula, where Sinhala had been given prominence. Anandatissa de Alwis, being an Anandian,\u00a0\u00a0 declared that Ceylon was able to establish Sinhala as the state language because of Ananda College. D.B. Dhanapala another Anandian,\u00a0 also\u00a0 observed that\u00a0 In\u00a0 1956, when Sinhalese became a national language, Anandians who were well versed in Sinhalese were present, in significant numbers\u00a0 in the Ceylon Civil Service, Official Languages Department and other state departments.\u00a0 They were superbly bilingual and could assist in the move from English to Sinhala.<\/p>\n

Schools were teaching in the \u2018mother tongue\u2019 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.\u00a0\u00a0 Preparation for this\u00a0\u00a0 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. \u2018They did yeoman service\u2019 (Sunday Island. 8.4.07 p 13).<\/p>\n

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. \u2018Even in the arts faculty, they faced difficulties.\u2019 \u00a0\u00a0D.E. Hettiarachchi, head of the Department of Sinhala,\u00a0\u00a0 created a special\u00a0\u00a0 division in the Department, known as \u2018Swabasha office\u2019 headed by senior lecturer P.E.E. Fernando . \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Sinhala lecturers sat for long hours with specialists in the different disciplines, coining suitable Sinhala words.\u00a0 They were assisted by lecturers from Sanskrit and Pali departments. \u00a0Pali 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.\u00a0 These glossaries were later acquired by the Department of Official Languages and used as the base for the Department\u2018s own glossaries.\u00a0 This \u00a0\u00a0contribution of the Sinhala department is now forgotten, said Dharmadasa. It should be placed on record.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0A.V. de S Indraratne pioneered the teaching of economics in Sinhala. His book \u2018Mila niyaya\u2019 (1961) was for long the only publication available on the Theory of Price in Sinhala.\u00a0 Other lecturers ran to the Department of Sinhala to learn Sinhala. Dharmadasa recalls a lecturer from the Medical faculty, \u2018with a Kandyan name\u2019 sitting in his \u2018Sinhala for Beginners\u2019 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>\n

The university set up a Question Paper Moderation Board which included Sinhala lecturers.\u00a0 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>\n

The university had no intention of ever becoming a \u2018Sinhala only\u2019 university.\u00a0 Academics anticipated that once Sinhala was securely established in the country, the university would revert to English. Undergraduates were therefore taught\u00a0\u00a0 English as a separate activity and English terminology was included in the lectures.\u00a0 Textbooks were never translated.\u00a0 Where necessary they wrote original works directly in Sinhala. \u00a0This took place outside the university too. G.P. Wannigama wrote a book in Sinhala on carbon chemistry \u2018which remains a landmark features to this day\u2019.\u00a0 \u00a0Around 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>\n

University education in swabasha did not lead to lowered standards, as opponents hoped. It\u00a0 simply opened up higher education to a vast group of \u00a0promising, intelligent\u00a0 young persons, mainly rural, who thereafter obtained\u00a0 post graduate degrees\u00a0 in prestigious universities abroad and\u00a0 went on to practice their professions\u00a0 successfully at\u00a0 home and abroad.<\/p>\n

Sinhala has \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0modernized very successfully.\u00a0 Sinhala now has a huge vocabulary and a very incisive style of delivery. We only need to switch on the television to see this.\u00a0 Whatever the subject under discussion, whether fashion,\u00a0 cricket, health problem or outer space exploration, the speakers express themselves fluently and clearly in a formal Sinhala\u00a0 which \u00a0is now the norm for both written and spoken Sinhala. \u00a0Parliamentary debates are also in Sinhala. In science, there is a greater use of English words,\u00a0\u00a0 such as \u2018Oxygen\u2019 instead of \u2018amlakara\u2019. Computer science straightaway used the English terms, instead of going for unfamiliar new Sinhala words. The value of this is obvious.\u00a0 The English terms are the standard terms in this subject.<\/p>\n

Dharmadasa concluded \u2018In 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\u2019 .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS The Official Language Act no 33 of 1956\u00a0\u00a0 said that the Sinhala language \u2018shall be the one official language of Ceylon.\u2019\u00a0 The Act was to come into effect on 1st January 1964.\u00a0 Sinhala had not been used as an official language since the fall of the Udarata kingdom in 1815. Therefore vocabulary, sentence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kamalika-pieris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55172","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=55172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}