Introduction

= Welcome to our ENG4U class WIKI on Michael Ondaatje's //Running In the Family//. = Some questions to get self-motivated students going...

Who was Oderic? How does his quote at the beginning of the novel relate? Odoric was a Franciscan monk from northeastern Italy who spent the early 14th century traveling in Asia. His adventures provided one of the most important Western findings of life and culture in what is present-day Iran, India, Indonesia, China, Nepal, and Russia. One of his quotes was found at the beginning of RITF, “I saw in this island fowls as big as our country geese having two heads … and other miraculous things which I will not here write of.” (9) This quotes describes what it was like back then. They had no maps so they had to resort to stereotyping the surroundings that they saw.

Describe the history of Colonization in Ceylon/Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka began with strong rulers, though once a single weak link in leader ship allowed canonicalization to occur. First it was the Dutch that took over in the 1600s, then by the British in the 1800s. By the 1940s there was an independent movement. Its name changed many times, as well as its shapes as the topography became more advanced. A few of its names before becomeing Sri Lanka were- Serendip, Ratnapida, Taprobane, Zeloan, Zeilan, Seyllan, Ceilon, and Ceylon

Where is Jaffna? Jaffna is at the top most part of Sri Lanka, it is the capital city of the Northern Province.

__**Pictures**__

" I still believe the most beautiful alphabet was created by the sinhalese. The insect of ink curves into shape that is almost sickle, spoon, eyelid. The letters are washed blunt glass which betray no jagedness." ( Ondaatje, 83)

The Sinhala alphabet, a descendent of the Brahmi script, started to appear in inscriptions during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. Both the alphabet and the language have changed considerably since then. The earliest surviving literature in Sinhala dates from the 9th century AD.
 * Origin:**


 * Notable Features:**
 * Type of writing system: syllabic alphabet.
 * Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines.
 * When they appear the the beginning of a syllable, vowels are written as independent letters.
 * Prenasalized consonants, such as mb, nd, ṇd and ng, are formed by special conjunct symbols that combine the stop and the homorganic nasal.
 * Conjunct symbols are used only when writing Sanskrit of Pali with the Sinhala alphabet.
 * A subset of the letters, known as //Eḷu hōḷdiya//, was used to write classical Sinhala (//Eḷu//) - shown in blue below. Many extra letters were added to write Sanskrit and Pali loanwords.