Sri Lanka shares an element of its linguistic heritage with the countries that colonised it from the 16th century onwards.
The Embassy of Netherlands in Colombo highlighted this shared cultural heritage in celebrating the friendship between the two countries at ‘Borrowed Words: spoken then & now”, part of a design collaboration with the Academy of Design.
Some words in the Sinhala language that we use in common parlance today derive their origin from Dutch words. Some are still in use today- for example ‘kokiya’ (cook) was originally kokin, ‘Kasiya’ (coin) was kwartje, and ‘baas’ (mason) was, well, baas.
Some words, like ‘Wortal’ for carrot and ‘kraan’ for tap have disappeared from usage, replaced by their English counterpart.
The exhibition, which was open at the Dutch Burgher Union last weekend, featured the work of graphic design students from the Academy of Design.
A Thai woman walking topless in Arugam Bay town has been arrested by the Police.
The UK government has unveiled a package of reforms to simplify imports from developing countries which allows for more garments manufactured in Sri Lanka to enter the UK tariff-free.
The Cabinet has approved a proposal for Sri Lankans overseas to apply for their passports through an online system via the Lankan diplomatic missions.
Villagers in Nirmalapura, Daluwa, Norochcholai today staged a protest over an incident where a group of Navy officials and sailors had assaulted a resident in the area over night, Police said.
A passenger attempting to smuggle the largest quantity of gold of 35 kilo grams was arrested by the Customs at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) today, a senior official said.
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