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50-602: The suburb has shown rapid development after the old Katugastota bridge which was constructed over 100 years ago by the British was replaced by a new 4 lane one with major upgrades to the road network along the A9 and A10 roads. The Sinhalese name කටු-ගස්-තොට ( Katu-gas-tota) literally means "Port with thorn trees". Another belief is that the name is derived from the Sinhalese name කඩු-ගත්-තොට which means "port with sword-bearers". According to

100-420: A marker). Inanimate nouns use suffixes such as –rukula and –danda with nouns denoting body parts and other suffixes such as -pojja , -tana , and -gejja . Suffixes are used when the words are borrowed from Sinhalese. There are number of forms that are from the original Vedda language that lack suffixes such as Vedda inanimate nouns are formed by borrowing Sinhalese adjectives and adding

150-783: A supposed former abundance of lions on the island. According to the chronicle Mahāvaṃsa , written in Pali, Prince Vijaya of the Vanga Kingdom and his entourage merged in Sri Lanka with later settlers from the Pandya kingdom . In the following centuries, there was substantial immigration from Eastern India, including additional migration from the Vanga Kingdom (Bengal), as well as Kalinga and Magadha . This influx led to an admixture of features of Eastern Prakrits. The development of Sinhala

200-622: A tropical rainforest climate ( Köppen : Af ) characterized by warm temperatures and a significant amount of rainfall. Katugastota has a wet season from October to December. 7°20′N 80°37′E  /  7.333°N 80.617°E  / 7.333; 80.617 Sinhala language Sinhala ( / ˈ s ɪ n h ə l ə , ˈ s ɪ ŋ ə l ə / SIN -hə-lə, SING -ə-lə ; Sinhala: සිංහල , siṁhala , [ˈsiŋɦələ] ), sometimes called Sinhalese ( / ˌ s ɪ n ( h ) ə ˈ l iː z , ˌ s ɪ ŋ ( ɡ ) ə ˈ l iː z / SIN -(h)ə- LEEZ , SING -(g)ə- LEEZ ),

250-653: A Dravidian origin for this word. ), dola for pig in Vedda and offering in Sinhala. Other common words are rera for wild duck, and gala for stones (in toponyms used throughout the island, although others have also suggested a Dravidian origin). There are also high frequency words denoting body parts in Sinhala, such as olluva for head, kakula for leg, bella for neck and kalava for thighs, that are derived from pre-Sinhalese languages of Sri Lanka. The oldest Sinhala grammar, Sidatsan̆garavā , written in

300-407: A gender classification in inanimate and animate nouns. Formerly distinct Vedda nouns have two types of suffixes, one for animate and another for inanimate. The animate suffixes are –atto for personal pronouns and –laatto for all other animate nouns and –pojja and –raaccaa for personified nouns. Examples are These suffixes are also used in singular and plural forms based on

350-479: A limited lexical stock. Vedda maintains many archaic Sinhalese terms from the 10th to 12th centuries, as a relict of its close contact with Sinhalese, while retaining 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 . It

400-722: A period of prior bilingualism: "The earliest type of contact in Sri Lanka, not considering the aboriginal Vedda languages, was that which occurred between South Dravidian and Sinhala. It seems plausible to assume prolonged contact between these two populations as well as a high degree of bilingualism. This explains why Sinhala looks deeply South Dravidian for an Indo-Aryan language. There is corroboration in genetic findings." In addition to many Tamil loanwords , several phonetic and grammatical features also present in neighbouring Dravidian languages set modern spoken Sinhala apart from its Northern Indo-Aryan relatives. These features are evidence of close interactions with Dravidian speakers. Some of

450-424: A rupture is created in their relationship with their original language. Such situations were often the consequences of slavery and trade that occurred from the 17th to the 19th centuries owing to the process of colonization. As far as the Vedda community is concerned, although the features of a creole are visible in terms of phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon, a number of distinctions have been identified between

500-655: A suffix. Kavi is the Sinhalese adjective for the noun Kaviya , whereas the Vedda noun is kavi-tana , where tana is a suffix. Examples of pronouns are meeatto ('I'), topan ('you'), eyaba ('there'), koyba ('where?'). Compared to Sinhalese, which requires five forms to address people based on status, Vedda uses one ( topan ) irrespective of status. These pronouns are also used in both singular and plural denotations. These are found in definite and indefinite forms, for example ekama 'one' (def.) and ekamak 'once' (indef.) They count ekamay , dekamay and tunamay . Vedda also reduces

550-519: Is a creole which evolved from ancient times, when the Veddas came into contact with the early Sinhalese, from whom they increasingly borrowed words and synthetic features, yielding the cumulative effect that Vedda resembles Sinhalese in many particulars, but its grammatical core remains intact. The parent Vedda language(s) is of unknown linguistic origins, while Sinhalese is part of the Indo-Aryan branch of

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600-473: Is a conspicuous example of the linguistic phenomenon known as diglossia . Sinhala ( Siṁhala ) is a Sanskrit term; the corresponding Middle Indo-Aryan ( Eḷu ) word is Sīhala . The name is a derivative of [[[:wikt:सिंह|siṁha]]] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script ( help ) , the Sanskrit word for 'lion'. The name is sometimes glossed as 'abode of lions', and attributed to

650-429: Is added to the infinitive. In Sinhalese, all indicative sentences whether negative or affirmative, exhibit two tenses – past and non past, but in Vedda a three-term tense system is used in affirmative sentences, but not in negative. Sinhalese pronouns have number distinction, but Vedda does not have number distinction. The Vedda verbal and nominal inflexions are similar to Sinhalese but are not identical. Vedda also exhibits

700-584: Is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka , who make up the largest ethnic group on the island, numbering about 16 million. Sinhala is also spoken as the first language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, totalling about 2 million speakers as of 2001. It is written using the Sinhala script , which is a Brahmic script closely related to the Grantha script of South India. Sinhala

750-401: Is an endangered language that is used by the indigenous Vedda people of Sri Lanka . Additionally, communities such as Coast Veddas and Anuradhapura Veddas who do not strictly identify as Veddas also use words from 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

800-479: Is divided into four epochs: The most important phonetic developments of Sinhala include: According to Wilhelm Geiger , an example of a possible Western feature in Sinhala is the retention of initial /v/ which developed into /b/ in the Eastern languages (e.g. Sanskrit viṁśati "twenty", Sinhala visi- , Hindi bīs ). This is disputed by Muhammad Shahidullah who says that Sinhala Prakrit branched off from

850-412: Is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, alongside Tamil . Along with Pali , it played a major role in the development of Theravada Buddhist literature. Early forms of the Sinhala language are attested as early as the 3rd century BCE. The language of these inscriptions, still retaining long vowels and aspirated consonants, is a Prakrit similar to Magadhi , a regional associate of

900-456: Is seen in other Creole languages like Melanesian Pidgin English and Jamaican English Creole . The preponderance of the palatal affricates is explained as a remainder from days when the original Vedda language had a high frequency of such phonemes. In Sinhalese, indicative sentences are negated by adding a negative particle to the emphatic form of the verb, whereas in Vedda, the negative particle

950-502: Is unknown which languages were spoken in Sri Lanka before it was settled by Prakrit -speaking immigrants in the 5th century BCE. The term Vedda is a Dravidian word and stems from the Tamil word Vēdu meaning 'hunting'. Cognate terms (such as bedar, beda in Kannada ) are used throughout South India to describe hunter-gatherers. Sri Lanka has had other hunter-gathering peoples such as

1000-641: The Indo-European language family . Phonologically , Vedda is distinguished from Sinhalese by the higher frequency of palatal sounds [c] and [ɟ]. 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 of borrowing new words from Sinhalese or other languages, Vedda creates combinations of words from

1050-700: The Middle Indian Prakrits that had been used during the time of the Buddha . The most closely related languages are the Vedda language (an endangered, indigenous creole still spoken by a minority of Sri Lankans, mixing Sinhala with an isolate of unknown origin and from which Old Sinhala borrowed various aspects into its main Indo-Aryan substrate), and the Maldivian language . It has two main varieties, written and spoken, and

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1100-517: 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

1150-576: The UNESCO National Commission of Ceylon According to Wilhelm Geiger , Sinhala has features that set it apart from other Indo-Aryan languages. Some of the differences can be explained by the substrate influence of the parent stock of the Vedda language . Sinhala has many words that are only found in Sinhala, or shared between Sinhala and Vedda and not etymologically derivable from Middle or Old Indo-Aryan. Possible examples include kola for leaf in Sinhala and Vedda (although others suggest

1200-405: The 10th century until the 13th century, the purported period of close contact between the original Vedda language(s) and Old Sinhala leading to the development of the creole. Some examples are: According to research at the turn of the 20th century by British anthropologists Charles and Brenda Seligman, the use of archaic Sinhalese words in Vedda may have arisen from the need to communicate freely in

1250-464: The 13th century CE, recognised a category of words that exclusively belonged to early Sinhala. The grammar lists naram̆ba (to see) and koḷom̆ba (fort or harbour) as belonging to an indigenous source. Koḷom̆ba is the source of the name of the commercial capital Colombo . The consistent left branching syntax and the loss of aspirated stops in Sinhala is attributed to a probable South Dravidian substratum effect. This has been explained by

1300-700: The Eastern Prakrits prior to this change. He cites the edicts of Ashoka , no copy of which shows this sound change. An example of an Eastern feature is the ending -e for masculine nominative singular (instead of Western -o ) in Sinhalese Prakrit. There are several cases of vocabulary doublets , one example being the words mæssā ("fly") and mækkā ("flea"), which both correspond to Sanskrit makṣikā but stem from two regionally different Prakrit words macchiā (Western Prakrits) and makkhikā (as in Eastern Prakrits like Pali ). In 1815,

1350-805: The Katugastota Hospital and the Kandy Private Hospital (KPH). KPH is located approximately 2.5 km (1.6 mi) from the Katugastota towards the Kandy city centre. It provides both out patient, specialist channeling services and residential treatment facilities. The Peoples Bank is located in the Kandy - Kurunegala high way. The Bank of Ceylon Katugastota branch is located in the Madawala Road. The Sampath Bank, Commercial Bank, Seylan Bank and DFCC bank are

1400-409: 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

1450-399: The Vedda language and the classic creolization which occurred during the colonial period. Here it is also important to acknowledge the existence of many issues in relation to the process of creolization that remain unresolved in the domain of linguistics. Therefore, the classification of the Vedda language either as a dialect or as a creole becomes a difficult task, although it is clear that in

1500-596: 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

1550-436: 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

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1600-604: The Vedi rata or Maha vedi rata. Subsequently, the Vedda language was subjected to hybridisation depending on the geographical locality of the community. For instance, the language of the Veddas living in the North Central and Uva regions was affected by Sinhala, while the language of the coastal Veddas in the East was influenced by the Tamil language. However, there are still many arguments regarding

1650-473: The country. Although in phonemic inventory Vedda is very similar to Sinhalese, in phonotactics it is very dissimilar to Sinhalese. The usage of palatal plosives ( [ c ] and [ ɟ ] ) is very high in Vedda. Some comparisons: This effect is heightened by the addition of inanimate suffixes such as pojja , gejja or raacca . These suffixes are used in tandem with borrowings from Sinhalese. These transformations are very similar to what

1700-527: The current context the Vedda language is not an independent language of its own. However based on recent studies conducted on the Vedda community, it has been revealed that the Vedda language is on the verge of facing extinction since the younger generation is keen on using Sinhala or Tamil as their first language, being influenced by the dominant language of the region of residence due to an array of reasons including fragmentation of settlements, economic policies, national education structure and political factors of

1750-562: The differences can be explained by the substrate influence of parent stock of the Vedda language. Sinhalese has many words that are only found in Sinhalese or it is shared between Sinhalese and Vedda and cannot be etymologically derived from Middle or Old Indo-Aryan. Common examples are kola in Sinhalese and Vedda for 'leaf' (although others suggest a Dravidian origin for this word. ), dola in Sinhalese for 'pig' and 'offering' in Vedda. Other common words are rera for 'wild duck' and gala for 'stones' in toponyms found throughout

1800-458: The features that may be traced to Dravidian influence are: ඒක ēka it අලුත් aḷut new කියලා kiyalā having-said මම mama I දන්නවා dannavā know ඒක අලුත් කියලා මම දන්නවා ēka aḷut kiyalā mama dannavā it new having-said I know "I know that it is new." ඒක ēka it අලුත් aḷut new ද da Q කියලා kiyalā having-said මම mama I දන්නේ Vedda language Vedda

1850-448: The forest', which later transformed into vadi . The language contact that might have occurred between the Aryan immigrants and the aboriginal inhabitants could have led either to a language shift or to the crystallization of a new language through the creation of a pidgin. The first instance could have been in effect in relation to the members of the Vedda community who were absorbed into

1900-428: The histories, Sri Lanka has been divided into three parts well known as Ruhunu(රුහුණු), Maya(මායා) and Pihiti(පිහිටි), with each of them divided into kingdoms, provinces and districts as per the 'Tun-Sinhale proposal' and Katugastota was the center point of Sri Lanka. The 'Three Sinhala Seemaramaya', together with the '18 Riyan statue of Lord Buddha' still remain to show the division point. Katugastota has two hospitals,

1950-478: The indigenous population of Sri Lanka is said to have inhabited the island prior to the arrival of the Aryans in the 5th century B.C. and after the collapse of the dry zone civilization in the 15th century, they have extended their settlements once more in the North Central, Uva and Eastern regions. However, with the entering of the colonization schemes to the island after the 19th century, the Vedda population has shrunk to

2000-411: The island (although others have also suggested a Dravidian origin). There are also high frequency words denoting body parts in Sinhalese such as oluva for 'head', kakula for 'leg', bella for 'neck' and kalava for 'thighs' that are derived from pre-Sinhalese languages of Sri Lanka. The author of the oldest Sinhalese grammar, Sidatsangarava, written in the 13th century has recognized

2050-538: The island of Ceylon came under British rule . During the career of Christopher Reynolds as a Sinhalese lecturer at the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London , he extensively researched the Sinhalese language and its pre-1815 literature. The Sri Lankan government awarded him the Sri Lanka Ranjana medal for his work. He wrote the 377-page An anthology of Sinhalese literature up to 1815 , selected by

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2100-628: The language was restricted to the older generation of people from the Dambana 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. Veddas of the Anuradhapura region speak in Sinhalese, but use Vedda words to denote animals during hunting trips. The Vedda community or

2150-503: The new settlements, while in the second instance the occasional contact of the Veddas with the new settlers would have resulted in the crystallization of a new language instead of the original Vedda language. The term creole refers to a linguistic medium which has crystallized in a situation of language contact and the process of this crystallization begins as a pidgin. A pidgin is spoken natively by an entire speech community, whose ancestors have been geographically displaced through which

2200-758: The number formations found in Sinhalese. Another example of simplification in Vedda is the minimisation of negative meanings found in Sinhalese: Many 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 borrowing words from other languages including Sinhalese. For example: Vedda maintains in its lexicon archaic Sinhalese words that are no longer in daily usage. These archaic words are attested from classical Sinhalese prose from

2250-483: The origin of the Vedda language. Ariesen Ahubudu calls the Vedda language a "dialect of Sinhala", saying that it is a creole language variety derived from Sinhala. According to him, "Veddas belong to the post Vijayan period and they use a language which has its origins in the Sinhala language." He further explains this with an etymological explanation of the term vadi , that evolved from dava , meaning 'forest, timber'. This became davi , meaning 'those who live in

2300-400: 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 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,

2350-400: The presence of Sinhalese speakers without being understood. They claimed that this need encouraged the development of a code internal to the Vedda language that included archaic Sinhalese words (as well as mispronounced and invented words) in order to intentionally obfuscate meaning. According to Geiger and Gair, Sinhalese has features that set it apart from other Indo-Aryan languages. Some of

2400-915: The private banks in Katugastota. The Sampath bank is located in Madawala road approximately 100 m from the Bank of Ceylon bank. The DFCC Bank is located right before the DFCC bank and the Seylan bank is located in Kandy-Kurunegala highway approximately 200 m from the Katugastota Bridge before St. Anthony's Girls College. Popular and prestigious St. Anthony's College is situated in the center of Katugasthota, and there are few more famous schools such as Sri Rahula college, St. Anthony's girls school, Zahira college, Mahaweli school, Wesswood International etc... Katugastota has

2450-443: The verbal and non-verbal context. The dependence on verbal (and non-verbal) context for semantic specification, which is accomplished by inflectional devices by natural languages is an indication of a contact language. Certain words that appear to be from original Vedda language do not have these suffixes; also, animate nouns also have gender distinctions, with small animals treated as feminine ( i marker) and larger ones masculine (

2500-409: Was confined to the older generation of Veddas from Dambana . In the 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 the language spoken by today's Veddas

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