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Singlais - the Invasion of Sinhala by English
By Carlton Samarajiwa
The Sinhala language is facing an invasion, and language purists of the "hela" school might even say their language is being murdered everyday on the little screen. Arun Dias Bandaranaike in his impressive and inimitable manner makes his daily announcement that a particular brand of noodles is "vinaadi deken kaemata ready" while a lengthy week-end Sinhala news programme on Rupavahini presented by a charming couple is called "News Station" in huge letters and "Pravurthi Sangrahaya" only in insignificantly small letters below.

Every evening at seven, Sirasa's newscaster Chethana Guneratne moves on from "Dasatha Puvath" to what has now become an integral segment of her programme, which she calls "One Sri Lanka Viseshangaya" and then invariably to "Crime Watch", where everybody watches the phenomenon of increasing crime and does and can do nothing about it except watch and wait.

Linguistic trend
And, there is also the Sinhala satire under the English name "Neighbour Talk", which is occasionally changed to the plural "Neighbours Talk". Other programmes whose content is wholly Sinhala but whose titles are in English are "Live at 8" and "Lunchtime TV".

Sinhala commercials persuading the public to consume different brands of consumer goods have also begun to become bilingual. In one that extols the virtues of a malted drink, an urban woman claims that it is "mage life style ekata niyamayi" and a village lass claims that using "saban kudu" to wash dirty clothes is "hari simple".

Young presenters of various talk shows and other TV programmes with the telephone lines open for listener participation are also heard to shift from Sinhala to English with ease, and sounding by no means offensive or jarring.

There is also some incidental teaching of a little English to non-English speakers through this bilingualism. For example, "await" is explained in Sinhala as "raendee sitinna" in the advance notice about "Savanata Vadanak".

This is a linguistic trend that seems to have come to stay in the electronic media, and there seems to be little point in attempting to preserve Sinhala purity against the steady inroads of "Singhlais". "Singhlais", coined to match with "Franglais", which denotes the invasion of the French language by English words and against which there was a battle some years ago but to no avail.

Italian faced the same problem of an invasion by English and Americanisms so much so that a new term "Itangliano" came into vogue to describe the new fashion that swept the Italian language.

Claudio Quarantotto listed as many as 8000 words that had "invaded" Italian since the end of World War II in his Dictionary of New Italian. He accepted the trend as inevitable. "Every language changes over time. Only dead languages are immobile, rigid and corpse-like," he said. He attributed the influx of Anglo-Americanisms partly to the fall of the Fascist era, a time when dictator Benito Mussolini forbade the use of foreign words. "After 1945 all the defences of the Italian language against foreign influence fell and in this, as in other areas, Italy passed from xenophobia to xenophilia," Quarantotta explained.

Like Franglais and Itangliano, "Singlais" has come to stay. Name boards of business establishments, shops, restaurants and grocery stores both in the city and even in remote rural areas contain an abundance of English words. Hardware, grocery, pharmacy, electrical goods, motor spare parts (including "body parts"), vegetarian, laundry, funeral directors, computers, typewriter, licence, fax, photocopy, telex, bakery, and bus stand are among the many English words which willy-nilly have crept into the written as well as the spoken word.

It is not that there are no Sinhala words for these English words, but it is more convenient to resort to the English word, which almost everybody, fluent in English or not, is familiar with. Interspersing Sinhala speech with English words and phrases seems a harmless trend, just as the Western skirt and trousers have become a more convenient mode of dress for Swabasha-speaking girls than the traditional cloth and jacket or sari.

Drama and language
Ruwanthi de Chickera in her play "The Mirror-Making Factory", which is an English play performed by an English-speaking theatre group for English-speaking theatre-goers, uses language "as it is spoke" in Sri Lanka nowadays -bilingually. It flows like waves, advancing and receding, from English to Sinhala and back from Sinhala to English.

In a song in the play sung in rap style, for instance, we hear these lines:
“Population exploitation
No sthanochitha pragnavation...
Parliamentary constipation
Karana karana dey justification
Maha Sishya Bala Mandalization
Rupee flotation/Bank liquidation
Apey nation/Hallucination.”
The second song, sung to a baila beat by Mr. Misfit and which brings the play to its climax, is even more bilingual:
“Misfit mama jil -fit, aith life eka full fit,
Full fit like plastic, aith kevoth gastric.
Gastric nam politics, ko public benefit,
Benefit eka ceramic, janathavata bullshit!”
de Chickera's play -incidentally and significantly- seeks to portray what is "normal" and "abnormal" in human beings and the futility of attempts to create normalcy among people.

Indu Dharmasena is another contemporary dramatist who uses to fine dramatic effect a blend of English and Sinhala in her "Tomiya" series such as "Madaeyi Tomiya Dubai Giyaa".

One of the several attractions in her satirical comedies is this informal and natural use of "Singlish". The audience makes no complaints on this score.

This is a language change that is happening and is going to happen, like changes in other areas of life and work. Accommodating these changes is all we can do.

It has become a fashion to litter Sinhala with English words and expressions and vice versa. Sinhala only and English also is better than Sinhala only!

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