Sri Lankan English (SLE) belongs to the family of South Asian Englishes. English is the third language of Sri Lanka after Sinhala and Tamil, and is spoken as a first language by a small but significant minority of the population – significant not so much for their numbers, but because they tend to belong to the Colombo elite, and therefore to be prominent in the social, political, commercial and cultural life of the country. The variety of English spoken by this group is generally referred to as Standard Sri Lankan English, and it remains close to the British standard from which it originated during colonial times. A number of non-standard varieties are spoken by others with varying degrees of bilingualism in English and Sinhala or Tamil.