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Item First Language Interference in Learning Tamil as a Second Language:A Case Study.(The Third International Conference on Linguistics in Sri Lanka, ICLSL 2017. Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka., 2017) Srikantharajah, S.Language learning has been one of the significant interest in the humanistic discipline. In recent studies, First Language Learning is viewed as a part of individual's biological development. Second Language Learning is a major discipline in both Applied Linguistics and Psycholinguistics, which have gained significance in educational contexts around the world today. In Sri Lanka Tamil Language acts as the First Language for Tamil and Muslim people, further the Sinhalese students learn it as a Second Language. Since Tamil and Sinhalese Languages belong to different Language families, many similarities and differences can be identified between these two languages. The aim of this research is to identify the Sinhalese Language interference in learning Tamil as a Second Language. A sample of twenty-three first year students, who are following Translation studies at the Department of Linguistics in University of Kelaniya were selected for this study. In the process of learning Tamil as a Second Language, students tend to perform many errors because of the interference of their first Language. The data were collected by studying the answer scripts, written assignments and presentations of the above-mentioned group of students. Twenty-three written assignments and answer scripts were analyzed using the theory of error analysis. Being a structural analysis, it consideres the errors from the lexical level. Thus, the first Language influence could be seen in morphological and syntactic levels. Significantly, many errors could be identified in morphological level, where 75% of the students made errors particularly in cases in Tamil. There are eight cases in Tamil and the Sinhalese students have shown no errors when making sentences in 1st (Nominative) and 8th (Vocative) cases because they are similar to Sinhalese, whereas they have made considerable number of errors when making sentences in other cases, particularly the 2nd (Accusative) and the 4th (Dative). Therefore, word-to-word translation is not effective in teaching cases in Tamil for the Sinhalese students, thus, it is recommended to teach Tamil while comparing the grammar rules with Sinhalese.Item What is ‘Linguistic interference’? A linguistic study with special reference to the Sinhala and English languages(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Assajithissa Thero, KurupitaWhen a speaker knows more than one language, because of their disparity, one language can be influenced by the other language. This is more familiar in the bilingual context. Contemporary, Sri Lanka is a bilingual country. In Sri Lanka, Sinhala, Tamil and English are used. In this research, our attention is specially only paid to Sinhala and English languages. Especially, the problem or this research is to examine how linguistic interference functions on Sinhala and English languages in Sri Lankan context. When one uses two languages together those two languages could be influenced by each other. This process is termed in Bilingualism as interference which means the influence for each other. This belongs to the use of the language. While using two languages, not only phonological but also semantic, grammatical, lexicon and cultural changes are usually made. Here, the word ‘change’ stands for interference. In this topic, what is interference, what are the types of interference are discussed with examples with special reference to Sinhala and English languages. To study the nature of the interference of above mentioned languages data have been collected by closely referencing the colloquial use of Sinhala and English languages. Sri Lanka as a bilingual society, interference can be seen in the day to day conversation. Further, it can be divided into five categories such as phonological, semantic, grammatical, lexicon and cultural interference. In conclusion, interference is not an uncommon process of the languages used in the world. So, there is no exception to Sinhala and English.Item First Language Interference in Second Language Speaking With a Special Reference to the Age Factor(University of Kelaniya, 2015) Gunarathne, N.M.A.D.W.C.English language has been playing the role of the second language in Sri Lanka since the British imperialists came to Sri Lanka in 1815. Since then English language has taken significant place in Sri Lankan society because of its role as the second language. Moreover, it has become a medium of communication in both private sector and government sector in providing a wide range of employments and it has become the language of not only the upper class but also upper middle class. Therefore learning and teaching English Language in Sri Lanka have been given priority. However, a problem encountered in the field of English is that although the second language learners are fluent in writing, why the learners cannot achieve native like speech in speaking the English as a second Language. Hence the research focuses on exploring the reason for the above issue. A survey was done taking 120 students whose first language is Sinhala with the intention of identifying the errors made by the second language learners in speaking English as a second language. In order to accumulate the necessary data, both quantitative and qualititative methods are used. Questionnaires, interviews have been done under these methods and in addition to that each student is supposed to make a speech of 3 minutes which is recorded for analyzing the changes of phonology of each language. The results reveal that the learner’s first language interferes when they speak the second language which can also be defined as mother tongue interference or phonetic interference. Moreover the data manifest that the interference occurs where the learner find difficulty to pronounce the sounds of English Language. Thereby these sounds are often replaced by similar sounds in Sinhala sound system. What is more to remark is that this mispronunciation also causes semantic errors and it will be a barrier to the communication. Extending the research further, it is also found that “Age” is a cause for the interference and plays a crucial role in learning a second language. The research draws the attention of the responsible authorities and academics that facilitate teaching and learning English as a second language in Sri Lanka.