ELTWeekly Vol. 3 Issue#102 | October 17 | ISSN 0975-3036

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1.0 Introduction

This paper deals with the key aspects of Bilingual History in Sri Lankan context. The history of bilingualism began in Sri Lanka with arrival of British and English was made as the official language in order to make the administration easy and those who were proficient in English got the privilege of enjoying the prestigious positions in the British regime. Consequently, people were coerced to acquire English in order to find good job and this pave the way to the people to adapt bilingualism in the country. Therefore, this paper captures the broad history of bilingualism and its implications in Sri Lanka.

1.1 English and Bilingualism in Sri Lanka

Before English was introduced to Sri Lanka as official language in 1976, Dutch and vernaculars, Sinhala and Tamil, were in use. The British regime displaced Dutch and vernaculars and declared English as the official language. It is very difficult to assess to what extent the Portuguese was used in Sri Lanka. As per  records available now, both Portuguese and Dutch had an entrenched idea of expanding their business and military to a larger extent and that was why their interest in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) was in terms of commercial and military aspects (Pieris,1914). To have a strong military hold in Sri Lanka, Portuguese advocated intermarriages with Sinhalese and Tamils, but they could experiment this idea only with the people who were deprived of basic rights. This implies that at least a section of the Ceylon society might have been bilinguals. In the case of Dutch rule, they could not retain their language in Sri Lanka, after they had been defeated by the British forces.  Dutch was almost extinct and the descendants of Dutch have converted themselves to Portuguese (Tennent, 1950). By the end of nineteenth century, the use of Portuguese and Dutch disappeared but Tamil, Sinhala and English borrowed many words from these two languages. (more…)