Zouriya Jayman and Mohammad Jaffar

Mohammad Jaffar: Ms. Jayman, who is in her 80s, grew up speaking the creole language in the central Sri Lankan town of Kegalle, and she is one of roughly 40,000 Sri Lankan Malay speakers worldwide, and some 1,000 in the Greater Toronto Area. In a lively and loose interview with linguist Mohammad Jaffar, another native Sri Lankan Malay speaker, Ms. Jayman fielded questions on the languages uncertain future as a camera recorded the session, according to Globe and Mail. With no codified spelling system and a general community apathy toward preservation, the languages prospects for survival are grim and Since she arrived in Canada more than two decades ago, Zouriya Jayman has found few people to converse with in her native tongue, Sri Lankan Malay. But on a frigid day earlier this year, two linguists turned the living room of her high-rise apartment in north Toronto into a sort of television studio in order to document Ms. Jaymans endangered language. Zouriya felt that we were truly the last generation of full native speakers, Mr. Jaffar, 78, said, interpreting Ms. Jaymans answers into English. Later generations, she felt, showed a regrettable lack of interest and no enthusiasm for speaking in Sri Lankan Malay. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.