Ade Meyler, summa debate, zero-dishung, theriya?

by Rajpal Abeynayake

(June 20, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) I’m amused by the claim being made these days that there is an ongoing “debate’’ on the use and abuse of Sri Lankan English. It’s funnier that the suddhas insist on telling us this. Micheal Meyler has been screaming from the top of his roof for all to hear. Now Gillian Westaway the British Council Sri Lanka director tells us at a launch event that there is such a debate.

Outside, somebody mentions in passing “machang, that lady —— absolutely thundering size no?’’

End of debate.

Whether we like it or not, there will be several Enlgishes spoken — and written — in separate strata of society. The entire “debate’’ is utterly trumped up. Michael Meyler thinks he initiated something of tsunami proportions.

Shiromi Goonsekera wrote the definitive book on the subject some ten years back.
At the end of the day, Sri Lankan English cannot be incorporated into the system or rejected by it based upon some policy decision made in an air-conditioned room or ivory tower.

The policy on this has already been decided by the people, through what’s called popular usage.

But that does not mean that there is no premium on grammatical English — presupposing that Sri Lankan English generally isn’t big’ (defined as ‘enamored of’, in my slang dictionary) on grammar.

Those who eschew grammatical English will fall behind in the race of — and for — ideas. They simply would not be able to assimilate the gamut of productive thought generated globally, and conveyed via the vehicle of the English language, quite apart from being able to manipulate these ideas towards achieving the greater good.

By way of remotely appropriate analogy, this mimics the perennial contestation between the banality of Evil and the triumph of the Good, needlessly profound though that may sound.

This is not to suggest by any stretch that Sri Lankan English is evil, even though those who may not be able to comprehend any sort of English could erroneously arrive at that conclusion.(!)

English standards

This is to say that as moral standards are relative, English standards are relative too, but there is always a mean benchmark that trumps over the comprehensively corrupted and the banal, with regard to English standards as well.

Therefore, though there is a general dumbing-down of English standards in the local universities for instance, it is clear that those who write good English outside the university system become the flag bearers of English that’s lucid, unaffected, and utterly useful in utility. Translation: Outside the University system, there are some who still continue to use English that’s correct while being comprehensible.

Quite sadly, this is not the English that I see coming out of the University system. It is sad that the English first class in Peradeniya has become an absolute unadulterated joke, due to the quality of written English displayed by some of the recipients.

Suffice to say that I was shocked to learn that those who have not mastered the elementary rules of syntax and are unable to construct two sentences without using a malapropism, have been awarded English first classes in the University of Peradeniya in recent times.

What do you say Dr. Walter Fernando, my friend? Oh well, with the system of rotating Heads in that department, I guess you are not to shoulder the blame, at least not entirely?

The problem with malaprop-rich, grammatically substandard English is not whether it’s Sri Lankan or pidgin, but that it makes it all the more difficult for the reader to understand the rudiments of what the writer is trying to convey in the patois that’s being used.

To me, that’s why this entire ivory-tower air-conditioned room policy kafuffle around the issue of Sri Lankan English is largely irrelevant.

There will always be several Englishes, but when it comes to issues of communicating reasonably complicated ideas, there is only one English, and that is to be utterly realistic about it.

My friend, the much misunderstood Kelaniya University English lecturer the late Ranjith Goonewardene used to say that this world has too many parrots and PhDs.
It is possible one can purloin a first class degree from the university of Peradeniya, and advance towards a PhD, but not all the parroting resorted to during this journey would alter the fact that those who use substandard English will fall back by miles in the global realm of ideas.

Even so, those such as Neluka Silva (University of Colombo) may insist on testing our English! Her grammar is right, but then her ideas - most importantly those she parleys in her tsunami “novels’’ - - do not require grappling with any kind of complex thought processes. Writing an editorial for this newspaper, for instance, will put her to the real test. Will she be up to it?

But that was an important digression. Society has artificially created benchmarks, and what are loosely referred to as standards.

This is largely a matter of functionality.

But the needs of utility and the demands of popular discourse would always transcend these markers.

Felicity with prose

This means that even if a Sri Lankan English writer may one day win the Mann-Booker prize, his/her writing should necessarily be free of malapropisms, or unintelligible syntax, for instance.

This felicity with prose will come to a person who has mastered the basic rules of the language, and will not come to someone who has not, irrespective of which university, Peradeniya or any other, he/she got his/her first class from.

So Gillian Westaway and Michael Meyler can rest assured that the tsunami they whipped up about Sri Lankan English, is in fact a little eddy they created in a still tinier rivulet formed by the gutter run-off of the British Council rooftops they scream from.
Sri Lankan English is already mainstream English, and there is no debate on that, period.

But intelligible English, and therefore by and large grammatically correct, appropriately worded English, whether Sri Lankan or not, is the only valid English tenable in the global currency of ideas.

Period.