living abroad and don’t speak sinhala

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hi :) sorry for the long post

im sri lankan but i was born abroad and lived there my whole entire life, ive been to sl 4 times in my life and im currently graduating from hs and ive been a little upset recently ab smth lol

my parents never taught me sinhala, i think they have the mindset that ‘u live abroad be posh u don’t need to learn sinhala’ and so ofc i can barely speak it now. as a kid all on my own i learnt to understand sinhala so atleast i have that however i can’t read or write at all and have a shit accent when i try to speak. all my friends can speak 2+ languages and i can barely speak my mother tongue which growing up made me feel very ashamed. id always told my parents ab this but they js laughed it out every single time. ive always tried to learn sinhala but resources online aren’t that good and its js me myself and i learning

now that im graduating hs and going to uni, leaving my parents, which is basically the only sl thing ab me (apart from the passport) im rly scared of not being able to fully understand my roots. i really want to teach my kids sinhala but ofc not rly possible unless i marry a sl (parents would hate this 😭 idk what’s this internal racism) but yeah im a little stuck and upset

i also think this is common icl but alot of my family friends here who r also sl cant speak sinhala, only understands too which is rly upsetting, we dont get to feel truly sl 💔

personally i never had an issue not knowing sinhala but majority for my family in sl do speak eng, kids go to international skls, some family who aren’t the best at it spoke sinhala while i
replied in eng and vice versa so there was no issues really since i can understand

im not sure what i can do i js need a little help lol 😅😅 what can i do here. has anyone else been in a similar situation and what have they done? thank you all replies are appreciated!

Posted May 7, 2026, 12:28 PM UTC

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