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I liked reading Adhila’s comparative writing about SriLankan English vs Indian English or we might as well call it Singlish vs Indlish but which appears to be only coming within your own limited experience.
Although you should not have attempted to make a point by stating, you suddenly realised only upon landing in India that we have been speaking wrong English all these days. It also depends on which part of India you landed at and which parts of or society in Sri Lanka you lived in. Because it is all about the external influence. As you know we had been greatly influenced by the British before Indipendance and there after by the South Indians who were imported as plantation labor and the other Indians who came in as traders and eventualy stayed for good. I would say there are some of us who would think freely and refuse to get carried away by the influences and stubbonly stick to the Queens language and there are most of us who blindly follow the trend. I believe that most of us are caught by the trend men.
Not sure if you have visited other parts of the world but visiting India alone is not enough to look back and take stock of the way we speak because ‘Indlish’ is not the bench mark to proper English.
There are lots of Srilankans who still speak almost perfect English.
Whilst you think that some terms used in Srilanka have evolved within, they are dirrect adoptions from the Indians.
For instance ‘Rasthiyadu’ which has the same meaning you mention is a dirrect adoption from Tamils. ‘Machchan’ is the dirrect meaning for brother in law in Tamil and nothing else, which is now vastly used amongst singhalese youth to mean ‘pal’
‘Aiyo’ is not Sri Lankan but adopted from ‘South Indians even though we have our own ‘aney’
But in Sri Lanka we would call the ‘trishaw’ or the ‘three wheeler’ so (or will it evolve in to ‘trikshaw’ in the future) only because it has three wheels and I am dam sure the Indians will call even a ‘tricycle’ a ‘bicycle’ even when it has three wheels. Having a ‘bath’ has to definitely involve a ‘bathtub’ or simmilar body of water or otherwise it is a shower. It is only the Indians that look for a ‘plastic glass’ to drink water from a dispenser. Jiraux copy has become a standard term for ‘photo copy’ in ‘Indlish’ whilst we still refer to them rightly as ‘photo copying’
I can go on and on because I have been living and working amongst Indians for decades and one of my main concerns was to get my children as far away from their influence as possible (with all due respect to them) only where English Language is concerned.
Also just remembered that ‘boys’ were also used to refer to our cricketers, dont you think.
The main topic you should have touched when you discuss Sri Lankan English is the ‘burgher English’ which is more hillarios in extreme cases. Have you not come accross the term ‘kicked the bucket’ to add pleasent humour to mean some old aged friend’s passing away. “Hitting in the stomach’ meant plotting to take somebody else’s job of work by depriving one of it. ‘Cad’ mening vulger. I recomend you read ‘The Jam fruit tree’ by Carl Muller’ which would give you proper insight to the Burgher Inglish in Sri Lanka.
By the way, I am still trying to find out where the term ‘TIFFIN’ meaning container of food or lunch that you would carry to work, come from. Is it from East Asia.