The Linguist’s Calendar: July 29

Sri Lanka

July 29

1987: Sri Lanka grants co-official status to Tamil.







EXTRA for today, from Mikael Parkvall's Limits of Language:

Most Bilingual Publishing

For the countries for which official UNESCO statistics on the subject are available, Sri Lanka is, by quite some margin, the country in which the largest proportion of all publi­ca­tions are bi- or multilingual—25%. Canada, Yugoslavia, Mauritania, and Ukraine follow, and only in sixth place do we find South Africa—the country in the world with the highest number of official languages (see p 24). Alas, it is uncertain precisely what UNESCO means by “a bilingual publication.” Sri Lanka lacks bi- or multi-lingual books and newspapers but government’s written communications with the public are all trilingual (Sinhala, English, Tamil) as are electricity and phone bills, and the packaging of most local goods.