“Colonialism. The enforced spread of the rule of reason. But who is going to spread it among the colonizers?”
― Anthony Burgess
Sri Lanka Creole Portuguese- Batticaloa
Batticaloa (our filed research mainly focused on the Batticaloa and Trincomalliee speech communities), is the district where the large number of speakers live. In the district the distribution of the speech communities are distinctive. Manmmunai North; the city region, is the hotspot of the speakers since the colonial period and the community could mainly be seen in two major clusters; Kallady and Dutch Bar.
Location
Batticaloa District
Census statistics indicate a total of 5,020 Burghers living in the Batticaloa district in contrast to the previous studies. Even though the numbers have increased, it is questionable whether the increase means an increase in language usage. Although Smith reported there were 2,255 Burghers at the time, and they all spoke Creole as their mother tongue, it is doubtful that all the Burghers in the district today speak Creole as their mother tongue. The number of Burghers today represents only 0.86% of the total population of the district, which is 586, 803.
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Voice of Burghers
The Portuguese Burgher Foundation has its office in Kallady, Batticaloa, where the adjacent Dutch Bar has the highest number of Creole speakers in the region. The Foundation has well organised programmes empowering the lives of the Burgher community, as well as maintaining their social life as a sodality (a non-kin group organised for a specific purpose) that has its own cultural and social features.