‘From Dethroning English to Planning for a Trilingual Society’

Language and Social Process in Sri Lanka 1956 - 2011 :

Keynote Address by Sunimal Fernando at the 9th International Language and Development Conference on ‘Language and Social Cohesion’ on October 18, 2011 in Colombo

President Mahinda Rajapaksa senses the people’s perceptions on language

Sunimal Fernando

President Rajapaksa’s policy in relation to Sinhala and Tamil evolved while the last phase of the war against terrorism was being fought in the first decade of this century. He had politically sensed a deep desire on the part of both the Sinhala and Tamil speaking people to learn each other’s language, communicate effectively across the lines of ethnicity, language and location, know each other, understand each other and integrate with one another.

This is not surprising in a country where the different communities though distinct in terms of language, religion and ethnicity share much in the way of lifestyle, values, customs and rituals. Sensing the mind of the people of all communities, President Rajapaksa while declaring 2009 the Year of English and IT courageously declared that his vision for Sri Lanka was that of a trilingual society in which the Sinhala and Tamil speaking people will relate to one another in each other’s language while English will be a life skill for occupation, employment and to access knowledge from the outside world.

Moving away from English as the link language to a linking to each other through each other’s language

By implication we see the country moving away from the older perception of English as a language that links the Sinhala and Tamil speaking people of the country: English as a link language. As it is estimated that even today in 2011 only about 10 percent of our people are able to work in English, we should not be surprised to find the country losing confidence in the ability of English to function as a link language between our two linguistic communities. President Rajapaksa is therefore moving the country towards an arrangement in which the two linguistic communities link to each other bilingually, by learning each other’s language.

People’s urge for integration through language

The Socio-Linguistic Survey of Sri Lanka which was conducted by an independent research organization for the Presidential Secretariat in August 2010 proved the correctness of the President’s perception. According to this survey conducted across the country, between 80 percent and 96 percent of Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim people living in both majority Sinhala and majority Tamil speaking areas expressed a strong desire both for themselves and their children to be conversant in both national languages. The reasons given by them were not of a material or utilitarian order but of an integrative nature - to be able to communicate, understand, appreciate and integrate with each other. The vast majority of respondents from a diversity of age and occupational groups even went to the extent of expressing a desire to live in mixed communities and send their children to bilingual rather than monolingual schools.

Why learn the other’s Language? - The people provide the answer

The results of the Socio-Linguistic Survey of 2010 speak for themselves. They confirm the perception that in most South Asian cultures the desire to learn languages is not provoked by factors that are purely utilitarian in nature. According to the results of the Socio-Linguistic Survey, the reasons are integrative in nature - propelled by a desire to explore and integrate with another culture that one wants to know and understand. While this is the ground reality in Sri Lanka, it is sad to find urban intellectuals applying Western intellectual categories to what is essentially a Sri Lankan situation and asking a culturally alien question, namely - what material benefit is there for a Sri Lankan to waste his or her time learning the second national language.

Sinhala and Tamil - markers of identity and vehicles of interaction

The Socio-Linguistic Survey of August 2010 also makes it abundantly clear that the Sinhala and Tamil speaking people of the country in their vast majority clearly desire the development of the national languages, Sinhala and Tamil, as the languages of discourse, discussion and communication in the country. It is not their wish that English should grow at the cost of Sinhala and Tamil or that English should be developed in a manner in which it becomes the instrument of an English speaking elite that alienates itself progressively from the mainstream of Sinhala and Tamil life to identify itself - as in the past - with the cultural, economic and political interests of foreign countries.

Collective development of languages: The vision of President Rajapaksa

Learning English can be fun

The vision of President Rajapaksa for a trilingual Sri Lanka and the perceptions of the people on the manner in which Sinhala, Tamil and English should relate to each other in a trilingual setting, form the building blocks on which the Ten Year National plan for a Trilingual Sri Lanka (2012 - 2021) has been constructed. It is proposed in the Plan that the Ten Year Trilingual Project should be placed directly under the President: And that it should be steered at a national level through two new overarching institutions, the Language Agency of Sri Lanka (LASL) and the National Agency for Language Research and Training (NALRT) that should function under the Presidential Secretariat and be implemented through the relevant institutions that come under the line ministries.

English to be delivered only in a Trilingual setting

However Sri Lanka still has its share of elitist language planners, confined almost exclusively to Colombo society. While being insensitive to the aspirations of the people, they continue to lobby for a revival of English as a differentiator for the elites. It is therefore necessary to state with clarity that it is our view that in the socio-political context of our country English skills can never grow and be disseminated successfully as a stand-alone activity. English can develop only in association with a parallel development, enrichment and dissemination of Sinhala and Tamil language skills. Sinhala and Tamil cannot in any way be the victim of an English language drive as that will be socio-politically unsustainable and disruptive. Sinhala and Tamil should be - as our mother tongue languages - and will most certainly continue to be the languages of discourse, discussion, debate and intellectual interaction in the country.

Liberating knowledge from the clutches of language

Thus if we are to move towards a knowledge society as required by government policy, knowledge has to be liberated from the clutches of language. In a country where only around 10 percent of the people can work in English and resource constraints and other factors will not permit too swift a drive towards islandwide English proficiency, we cannot allow knowledge that is imprisoned within the English language to remain inaccessible to 90 percent of the people even in the short run.

Making knowledge available in Sinhala and Tamil - a state responsibility

Therefore as listed in the Ten Year National Plan for a Trilingual Sri Lanka, sharply focused Sinhala and Tamil language development programmes and large scale translation programmes will enable knowledge in all modern subjects of science and technology, medicine, economics, management, law and governance systems and a host of other subjects to be available in Sinhala and Tamil in addition to English.

Sinhala and Tamil would be the languages in which the vast majority will continue to function for very many decades to come. Therefore it is the responsibility of the State to make knowledge available to them in the language used by them. If they feel their interests are threatened by a politically insensitive and forceful drive for English dissemination thereby neglecting the development of Sinhala and Tamil as has happened on past occasions, they will very rightly act politically and make the English drive a failure, even to the detriment of some of their own interests.

English can only grow on the lap of Sinhala and Tamil

Socio-politically therefore, English can never grow and prosper on its own in Sri Lanka. It can do so only on the lap of Sinhala and Tamil in a strictly trilingual setting. If English is to be socio-politically sustainable, it must in actual fact be packaged together with Sinhala and Tamil. In other words Sinhala and Tamil have to be developed, enriched and delivered as the country’s primary languages of discourse and interaction. This is a fundamental of the Ten Year National Plan. English on the other hand should be advocated at a different level. English must be promoted as a culturally neutral life skill for occupation, employment and for accessing knowledge from the outside world.

The packaging of English in cohort with Sinhala and Tamil: a design component of the new plan

Such a packaging of English in cohort with or as an associate language to Sinhala and Tamil is in a sense what is being designed in the Ten Year National Plan for a Trilingual Sri Lanka which the President is expected to launch later this year. The Trilingual Initiative has been thus drafted with sensitivity to the socio-political dimensions of language use, practice and identity in Sri Lanka. Sociologically speaking the dissemination of English, in the context of the Ten Year National Plan for a Trilingual Sri Lanka is packaged in conjunction with a parallel development and enrichment of Sinhala and Tamil as the country’s undisputed languages of discourse and interaction. Only an approach such as this will give English a stable and lasting though not dominant place in the language landscape of our country.