Dialectal Variations of Sri Lankan English due to Mother Tongue Influence of Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim

Abstract

Dialect is a regional or social variety of a language distinguished by minimal lexical, grammatical, phonological or vocabulary, specially a way of speaking differences from the standard variety of the language. Sri Lankan English is the language spoken and understood by the Sri Lankans who speak English as their first language, and/or who are bilingual in English and Sinhala or Tamil. Sri Lanka being a multi-national society, Sri Lankan English consists of a variety of dialects and the way the Sri Lankans speak English as a second language is absolutely different from the original speakers of English. The objectives of the present research are investigation whether Sri Lankan English has provincial dialects and the specific phonological features around provincial dialects. For methodology all the data were collected from the tertiary level students at Advanced Technological Institute - Dehiwala and from the lecturers who speak English as their second language, by conducting face to face interviews, listening to the conversations taking place at the staffroom, meetings, lecture halls and cafeterias. The sample groups were selected considering the province in which they live in. Finally, all the data recorded were separately analysed phonologically to examine the colloquial features and pronunciation variety among the speakers. According to the findings, it was clear that mother tongue influences the pronunciation of any language especially English than the provincial differences. The association of the society may slightly influence the speaking variety of a language.