Coloniality Encounters: Sinhala as it should be spoken

Continuing anecdotes of my lived experience of how coloniality played out in my own life

My primary and secondary schooling was at Ladies’ College, a fee-levying private, girls’ school, founded by the Church Missionary Society in 1900.  It had been my mother’s alma mater as well.  In her time, the school was largely run by missionaries, instruction was in English and my mother followed Latin as her second language, not Sinhala.  I saw two missionary Principals in my time - Miss Simon and Miss Hitchcock, but educational reforms in the country meant that all of us with Sinhalese and Tamil parents had to follow classes in SInhala or Tamil  There was a small English medium for girls who were neither SInhalese nor Tamil or who had mixed parentage.  Even though the classroom work was in the local languages, the rest of our school life was conducted in English. I learned Sinhala as a subject and even though I had this very anglophilic background, and a home and social life where I also spoke almost exclusively in English, I did well enough to get good grades, have my essays published in the school magazine and even win a couple of prizes! The latter was a great source of amusement to Sara, my University batchmate from Akmeemana!! Pulling out the only  two SInhala language books in a bookcase of English titles in my room on her first visit to my home in Colombo, and seeing that they were Prize Books for SInhala,  she remarked that she now understood the standard of SInhala at Ladies’ College!!!!

When I entered the Peradeniya University as an undergraduate the situation became totally reversed.  Alongside a handful of others, I had opted to study in the English medium, so lectures were in English, but outside the lecture halls I was totally immersed in the Sinhala language. The transition was not difficult, but there were some interesting moments.  For instance, I really did not understand Sinhala slang, and used to walk to and from the halls of residence  oblivious to the profanity that was being hurled at me from the men’s halls.[This was a key feature of Campus life, and we hardly considered it misogynist or disrespectful, though I guess we should have]  Sara could not bear it, and asked me why I was not reacting.  I had to admit that I did not understand what they were saying. Horrified she proceeded to give me a  Sinhala Profanity 101 lecture. I now know what the profane invectives mean - but not having ever internalised them they still do not make me as uncomfortable or angry as they should.

As all undergraduates are wont to do, Sara and I used to have long discussions on politics, relationships and the moral issues of the day - I cannot exactly remember exactly what we talked about, but I do remember that I couldn’t keep up (usually very late in the night) when the conversation became highly philosophical and conceptual.  At that point I would invariably switch to sharing my thoughts and arguments in English, while Sara continued in Sinhala.  This spontaneous bilingual exchange actually served us well and we solved many of the world’s problems, as many other undergraduates have done before us and since. 

But the ultimate challenge to the legacy of coloniality in my life came when Sunil, a truly bilingual fellow English medium student, decided that we, the English medium students, should participate in the University's Sinhala Drama Competition.  Sunil had translated J M Synge’s Riders to the Sea into Sinhala and set it in Negombo where he, Sunil, had worked, and which was a similar context to the Irish, Catholic fishing community of the original.  Called වාරකන්ග්  වැල්ල  (Varakang Vella), it was an excellent translation of a very emotive and brilliant play and I felt very privileged when Sunil invited me  to play the part of the main protagonist, Maurya.  Our first reading of the script was at the student centre.  I remember with great mortification the hilarity with which my batchmates greeted my first attempt. "Aiyoo ප්‍රියන්ති !! ඔහොම කතාකලොත් අපි විනාසයි“ (Aiyo Priyanthi!! We are lost if you talk Sinhala like that) was their honest and amused observation.  So with great patience they taught me how to speak my mother tongue with the correct intonations of a native speaker…. 

[the play incidentally was well received at the competition though disappointingly it didn’t win any prizes]