Prof. Dissanayake addressing the Toronto gathering on May 12
Language is a living organism that continuously evolves by shedding unnecessary growth, incorporating outside influences, social and technical changes, even fusing common errors into the mainstream.
The Sinhala language is no different, and judging by the rapid changes due to the needs of the advancing technology coupled with people’s changing habits, it will, after a generation or two, might very well acquire the use of the Roman alphabet as done in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia. That may be a price we pay for being integrated into a world fast shrinking due to rapid developments in modern technology.
These ideas were expressed by leading Sinhala scholar Professor J.B. Dissanayake, Emeritus Professor and former Sri Lankan ambassador to Thailand, at a speech in Toronto, while he was on a brief visit here last week.
Professor Dissanayake whose teaching career spans 40 years as a senior lecturer at the University of Colombo and the Head of the Department of Sinhala at University of Colombo is a well-known author of numerous books on linguistics, culture and history.
Speaking about past, present and future of Sinhala language, Professor Dissanayake said Sinhala language is facing its toughest test at the moment.
“When Sinhala was made the official language of Sri Lanka in 1956 there was a need to create and coin new words to teach science subjects in schools and also to introduce new local words in official correspondences,” he said adding that the Official Language Department was created to handle that aspect.
Sinhala has borrowed many words from languages like Portuguese, Dutch, English and Tamil, to name a few. How certain words have come into use is hilarious.
The expression ‘kehel mal’, which literally means banana flower in Sinhala is not really what it means. The word, roughly meaning nonsense in English, is actually a corrupt version of the Portuguese phrase ‘que al mal’ or ‘what’s wrong’.
Similarly, Sinhala word ‘polin’ (queue or line up) had come down from the English word Fall in Line, a phrase widely used by British jail guards in Ceylon prisons. Since Sinhala alphabet has no F, P has been substituted.
Dikkasada (divorce) is another word added from the Portuguese word diskasado. ‘Dik’ means prolong in Sinhala and it seems funny how a word like that could be added into describe a marriage briefly ending in separation!
“Sinhala does not have an F sound and the credit for adding that word goes to cigarette manufacturers. When they introduced a filter-tip cigarette brand called Four Aces in the 60s they also introduced F sound to Sinhala to make it easy to pronounce the word. Today, we find lot of Fs in words like fax, pharmacy, café, photocopy etc.” he said.
Prof. Dissanayake, who seems to follow a practical approach to the development of Sinhala rather than being theoretical, has published a Hodi Potha, a book designed to teach the alphabet to the kids, and he has composed a little poem to teach how to pronounce F. It goes like this: ‘Colombo Fife road eke pharmaciak etha. A asalama fan dapu café ekak atha. Faluda bonna, toffee kanna, fax machimak nethath photo copiyak gaththahaki.” (There is a pharmacy on Colombo Fife Road. There is also a café with fans. Drink faluda there, eat toffees, and even if there is no fax machine you can use the photocopier.)
Revealing details about Sinhala writing, the professor says the cursive scripts with some joined words was developed by ancient writers like Gurulugomi to get the maximum use of limited supply of dried palm leaves. There is no rule that we have to follow the same tradition at a time when we have lot of papers to spare.
Responding to a question how many letters the Sinhala alphabet consists, the audience gave various answers. “The old Sinhala alphabet had 52 letters but this was increased to 60 in 1980 to incorporate some sounds which we did not have. Today Unicode alphabet has 61 letters,” he said.
The professor suggests dropping certain letters that are no longer in use and adding words that may come into use in future. As an example the sound A to denote a variation used in words like Ernest or mercury which uses the letter R to identify that sound at the moment. “Adding an R is no solution and we must have a unique word to identify the derivation of that A sound,” he said.
Trying to show where Sinhala is heading, he said, today people, particularly in big cities like Colombo, use lot of English words and it is not difficult for a foreigner to understand what is spoken in ‘Sinhala’ in a place like the Colombo university faculty café.
A typical conversation there goes like this: ‘Vice chancellor science deanta phone karala kiwwa faculty meeting eka postpone karala report eka type karala submit karanna kiyala.” This conversation can be translated into English like this: Vice Chancellor telephoned the science dean to postpone the faculty meeting and submit a typed report.
A particular aspect of Sinhala is the existence of two versions. People use one version to speak and write in a different form adhering to a correct set of grammatical rules. Prof. Dissanayake says that this practice can soon disappear, judging by certain developments seen in the field of art. Today, spoken Sinhala is increasingly being used by fiction writers to inject a semblance of realism into their works and it is only a matter of time before colloquial Sinhala finds its way to written version which the purists are desperately trying to protect.
Another endangered aspect of Sinhala is the use of two different sets of L and N (nana lala bhedaya) which create disastrous results if these particular letters are not used according to correct grammar rules. The die-hard pundits fight tooth and nail to protect the existence of two sets of N and L. The incorrect use of N in thana (grass) can mean breast if the wrong letter is used. The sentence ‘The bull is eating grass’ can give a totally different obscene meaning if the N is used wrongly. Professor Dissanayake is in favour of doing away with this practice to drop two more unnecessary letters from the alphabet as it can ease the pressure on the keyboard. It is not difficult to identify the differences between the two sets of N and L from the context of the sentence.
Naming a child according to lucky letters depending on one’s birth chart is a common practice in Sri Lanka but this traditional practice has brought some outlandish names into use in modern Sri Lanka. This is because the parents have adopted the practice of giving their kids unique names which no one else uses. (Best examples can be seen in the names the Hollywood stars give their kids these days!)
Giving some hilarious examples, Professor Dissanayake said he had been stumped by parents who ask him the meaning of some names.
“Sinhala names a generation ago had beautiful meanings but now it is hard to find names with sense. Someone named his daughter as Thamoda and I was helpless when her father asked me to find the meaning of that name. The name means darkness in Sanskrit, a root language of Sinhala, and the correct Sinhala translation is Dawn of Darkness. Another name he had come across is Dabeendra, and in his own words, ‘the name can only mean king of dubbing’ (as in movie or TV industry.)
The most embarrassing name he had heard is Ayoni. He suspects that the parents may have picked the name from some foreign culture but when it is translated into Sinhala the meaning is funny. Yoni in Sanskrit means female organ and when A is used as a prefix it can mean ‘without’.
“As a friendly reminder I have asked people not to ask the meaning of their children’s names to avoid embarrassing situations,” he said. It is natural that people approach him to find the meanings of names as he is a reputed Sinhala scholar.
Responding to a question from the audience whether there will be a universal language in the world, he said that can be a possibility after a generation or two. He said there can be an auxiliary language like Esperanto to facilitate modern modes of communication and added that a revolutionary technology which is being tested successfully will be able to translate any language in the world with the help of modern software. Such ground-breaking technological innovations can obviously transform the future of linguistics.
Professor Dissanayake’s speech was the inaugural lecture of the Kathika Kavaya (Discussion Forum) founded to promote healthy dialogues among Sri Lankans in Canada relating to their social and cultural issues.
Writer and researcher Dr. Swarna Chandrasekera, a student of Professor Dissanayake at Peradeniya University living in Toronto, introduced the Sinhala scholar to the audience. – Somasiri Munasinghe
