|
Vedda/væđđā/ is the language of the indigenous Vedda people of Sri Lanka. But communities, such as Coast Veddas and Anuradhapura Veddas, that do not strictly identify themselves as Veddas also use the Vedda language in part for communication during hunting and or for religious chants, throughout the island. When a systematic field study was conducted in 1959, the language was confined to the older generation of Veddas from Dambana. In 1990s self-identifying Veddas knew few words and phrases in Vedda, but there were individuals who knew the language comprehensively. Initially there was considerable debate amongst linguists as to whether Vedda is a dialect of Sinhalese or an independent language. Later studies indicate that Vedda language is a creole which evolved from ancient times, when the Veddas came in contact with the early Sinhalese, from whom they increasingly borrowed words and synthetic features, yielding the cumulative effect that Vedda looked like Sinhalese in many particulars, but its grammatical core was still intact. The parent Vedda language(s) is of unknown genetic origins, while Sinhalese is of the Indo-Aryan branch of Indo-European languages. Phonologically it is distinguished from Sinhalese by the higher frequency of palatal sounds C and J. The effect is also heightened by the addition of inanimate suffixes. Morphologically, the Vedda word classes are nouns, verbs and invariables, with unique gender distinctions in animate nouns. It has reduced and simplified many forms of Sinhalese such as second person pronouns and denotations of negative meanings. Instead borrowing new words from Sinhalese or other languages Vedda creates combinations of words from a limited lexical stock. Vedda also maintains many archaic Sinhalese terms from the 10th to 12th centuries, as a relict of its close contact with Sinhalese. Vedda also retains a number of unique words that cannot be derived from Sinhalese. Vedda has exerted a substratum influence in the formation of Sinhalese. This is evident by the presence of both lexical and structural elements in Sinhalese which cannot be traced to either Indo-Aryan or neighboring Dravidian languages. ==History== It is unknown which languages were spoken in Sri Lanka prior to its settlement by Prakrit-speaking immigrants in the 5th century BCE. The Sinhalese term ''Vedda'' is a generic term denoting hunter-gatherers. In Tamil they are known as ''Vedar'', meaning 'hunter.' Cognate terms (Such as ''bedar, beda'') are used throughout South India to describe hunter-gatherers. Sri Lanka has had other hunter-gatherering peoples such as the Rodiya and Kinnaraya.〔 The earliest account of Vedda was written by Ryklof Van Goens (1663–1675), who served as a Director General of the Dutch East India Company in Sri Lanka. He wrote that the Veddas' language was much closer to Sinhalese than to Tamil. Robert Knox, an Englishman held captive by a Kandyan king, wrote in 1681 that the wild and settled Veddas spoke the language of the Sinhalese people. The Portuguese friar Fernão de Queiroz, who wrote a nuanced description of Vedda in 1686, reported that the language was not mutually intelligible with other native languages. Robert Percival wrote in 1803 that the Veddas, although seemingly speaking a broken dialect of Sinhalese, amongst themselves spoke a language that was known only to them. But John Davies in 1831 wrote that the Veddas spoke a language that was understood by the Sinhalese except for a few words. These discrepancies in observations were clarified by Charles Pridham, who wrote in 1848 that the Veddas knew a form of Sinhalese that they were able to use in talking to outsiders, but to themselves they spoke in a language that, although influenced by Sinhalese and Tamil, was understood only by them. The first systematic attempt at studying the Vedda language was undertaken by Hugh Neville, an English civil servant in British Ceylon. He founded ''The Taprobanian'', a quarterly journal devoted to the study of everything Ceylonese. He speculated, based on etymological studies, that Vedda is based on an Old Sinhalese form called Hela. His views were followed by Henry Parker, another English civil servant and the author of ''Ancient Ceylon'' (1909), who wrote that most Vedda words were borrowed from Sinhalese, but he also noted words of unique origin, which he assigned to the original language of the Veddas. The second most important study was made in 1935 by Wilhem Geiger, who also sounded the alarm that Vedda would be soon be extinct and needed to be studied in detail. One of the linguists to heed that call was Manniku W. Sugathapala De Silva who did a comprehensive study of the language in 1959 as a PhD thesis, which he published as a book: according to him, the language was restricted to the older generation of people from the Dambanna region, with the younger generation shifting to Sinhalese, whereas Coast Veddas were speaking a dialect of Sri Lankan Tamil that is used in the region. During religious festivals, people who enter a trance or spirit possession sometimes use a mixed language that contains words from Vedda.〔Vedars or Coast Veddas consider themselves and are considered by the Sri Lankan Tamils as a caste (''kulam'' or ''jati'' in Tamil), rather than an ethnic group. Nevertheless there is considerable debate amongst Vedars and their Tamil neighbors to their status within the caste system, Vedars claiming very high status and their neighbors assigning somewhat lower status. Vedars use the Sri Lankan Tamil dialect peculiar to that region called Batticaloa Tamil dialect in their day to day conversations. Vedar children also study in that language in schools. But during religious (''Sadangu'' in Tamil) ceremonies, those who are possessed by spirits speak in a mixed language that they call ''Vedar Sinkalam''(Vedar Sinhala") or ''Vedar Bhasai'' ("Vedar language") which is Vedda language of the interior Vedas. ''Vedar Sinkalam'' is mixed with many Tamil words, as people no longer know the language. At some point in the past that the people were bilingual in Vedda and Tamil, but that is no longer the case.〕 Veddas of the Anuradhapura region speak in Sinhalese, but use Vedda words to denote animals during hunting trips.〔In the late 1800s, Veddas of Anuradhapura did not identify themselves as Veddas to Parker and other British ethnologists. They self identified themselves as Vanniyas or people of the forest. But to James Brow an anthropologists who studied them in the 1970s they readily identified themselves as Veddas. Parker recorded number of hunting terms used by the Vanniyas that were similar to what the Veddas of Bintanne region used.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Vedda language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|