Standard of English

Dr Chandra Weeraratne

This is with reference to the speech made by Prof Dayananda Somasundera at his felicitation ceremony, reported in your issue of October 25. His handwritten speech, straight from the shoulder as it were. Coming from a village boy, who made it good in life, needs high praise. Not all educated people speak out in that fashion.

It is significant that Dr C W W Kannangara, did not at any stage try to change the medium of instruction, having had first hand knowledge himself. The Professor points out that it was the political agenda at the time that denied the students the benefit of learning English. By that time the standard of English in our society was very high, though only about 10 percent were conversant with it. The teachers of English at the time were not graduates, but the little they knew, they knew well. With that short sighted policy.

We threw the baby with the bath water. Before that langauge policy, a boy from Jaffna conversed with a boy from Dondra, through the medium of English. Today, after 50 yrs, we have come to realise the value of English and are trying all manner of things to revive it. It is significant that India, with all its diversity of languages, and having made Hindi the official language did not discard English.

It may be of interest to note that in Jaffna schools they did not entirely do away with English.

How else can one explain the fact that during the war years, so many thousands emigrated to English speaking countries like New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the USA.