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: Archaic terms 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 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 in Vedda means 'sky', but in a 10th-century Sinhalese exegetical work called , it is used in the meaning of 'cloud'. in Vedda meaning 'fish' is similar to found in a 10th-century monastic work called Sikhavalanda. in Vedda means 'near' or 'with'. This word is attested in the 12th-century eulogy called Butsarana. meaning 'wearing apparel' is similar to the Sinhalese word found in the 13th century work Ummagga Jatakaya; alternatively in Tamil is a 'loincloth', a cloth worn by early Veddas. 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 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. Substratum influence in Sinhalese and contemporary situation These features place Vedda language as an independent body of language, than a creole variety of Sinhala. Now the Vedda language is fast mingling with Sinhala/Tamil according to the respective neighboring contexts. 'From the Southern Sinhala speaking areas Vedda language gets the Sinhala influence, while from the Northern areas it gets the Tamil influence'. According to Prof. Premakumara De Silva and Asitha G. Punchihewa of the University of Colombo, 'the original language of the Veddas has now become a second language mostly commercialized as a tourist attraction, than a cultural asset'. Their functioning language has become Sinhala/Tamil and those who speak the traditional language now are mostly the older generation. The second generation and the youth are more prone to use Sinhala. There are even those who have very little to no knowledge of the Vedda language. Their language has