The Constitution of Sri Lanka specifies in its section on 'official languages' that Sinhala and Tamil are the 'national languages' of Sri Lanka, while English is labelled a 'link language'. English is used by many Sri Lankans as their second language. There is also a small group of L1 speakers of English in Sri Lanka. As Mesthrie and Bhatt (2008: 200) point out, "Sri Lankan English is not simply 'English in Sri Lanka', but a variety with a certain regional and social identity."
Population: c. 23 million.
Reading Bernaisch, Tobias (2012) Attitudes Towards Englishes in Sri Lanka. World Englishes 31(3), 279-291. Mendis, D. & H. Rambukwella (2010) Sri Lankan Englishes. In Kirkpatrick, A. (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes. London: Routledge, pp. 181-196. Mesthrie, R. & Bhatt, R. M. (2008) World Englishes: The Study of New Linguistic Varieties. Cambridge: CUP. Mukherjee, Joybrato (2012) English in South Asia - Ambinormative Orientations and the Role of Corpora: The State of the Debate in Sri Lanka. In Kirkpatrick, A. & Roland Sussex (eds.) English as an International Language in Asia: Implications for Language Education. New York : Springer, 191-208. Mukherjee, J. Schilk, M. & T. Bernaisch(2010) Compiling the Sri Lankan component of ICE: principles, problems, prospects. ICAME Journal 34: 64-77.
