Eyebrows were raised when I included the word deffa on the mirisgala website under “new entries”. And it’s true that it is stretching the point to claim that it qualifies as standard Sri Lankan English. But perhaps it also gives us an insight into the future of SLE.

Deffa (or defa) is a word that is increasingly common in internet chatrooms etc. It is an abbreviation of the English word definitely, which is used in colloquial Sinhala as an alternative to the slightly formal anivareng. From Sinhala (via Singlish?) it has re-entered colloquial Sri Lankan English with the same meaning. Here are a few examples from the internet:

He will defa help you out.
dudes…we can all defa chip in a bit and …

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The terms cousin brother and cousin sister are not used in standard British English. Nowadays they are used in Sri Lanka to refer to any male cousin or female cousin respectively, but the origin of the term lies in the traditional distinction between cross cousins and parallel cousins.

There are many different terms in both Sinhala and Tamil for aunts and uncles and cousins, and because English does not have equivalent terms, the Sinhala/Tamil words tend to be used in Sri Lankan English as well. This is my understanding of the system, though of course there are regional variations, and different families might have their own terms for particular family members.

1. Your mother’s elder sister is your loku amma (Sinhala)/ periyamma …

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In the article “The bowl-or-ball dilemma of rubbishing English standards” (Sunday Observer, 6/6/2010), Dilshan Boange adds his voice to the growing clamour of protest at the idea of speaking English “our way”. He recounts the anecdote of a friend who called an Indian hotel and “had to face a lingual jumble of a marginally intelligible dialogue from the hotel staffer”, concluding that the problem was that the Indian was talking English “their way”. If only everyone learnt to speak English properly, such situations would never arise.

He goes on to discuss the pronunciation of the various ‘o’ sounds in English, and asks: “What happens when you ask for a ‘ball’ and are given a ‘bowl’?” It is difficult …

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An adhi poya is an extra poya day inserted into the Buddhist lunar calendar to ensure that it stays in sync with the western (solar) calendar. In December 2009 there were two poya days, Unduvap on the 1st and Duruthu on the 31st (much to the dismay of New Year’s Eve revellers, who weren’t officially allowed to drink alcohol until the strike of midnight!). This meant that Duruthu poya fell in December instead of January, Navam in January instead of February, and so on until Adhi Vesak on April 28th. The extra poya day means that Vesak itself will be celebrated (as always) in May.

The following explanation appeared in The Island on April 28th (Adhi Vesak day) under the heading …

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