0.0. General
Many Dravidian Languages are spoken in India. Among them, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu have very good written literature. But some other languages like Badaga, Coorg, Kota, Toda, Tulu, etc. have neither written literature nor scripts of their own. The present study is an attempt to investigate the characteristics of TULU as spoken today.
0.1. Tulu-locality
Nowadays, the existing Tulu-area' lies mostly in the district of South Kanara, Mysore State, India and to some extent, in the Kasaergod Taluk, Kerala State. Before the reorganization of the Linguistic States in India (in 1956), the entire Tulu-region was annexed to the present Tamilnad (previous Madras State). The boundaries of Tulu-land are the Kalyanapur river on the north, the Chandragiri River on the south, the Arabic Ocean on the west, and the Western-ghats on the east. The important places are Udipi, Mangalore, Karkal and Puttur.
0.2. Tulu-language
Tulu language has no written form of literature. But it has a good amount of oral literature. The number of Tulu-speakers might be above one million. There is one grammar written in 1982, and also one descriptive analysis of Tulu. There are two dictionaries', but, they are out of print. There are some translations of the Bible in Tulu written in Kannada script. Virtually, no other work in Tulu is worth mentioning.
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