Abstract:
In linguistically heterogeneous societies, language planning constitutes core
institutional practice for maintaining social cohesion as well as unique cultural
identities. This study intends to examine the Colonial Period Language Planning
in Sri Lanka. The data were collected through official documents, books, journals
and thesis such as Colbrooke Cameron Papers, Language Planning by Robert. B.
Kaplan etc. The first Europeans to visit Sri Lanka in modem times were the
Portuguese who arrived in 1505 and the Dutch who captured Ceylon in 1656.
Then the British presence in Sri Lanka began in 1796. The arrival of Europeans
was a novel influence on our languages. During those periods Portuguese, Dutch
and English were introduced as their official languages and Greek, Latin and
Hebrew were included as the languages under the education planning. The
colonisation brought European style of education to Sri Lanka, especially to
prepare students for positions in the colonial administrations. All official
domains were conducted in their official languages. Accordingly, those language
policies were introduced to our educational system and to Sinhalese and Tamil
languages. As a result, only few people could obtain a proper education and most
of the people remained uneducated. Therefore, those language policies caused
several social issues. Moreover, Mr. J. R. Jayawardhana introduced a new
language planning proposal to change the colonial language planning in 1944.
However, that proposal could not be implemented properly. This was a reason
for the ethnic problem in Sri Lanka that took place after the independence.
