Vedda is an endangered language spoken by roughly 300 people of the indigenous Vedda community in Sri Lanka's Uva Province, out of an ethnolinguistic Vedda population of about 2,500. Its classification is disputed: Ethnologue places it within the Indo-Aryan branch of Indo-European, while other linguists treat it as a language isolate unrelated to either the Dravidian or Indo-European families, and recent research describes the modern language as a creole that developed through long contact between the Veddas and early Tamil and Sinhala speakers while retaining a distinct grammatical core. UNESCO classifies Vedda as definitely endangered, with the language confined to older generations since at least the late 1950s as younger speakers shift to Sinhala or Tamil.
Facts
RegionSri Lanka: the North Central, Uva and Eastern regions 1 Speaker Count Proto-Language StatusVedda is classified as Indo-Aryan by Ethnologue, but some linguists instead treat it as a language isolate unrelated to either Dravidian or Indo-European, so no single agreed proto-language lineage exists for it. 1 Sources
1. Wikipedia: Vedda Language
Wikimedia FoundationClassification section, Dialect creole or independent language subsection
they have extended their settlements once more in the North Central, Uva and Eastern regions
- Infobox, speakers field
Lead section, first paragraph
According to Ethnologue, Vedda is an Indo-European language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch, but some linguists consider it a language isolate that is not related to either Dravidian or Indo-European.
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