The Language of the Vaddas

Summary

This study of the language of the Vaddas examines the speech of one of the most isolated communities of Sri Lanka. The author first reviews the ethnographic literature, noting that the Vaddas are divided into rock‑dwelling bands who live by hunting and gathering, village groups who cultivate small plots and have intermarried with Sinhalese, and coast‑dwelling bands who fish and trade. He then records and analyses samples of vocabulary, grammar and phonetics collected during fieldwork. The Vadda language shares many core lexical items and grammatical structures with Sinhalese but preserves archaic forms that have disappeared from modern Sinhala. For example, personal pronouns retain old inflections, verbs show a past tense ending in –dā and nouns use declensional suffixes unknown to other Sinhala dialects. The article supplies lists of words connected with kinship, hunting, local fauna and beliefs, pointing out borrowings from Tamil, Pali and even Portuguese. Vadda phonology lacks aspirated consonants and exhibits a tendency to stress the first syllable, features that distinguish it sharply from Sinhalese. In discussing syntax, the author notes that clauses are strung together without subordination, suggesting that complex sentences are a later innovation. Linguistic data are correlated with social observations: the most traditional rock‑Vaddas have the most distinct speech, while village‑Vaddas have almost merged with neighbouring Sinhala communities. The author argues that Vadda speech is not an independent language but a conservative dialect of Sinhalese reflecting an earlier stage in the island’s linguistic history. The isolation of the Vaddas has preserved archaic features that help reconstruct the development of Sinhala, yet the increasing assimilation of the community threatens to erase this linguistic heritage. The article closes by urging scholars to document the speech and folklore of the Vaddas before they disappear.