Cross-Cultural Influences on the Language of the Sri Lankan Malays

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 222-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya

Abstract Although Sri Lanka has had links with the Malays from ancient times, the Sri Lankan Malays trace their ancestry only from the mid-seventeenth century. Taking into account the process of global commercial interactions and territorial expansion, this paper demonstrates the effects of cross-cultural contact in the language of the Sri Lanka Malays illustrated through typological alterations and lexical changes in a multilingual and multicultural setting.

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-97
Author(s):  
Ravi Mokashi Punekar ◽  
◽  
Shiva Ji ◽  

The exchange of goods and materials by way of trading and exchanges were common in ancient times between India and China via silk route and other trading routes. The movement of people from one place to another brought exchange of not only materials but also techniques and processes and helped to establish their own manufacturing facilities and craftsmanship. This has resulted into a cross-cultural influence over the craft forms as reflected in many resemblances of material culture, annotations and apologies seen in various forms and shapes in multiple domains such as ceramic pottery, glazed pottery, metalware, ship buildings, printing, silk and other fabrics, patterns and motifs etc. Observations of ancient remains from Belitung and artifacts from Indian cities along secondary and tertiary Silk routes, show significant influence in the similarities in techniques, materials, surface treatments, kiln processes, colors, motifs , etc. This paper examines a cross-cultural resemblance of product form factor between Changsha pottery and pots to ceramic ware from eastern parts and metalware from western regions of India like Gujarat and Rajasthan. The spread of Buddhism from India to China and other eastern and south eastern countries during this period must also form a strong reason for this cultural exchange.


1996 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 907-914 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Freeman

This study investigated the dimensionality of a 21-item questionnaire measure of idiocentrism-allocentrism (the within-culture measure of individualism-collectivism) within the context of Sri Lankan culture. A survey of 438 Sri Lankan respondents, sampled from a wide variety of demographic contexts, provided data. Factor analysis indicated that idiocentrism and allocentrism are two independent, unipolar factors, rather than opposite poles of a single, bipolar dimension. The implications are discussed in the context of existing and future cross-cultural (etic) and within-cultural (emic) research on individualism-collectivism.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Asanka Bulathwatta

Development process of any other field is not a quick one. It may come across steps throughout the history. When we compare the European region with the Asian region the situational processes they came across have similarities and differences. Germany is the birthplace of many psychological schools in which Sri Lanka still have some shadow of those schools and keep continuing some parts of psychology adapted from this society. Nevertheless, there are some trends of having own psychological practices affirming the cross-cultural framework. Sri Lankan universities are now trying to give a proper place for Psychology but still the tendency is not adequate compared to the placement given into other disciplines.


Author(s):  
Lola Sharon Davidson ◽  
Stephen Muecke

Like the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean has been a privileged site of cross-cultural contact since ancient times. In this special issue, our contributors track disparate movements of people and ideas around the Indian Ocean region and explore the cultural implications of these contacts and their role in processes that we would come to call transnationalization and globalisation. The nation is a relatively recent phenomenon anywhere on the globe, and in many countries around the Indian Ocean it was a product of colonisation and independence. So the processes of exchange, migration and cultural influence going on there for many centuries were mostly based on the economics of goods and trade routes, rather than on national identity and state policy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-224
Author(s):  
Ronit Ricci

This article considers the crossings, modes of mobility, and affiliations that have shaped forms and contexts of storytelling within a small yet culturally resilient diasporic community: the Sri Lankan Malays, whose forefathers were sent from across the Indonesian archipelago to colonial Ceylon (Sri Lanka), beginning in the late seventeenth century, as exiles, slaves, and soldiers. Two storytelling contexts set in mid-to late nineteenth-century British Ceylon are discussed: the first centers on the Qur’anic tale of the prophet Nuh (Noah) and his ark, typically viewed as representing an age-old Islamic tradition; the second, based on stories and reports in a Malay newspaper, signals the drive toward novelty, progress, and modernity. The article explores how both storytelling contexts, despite certain differences, converge on the shared themes of travel, water, and islands and can be understood as overlapping and complementing one another. Both contexts taken together highlight the ways different temporalities, affiliations, and allegiances were concurrently relevant for colonial subjects. The article thus challenges the tendency to reduce colonial subjects’ experiences to interactions and engagements with the ruling Europeans and suggests that storytelling practices illuminate greater nuance and complexity in how people lived their lives while inhabiting different spaces, temporalities, and relationships simultaneously.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. e0260475
Author(s):  
Lasara Kariyawasam ◽  
Margarita Ononaiye ◽  
Chris Irons ◽  
Lusia Stopa ◽  
Sarah E. Kirby

Practicing compassion has shown to reduce distress and increase emotional well-being in clinical and non-clinical populations. The existing research is primarily focused on Western populations although the concepts of compassion are heavily influenced by Asian Buddhist views. There is a dearth of compassion research conducted particularly in the Asian context. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the views and lived experiences of compassion in Sri Lankan students, to understand whether compassion is a socially embraced construct in Sri Lanka, considering that Sri Lanka is a Buddhist influenced society. Participants’ views and lived experiences of compassion towards themselves and to/from others were also investigated, with a specific focus on their perceived inhibitors and facilitators of compassion. Aims were set to identify whether Western compassion-based practices could be successfully applied to Asian societies such as Sri Lanka. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis approach was used to obtain and analyse qualitative data from a convenience sample of 10 Sri Lankan students, recruited from a Psychology course. The phenomenological analysis of the semi-structured face-to-face interviews elicited three predominant themes: What compassion means to me, what I make of it, and compassion through facilitators and inhibitors. The findings suggested that participants shared a similar understanding of the concept of compassion as reflected in the Western definitions. Experiences and views of compassion were shaped by several factors including religion, culture, society, and upbringing. In general, this study revealed that participants were well aware of the concept of compassion as well as its impact on their psychological well-being. Despite this, inhibitors existed in experiencing compassion. The religious and collectivistic-cultural influences need to be further explored and taken into account when implementing Western compassion-based practices to non-Western contexts such as Sri Lanka.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
NIRUSIKA RAJENTHIRAN ◽  
◽  
H.A.S MADHUWANTHI ◽  
D.M.P.P DISSANAYAKE ◽  
D.C. SIRIMEWAN ◽  
...  

Significant issues affecting the success of construction projects due to globalisation is the establishment of a multicultural project team. Presently, China has emerged as one of Sri Lanka's main sources of foreign and commercial loans in an environment, where the island is seeking to rebuild and modernise infrastructure. However, the involvement of multi-cultural project teams often present unique challenges due to cross-cultural interactions, thereby, creating conflicts through construction projects, makes the conflict unavoidable. Therefore, this study was attempting to identify the cross-cultural dimensions and cross-cultural orientations in cross-cultural teamwork of Chinese contractors in construction projects in Sri Lanka. A qualitative approach was followed in this study in which multiple case study was selected as the most appropriate method for the research. Accordingly, semi-structured interviews were conducted among the selected four (4) respondents from each case to collect the data. Captured data was analysed by the manual content analysis method. An empirical investigation has been validated communication, leadership, trust, collectivism, team selection, uncertainty, team development and management as the common cross-cultural dimensions for all the three cases. This study added new cross-cultural dimensions to the literature in the context of Sri Lankan construction industry namely, coordination, harmony and customs with specific cross-cultural orientations. The study can be further developed to investigate strategies to manage intragroup conflicts occurs in cross-cultural teamwork of Sri Lankans and Chinese professionals in the Sri Lankan construction industry.


From the seventeenth century to the current day, more than 2.5 million Scots have sought new lives elsewhere. This book of essays examines the impact since 1600 of out-migration from Scotland upon the homeland, on the migrants themselves, on the destinations in which they settled, and upon their descendants and ‘affinity’ Scots. It does so through a focus on themes of slavery, cross-cultural encounters, economics, war, tourism, and the modern diaspora since 1945 in diverse destinations encompassing Europe, the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Hong Kong, Guyana and the British World more broadly.


Medieval Europe was a meeting place for the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic civilizations, and the fertile intellectual exchange of these cultures can be seen in the mathematical developments of the time. This book presents original Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic sources of medieval mathematics, and shows their cross-cultural influences. Most of the Hebrew and Arabic sources appear here in translation for the first time. Readers will discover key mathematical revelations, foundational texts, and sophisticated writings by Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic-speaking mathematicians, including Abner of Burgos's elegant arguments proving results on the conchoid—a curve previously unknown in medieval Europe; Levi ben Gershon's use of mathematical induction in combinatorial proofs; Al-Muʾtaman Ibn Hūd's extensive survey of mathematics, which included proofs of Heron's Theorem and Ceva's Theorem; and Muhyī al-Dīn al-Maghribī's interesting proof of Euclid's parallel postulate. The book includes a general introduction, section introductions, footnotes, and references.


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