I can vividly remember an incident from my schooldays - as clearly as if it was yesterday.

Two of my thirteen year old classmates were having an argument - one of those usual schoolboy situations where one fellow was needling the other. Driven to desperation, the fellow being bullied turned to the fellow doing the bullying, raised his fists and said "If you come too much I'll give you..."

It is a phrase that all of you, dear readers, would have heard at some time or other if you have been living in this country. To any of us who have grown up in this tropical island in the sun among hot blooded Lankans, a threat like this makes perfect sense. If some one "comes too much", they are certainly asking for trouble - perhaps even asking to be "put a thundering slap". Has it ever occurred to you, dear reader, that in our country nobody gives another person an ordinary slap - it is always a THUNDERING slap?

To anyone outside Sri Lanka, however, the phrase "You come too much I'll give you," would make absolutely no sense. In fact, it may even be construed by someone unfamiliar with Sri Lankan English as something rude, wicked or even possibly with sexual connotations.

 In India, I was once told by an Indian colleague " I am preponing my examination, yaar. I have now prepared enough and I am ready to appear." To me this statement was quite unintelligible - until it was explained to me that in India, "PREPONE" is what one does when one brings an event forward - the opposite of POSTPONE. And in India, one does not sit for an examination - one appears for an examination - a wonderful example of peculiarly Indian English.

I was reminded of these two incidents after reading all this stuff that is being tossed about these days about "Speaking English Our Way".

Having lived and worked in many countries, I realized long ago that the many dialects of English spoken in various parts of the Anglophone world are peculiar to those parts - and often make no sense to folk from other countries. A 'sidewalk' in Canada is called a 'pavement' in Sri Lanka and a 'kerb' in the US - while a 'lift' in Sri Lanka becomes an 'elevator' in Australia.

To my way of thinking, English is not the sole preserve of the English people - or even of the Americans who now dominate the English movie industry or the internet. It is the common language, if not of most of the world's population, at least of most of the world's countries. Although the world has numerically more Chinese speakers, they are for the most part concentrated in China - while English, followed by Spanish, are the languages spoken by the most of the countries in our world, and the language in which most countries of the world communicate .

And this is where I beg to differ with those who want to encourage Lankans to speak English "our way" at the expense of learning to speak English so it is understood by the rest of the world. One does not have to be able to speak English with an accent sounding like a BBC announcer - but one must be able to speak English so it can be understood, without colloquialisms, by anyone listening to the BBC or other international news service or organization. If we want to communicate with other Lankans, let us do so in Sinhalese and Tamil (and here lies a good case for our children being taught both these languages so that the next generation can be bilingual) and if necessary in Sri Lankan English.

Speaking English our way is alright if all we want to do threaten to give someone a thundering slap if they come too much.

But to become part of the global community - so we can do business with folk in other countries, send our students with confidence for education in overseas universities, get our message across to those who matter in the rest of the world and make the best use of this country's great tourist potential, then we HAVE to be able to communicate in world English.

And this is not simply by trying to speak the current Sri Lankan dialect of English.