Public lecture on preservation of lesser-known languages

The Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka has organised a Public Lecture on Preservation of the Lesser-known Languages of Sri Lanka.

Dr Romola Rassool, Director, Postgraduate Institute of English at the Open University of Sri Lanka will deliver the lecture on Monday, 28st August 2023, at 5.00 p.m. at the Council Room of Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka 96, Ananda Coomaraswamy Mawatha, Colombo 7.

The lecture which is held in English medium would be held via Zoom, YouTube as well as web page of the society.

Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83934628724?pwd=TVRPQjZ1bjNtbmZnaDdzek5TV0F4UT09

(Meeting ID: 839 3462 8724                   Passcode: 329661)

YouTube: https://youtube.com/live/bLvRn1vajxs?feature=share

Visit Web Page: https://www.royalasiaticsociety.lk/monthly-lectures/

The Society in a background note said: There has been an alarming increase in the number of languages facing endangerment in the recent past. This has been followed by a response from community members and academics that these languages should be preserved, which has resulted in the publication of many academic and popular calls for language documentation, description, and preservation. A common feature in these works has been the utilization of rhetoric such as ‘language death’, ‘language endangerment’ and ‘language decline’. Another common feature of the endangerment discourse is the use of statistical data and figures, such as Krauss’ estimate that only 10 per cent of the approximately 6,000 languages will survive into the 21st century and Crystal’s estimation that an average of one language may vanish every two weeks over the next 100 years.

In Sri Lanka, discussions surrounding ethnicity and language have been dominated by the situation of the Sinhalese, Tamil, and Moor (Sri Lankan Muslim) communities, perhaps because together they have constituted above 95 percent of the total population in all censuses since 1871. By 2012, 99.5% of the total population belonged to these four groups. All other communities are considered numerically small and therefore inconsequential, and through the years, several ethnic groups have been assigned to the category labelled as “Others”. Within this categorization are found the users of the following languages: the ‘Ādivāsi’ language (the language of the ‘Vanniyela-Eththo’, ‘Veddas’), Sri Lanka Portuguese (SLP), Sri Lanka Sign Language (SLSL), Sri Lanka Malay (SLM), Memoni, Dawat-ni-Zaban, Telugu, Sindhi, and the Rodi language, among others. It is vital that these under-researched languages are preserved as they are all threatened to varying degrees.

This discussion will present an overview of the lesser-known languages of Sri Lanka and argue for the need to preserve the languages and, through that, the cultures of these communities whose presence enriches Sri Lanka’s linguistic and ethnic tapestry.