sinhala is a great language. But nothing much useful is written or spoken in it. Like I said in my earlier posts, things related to science, technology comes from foreign sources. Not being able to consume them is a major issue. Can’t say this is limited to reading what foreigners are writing. People may have to engage with them in certain situations. What we need to keep in mind is all we have is professors singing in tv shows and talking about metaphysical concepts in news articles and nothing much related to their field of studies. So most if not all practically useful things are coming from outside sources.
If a student goes to a Russian university for a degree program, In the first 6 months he/she has to learn Russian language. There are no exceptions. All programs are conducted in Russian. Their new findings and scientific research articles are all written and published in Russian language. If international community wants to use them have to translate it back to English. I think same goes with china and japan.
But our universities expect things do be done in English language. All journals are published in English language. But see our university rankings non of them are in top 1000. Our emphasize on doing research and publishing articles is quite limited. Could English be the course that most of the students just wanted to get their degree or masters and quickly move on to a job?
I don't know whether I sound clear to you. But I see a gap.
Our every day tom, dick and harry speak better English than Japanese, Chinese and even some European Scholars. But are we in a better economic position than them?