40-728: Official Language Act or Official Languages Act may refer to: one of several acts passed in Sri Lanka, including the Official Language Act No. 33 of 1956 (Ceylon) , commonly known as the Sinhala Only Act, which replaced English with Sinhala as the official language of the country, the Tamil Language (Special Provisions) Act No. 28 of 1958 (Ceylon) , which allows Tamil in education, public service entrance exams and administration in
80-443: A second language is any language that one speaks other than one's first language. A related concept is bilingualism . One definition is that a person is bilingual if they are equally proficient in two languages. Someone who grows up speaking Spanish and then learns English for four years is bilingual only if they speak the two languages with equal fluency. Pearl and Lambert were the first to test only "balanced" bilinguals—that is,
120-419: A "native speaker" of a language by being born and immersed in the language during youth, in a family in which the adults shared a similar language experience to the child. Native speakers are considered to be an authority on their given language because of their natural acquisition process regarding the language, as opposed to having learned the language later in life. That is achieved by personal interaction with
160-586: A "subordinate legislation" with the adoption of the Republican Constitution in 1972 under Mrs Bandaranaike which consolidated the 'Sinhala-only' policy, thus affirming the subordinate status of the Tamil language: "the Tamils felt indignant that it was specifically stated in the constitution that the provisions relating to the Tamil language could be amended by ordinary legislation whereas the provisions relating to
200-403: A child who is completely fluent in two languages and feels that neither is their "native" language because they grasp both so perfectly. This study found that One can have two or more native languages, thus being a native bilingual or indeed multilingual . The order in which these languages are learned is not necessarily the order of proficiency. For instance, if a French-speaking couple have
240-548: A child who learned French first but then grew up in an English-speaking country, the child would likely be most proficient in English. Defining what constitutes a native speaker is difficult, and there is no test which can identify one. It is not known whether native speakers are a defined group of people, or if the concept should be thought of as a perfect prototype to which actual speakers may or may not conform. An article titled "The Native Speaker: An Achievable Model?" published by
280-545: A medium of examination for admission into public service (with the proviso requiring Sinhala fluency within certain time period), for official correspondence and administrative purposes in the Northern and Eastern provinces. However, following the assassination of Bandaranaike the next year by a Buddhist monk over alleged racial betrayal, the regulations needed to implement the bill would not be submitted for parliamentary approval for another eight years. Starting from January 1961,
320-558: A symbol of minority oppression and a justification for them to demand a separate nation-state, Tamil Eelam , which was a factor in the emergence of the decades-long Sri Lankan Civil War . During the British colonial era , English was the official language in Ceylon (known as Sri Lanka since 1972). Until the passage of the Free Education Bill in 1944, education in the English language
360-538: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Official Language Act of 1956 (Sri Lanka) The Official Language Act (No. 33 of 1956) , commonly referred to as the Sinhala Only Act , was an act passed in the Parliament of Ceylon in 1956. The act replaced English with Sinhala as the sole official language of Ceylon , with the exclusion of Tamil from
400-460: Is quite possible that the first language learned is no longer a speaker's dominant language. That includes young immigrant children whose families have moved to a new linguistic environment as well as people who learned their mother tongue as a young child at home (rather than the language of the majority of the community), who may have lost, in part or in totality, the language they first acquired (see language attrition ). According to Ivan Illich ,
440-462: Is the lingua franca for most post-independence Singaporeans because of its use as the language of instruction in government schools and as a working language. In the context of population censuses conducted on the Canadian population, Statistics Canada defines the mother tongue as "the first language learned at home in childhood and still understood by the individual at the time of the census." It
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#1732837111742480-480: Is the first language a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period . In some countries, the term native language or mother tongue refers to the language of one's ethnic group rather than the individual's actual first language. Generally, to state a language as a mother tongue, one must have full native fluency in that language. The first language of a child is part of that child's personal, social and cultural identity. Another impact of
520-528: Is used to indicate the language of one's ethnic group in both common and journalistic parlance ("I have no apologies for not learning my mother tongue"), rather than one's first language. Also, in Singapore , "mother tongue" refers to the language of one's ethnic group regardless of actual proficiency, and the "first language" refers to English, which was established on the island under the British Empire , and
560-643: The "cradle tongue". The latter is the language one learns during early childhood, and one's true "native tongue" may be different, possibly determined by an inherited linguistic taste and may later in life be discovered by a strong emotional affinity to a specific dialect (Tolkien personally confessed to such an affinity to the Middle English of the West Midlands in particular). Children brought up speaking more than one language can have more than one native language, and be bilingual or multilingual . By contrast,
600-684: The English and Chinese languages to equal status as official languages of the territory; the Official Languages Act (India) passed in 1963; see Official Languages Act the Official Languages Act (Ireland) passed to promote the provision of state services in Irish; the Official Languages Act (New Brunswick) ; the Official Languages Act (Northwest Territories) ; and the Official Language Act (Quebec) , passed to ensure that French retained its primary status. Topics referred to by
640-720: The Northern and Eastern provinces, the Official Languages Act of 1987 (Sri Lanka) passed to make Tamil an official language of the country, and the Official Languages Commission Act No. 18 of 1991 (Sri Lanka) passed to establish the Official Languages Commission of Sri Lanka ; the Official Languages Act (Canada) passed to enshrine official bilingualism; the Official Languages Ordinance passed in Hong Kong in 1974 to bring
680-624: The Sinhala and Tamil languages to be state languages of Ceylon with parity of status throughout the Island." Colvin R. de Silva of the LSSP famously argued against the Act: Do we want an independent Ceylon or two bleeding halves of Ceylon...? These are issues that in fact we have been discussing under the form and appearance of the language issue…One language, two nations; Two languages, one Nation… The passage of
720-611: The Sinhalese were constitutionally entrenched." The policy turned out to be "severely discriminatory" and placed the Tamil-speaking population at a "serious disadvantage". As a Sinhalese academic A. M. Navaratna Bandara writes: "The Tamil-speaking people were given no option but to learn the language of the majority if they wanted to get public service employment. [...] A large number of Tamil public servants had to accept compulsory retirement because of their inability to prove proficiency in
760-412: The act saw it as an attempt by a community that had just gained independence to distance themselves from their colonial masters, while its opponents viewed it as an attempt by the linguistic majority to oppress and assert dominance on minorities. The Act symbolizes the post independent Sinhalese majority's determination to assert Ceylon's identity as a Sinhala Buddhist nation state, and for Tamils, it became
800-691: The act was met with demonstrations from Tamils led by the Federal Party who organized a satyagraha outside the parliament building. In response, the Sinhalese nationalist group Eksath Bhikkhu Peramuna organized a counter-protest; a mob representing this group attacked the Tamil protesters and was "responsible for unleashing riots that killed nearly 150 Tamils" in the Gal Oya riots between 5 and 6 June 1956. Bandaranaike stated in parliament on 6 June 1956 that Sinhalese people saw parity between Sinhala and Tamil as official languages as being "gravely detrimental to
840-477: The act. At the time, Sinhala (also known as Sinhalese) was the language of Ceylon's majority Sinhalese people , who accounted for around 70% of the country's population. Tamil was the first language of Ceylon's three largest minority ethnic groups, the Indian Tamils , Sri Lankan Tamils and Moors , who together accounted for around 29% of the country's population. The act was controversial as supporters of
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#1732837111742880-558: The armed forces were Tamil. By 1970 those numbers had plummeted to 5 percent, 5 percent, 10 percent, and 1 percent, respectively." For much of the 1960s government forms and services were virtually unavailable to Tamils, and this situation only partly improved with later relaxations of the law. Following pressure from the Indian government in 1987, the Thirteenth amendment to the Constitution
920-521: The continuance and progress of the Sinhala language; that it would almost imply the extinction of the Sinhala language." In order to assuage Tamil feelings following the anti-Tamil riots in 1958 , Prime Minister Bandaranaike passed the Tamil Language (Special Provisions) Act, No. 28 of 1958 in August that year. The bill allowed for the use of Tamil as a medium of instruction in schools and universities, as
960-555: The elites of the main communities: the Sinhalese and the Tamils. In 1949, at the behest of the foreign plantation owners, the government disenfranchised the Indian Tamil plantation workers, who accounted for 12% of the population. In 1951, the ambitious Solomon Bandaranaike broke with his party, the conservative United National Party (UNP), and created a new centrist party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). By 1953,
1000-486: The emotional relation of the speaker towards the language, and even its dominance in relation to the environment. However, all three criteria lack precision. For many children whose home language differs from the language of the environment (the "official" language), it is debatable which language is their "native language". In some countries, such as Kenya , India , Belarus , Ukraine and various East Asian and Central Asian countries, "mother language" or "native language"
1040-504: The first language is that it brings about the reflection and learning of successful social patterns of acting and speaking. Research suggests that while a non-native speaker may develop fluency in a targeted language after about two years of immersion, it can take between five and seven years for that child to be on the same working level as their native speaking counterparts. On 17 November 1999, UNESCO designated 21 February as International Mother Language Day . The person qualifies as
1080-607: The general consensus on the left to have both Sinhala and Tamil as official languages to campaign on the slogan "Sinhala Only". In the 1956 general elections , the SLFP campaigned on largely nationalist policies, and made the language policy one of their key election promises. The result was a landslide electoral victory for the SLFP lead coalition Mahajana Eksath Peramuna , which paved the way for Bandaranaike's appointment as Prime Minister. The Sinhala nationalist demanded that their new government immediately implement promise to make Sinhala
1120-620: The island's population. After their election to the State Council of Ceylon in 1936, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) members N. M. Perera and Philip Gunawardena demanded the replacement of English as the official language by Sinhala and Tamil. In November 1936, a motion that "in the Municipal and Police Courts of the Island the proceedings should be in the vernacular " and that "entries in police stations should be recorded in
1160-550: The language and speakers of the language. Native speakers will not necessarily be knowledgeable about every grammatical rule of the language, but they will have good "intuition" of the rules through their experience with the language. The designation "native language", in its general usage, is thought to be imprecise and subject to various interpretations that are biased linguistically, especially with respect to bilingual children from ethnic minority groups. Many scholars have given definitions of "native language" based on common usage,
1200-627: The language in which they are originally stated" were passed by the State Council and referred to the legal secretary . In the 1940s, Sinhala political leaders were willing to support both Sinhala and Tamil as the official languages. For example, in 1944, both J. R. Jayewardene and S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike supported both languages getting official status, with Bandaranaike saying that he had "no personal objections to both languages being considered official languages, nor do I see any particular harm of danger or difficulty from this." However, nothing
1240-605: The new government led by Bandaranaike's widow Sirimavo sought to forcefully implement the Sinhala Only Act and, under Sinhalese nationalist pressure, enacted the Language of the Courts Act No. 3 of 1961 to make Sinhala the only language of the courts, while ignoring the Tamil Language (Special Provisions) Act. Although the regulations for implementing the bill were approved in January 1966 under Dudley Senanayake , it would be relegated to
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1280-465: The official language [....]" It also entailed that a Sinhalese officer working in Tamil areas was exempted from learning Tamil, but a Tamil officer working in even Tamil areas had to learn Sinhala. The effects of these policies were dramatic as shown by the drastic drop of Tamil representation in public sector: "In 1956, 30 percent of the Ceylon administrative service, 50 percent of the clerical service, 60 percent of engineers and doctors, and 40 percent of
1320-532: The official state language. When Bandaranaike proceed to make Sinhala the official state language with administrative provisions for Tamil, K. M. P. Rajaratne and Professor J. E. Jayasuriya went on a fast unto death demanded legislation be drafted to make Sinhala the only official state with no concessions to Tamil language. This forced Bandaranaike to drop the administrative provisions for Tamil and The Ceylon (Constitution) Order in Council or Sinhala Only Bill as it
1360-432: The proposal for the use of Sinhala and Tamil as official languages was replaced by the chauvinist cry for 'Sinhala only', and the argument that Sinhala would be 'swamped' by Tamil. Arguments were made that 'Sinhala only' would give better opportunities for the Sinhalese. By 1956, 50% of clerical jobs were held by Tamils, although they were a minority of the country's population. In 1955, the SLFP decided to break ranks with
1400-441: The same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Official Languages Act . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Official_Languages_Act&oldid=1245304554 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
1440-450: The term "mother tongue" was first used by Catholic monks to designate a particular language they used, instead of Latin , when they were "speaking from the pulpit". That is, the "holy mother the Church" introduced this term and colonies inherited it from Christianity as a part of colonialism. J. R. R. Tolkien , in his 1955 lecture " English and Welsh ", distinguishes the "native tongue" from
1480-453: Was done about these matters, and English continued to be the language of rule until 1956. Ceylon was granted the status of dominion in the British Empire in 1948 after largely non-violent independence movement , with the transition of sovereignty from Britain to the Sri Lankans being a peaceful process. For the first years of independence, there was an attempt to balance the interests of
1520-647: Was known was passed through parliament and was enacted. The bill was passed with the SLFP and the UNP supporting it, with the leftist LSSP and Communist Party of Sri Lanka as well as the Tamil nationalist parties ( Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi and All Ceylon Tamil Congress ) opposing it. The left bitterly opposed the Act, with N. M. Perera, leader of the LSSP, moving a motion in Parliament that it "should be amended forthwith to provide for
1560-482: Was passed, which stated that, "the official language of Sri Lanka is Sinhala" while "Tamil shall also be an official language," with English as a "link language." However, in practice, predominantly Sinhala-speaking police officers who are not fluent in Tamil are stationed in Tamil areas, posing practical challenges for the locals when interacting with the authorities. First language A first language ( L1 ), native language , native tongue , or mother tongue
1600-650: Was the preserve of the Sri Lankan elite and the ordinary people had little knowledge of it. A disproportionate number of English language schools were established in Jaffna by the American Ceylon Mission , which provided English-language skills for the Tamil population in Jaffna. Thus, English-speaking Tamils held a higher percentage of coveted Ceylon Civil Service jobs, which required English fluency, than their share of
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