From the British Isles to Ceylon, or English in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Although Sri Lanka was a site of colonization of the Portuguese, Dutch and (under the treaty of Amiens in 1802) British, it was the English language that had the strongest influence on the indigenous population of the island as the earlier colonizers were less interested in disseminating their culture. Taking into consideration the fact that English was established in Sri Lanka by missionaries and British officers, it can be assumed that the language brought to the island of Ceylon was the Standard English of the turn of the 19th century. Exploiting data from International Corpus of English – Sri Lanka and articles on Sri Lankan English, the present study contains a comparison of contemporary Sri Lankan English and the English of the period when the language was brought to the Island (early 19th century). Thus, an effort is made to show the conservative features of the language of the first British settlers, which survive in English spoken in contemporary Sri Lanka.