Vedda Language - Lexicon

Lexicon

Many of the Vedda words are directly borrowed from Sinhalese or Tamil via Sinhalese while maintaining words that are not derivable from Sinhalese or its cognate languages from the Indo-Aryan language group. Vedda also exhibits a propensity for paraphrases and it coins words from its limited lexical stock rather than to borrow words from other languages including Sinhalese. For example:

Sinhalese Vedda English
nava maadiyanganalle dandDukacca (vehicle of the ocean) ship
vassa uDatanin mandovena diyaracca (water falling from above) rain
tuvakkuva (loan from Turkish) puccakazDana yamake (shooting thing) gun
upadinava baDapojjen mangaccanvaa (come from the belly) to be born
padura vaterena yamake (sleeping thing) bed
pansala (loan from English) kurukurugaccana ulpojja (spike making kuru kuru sound) pencil

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