I warmly congratulate our President on his recent initiative to promote English and Information Technology (IT).
Anyone with any compassion for the underprivileged will eagerly support this excellent initiative, because those who will most benefit from it are the underprivileged.
We cannot expect the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Jathika Hela Urumuya (JHU) to be overly delighted with this initiative, because these two political parties have been traditionally against the promotion of English. It is this kind of narrow-minded, frog-in-the-well outlook and attitude that has held this country back for decades.
The vast majority of Sri Lankans now realise the seriousness of a situation that has its origin in ill-conceived language policies of the past. We see clearly now how badly we missed the bus when we swept away the tremendous advantage we had of a high standard of English at the time we gained Independence.
The standard of English in this country then was the envy of India and Singapore, and possibly the entire East. Foolish chauvinistic ideas on the part of our politicians resulted in the rapid dismantling of the sturdy English infrastructure we had.
While we kept on harping on the “kaduwa” (English), India and Singapore were working on their English through school education. Although the majority of Singaporeans were Chinese-speaking, Singapore never made Chinese the official language. English remained the working language of the administration.
In India, although Hindi became the official language after the country gained independence, the teaching of English in schools was never neglected. As a consequence, India maintained a high standard of English throughout, and was identified as a suitable “call centre” for American businesses. Meanwhile, India’s IT infrastructure developed rapidly.
We in Sri Lanka would also be enjoying this advantage if it were not for the short-sighted language policies of politicians whose ambitions to win at elections overwhelmed their good sense and statesmanship.
It would not be wrong to attribute a good part of our so-called ethnic problems to the insistence that Sinhala be the pre-eminent official language, to the detriment of the Tamil language.
President Rajapaksa emphasises that if we are to regain respect from the international community and develop our economy in the 21st century, we must regain our mastery of English.
Speaking of English usage in Sri Lanka, English pronunciation, it must be admitted, is one of our significant weaknesses, and this weakness gives rise to fear of the “kaduwa”.
An excellent – and easy – way to learn correct English pronunciation is to listen to the BBC. I was delighted when an enlightened public servant or politician started to relay BBC news broadcasts on FM (95.6 in Colombo). In Singapore, BBC programmes are available throughout the day. This BBC service has been available for some time now in Colombo. Quite apart from the pleasure of listening to well-spoken English, we have an excellent source of comparatively unbiased world news and intellectually stimulating programmes of high quality.
It was therefore with great alarm that I discovered that some retarded bureaucrat at the SLBC (possibly influenced by JVP dogma) has recently cut back on the BBC broadcasts. I urge the President to look into this matter and do all he can to help expose our citizens to well-spoken English.
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