Culture Shock

It's always the small things that get me in Sri Lanka. I expected the food to be different, and it is. I expected the people to have (to my ears) accents, and they do. So those things don't really surprise me. But the other day, I was sitting in church, wearing my black cassock and white surplice, right in the midst of a traditional BCP evensong service. Aside from the fact that I was slowly roasting to death in my heavy black cassock, everything was familiar. Then I looked across the chancel (where we were sitting) through the vestry, and out an open door on to the street. From where I was sitting I could see a dirty cement wall covered in election posters (from the elections in January). So far, so normal. Then a little man with a mustache wearing a sarong and no shirt wandered by, and I was suddenly reminded that I was not, in fact, in Canada, or even England, but was indisputably in Sri Lanka.

It's the same with the language. They have what they call "Sri Lankan English" (SLE) here. The idea is that every country has its own way of speaking English, and that none is exactly wrong, just different. If two Sri Lankans can speak SLE to each other, and understand each other, what does it matter if the Canadian is lost? There is an accent, of course, and as I said, I expected this. What I didn't expect, the part of SLE that really gets me, even now, is the phrases they use. Sri Lanka was an English colony until 1948, and so the English they speak here uses English slang and phrasing. This gets confusing for a North American who uses the phrasing from the USA more often than England. I cannot express my confusion and amusement the first time I heard a driver, who had been cut off in traffic as "that fellow! That cheeky fellow!"

When I ask people if I can take a picture of them, I get a blank look. When I ask if I can take a photo, it's all smiles. I even catch myself beginning to use it with people, which has prompted a question for me. Is it better, would it make me easier to understand, if I use SLE (at least to a degree), for me to speak Canadian English? Sometimes I think that to use SLE would be better, as it is what they are used to hearing. But then I use it, and it sound so fake, sound to my ear as if I am condescending to speak SLE, that I revert back to Canadian English. At least until I get another blank look.