Common TuluDravidian, South Dravidian
The everyday register of the Bunt, Billava, Mogaveera and most other communities, from Udupi through Mangaluru to the Chandragiri.
बोलने वाले: About 18.5 lakh returned in the 2011 Census
इस क्षेत्र का अनुवाद अभी इस भाषा में नहीं हुआ है, इसलिए यह अंग्रेज़ी में दिखाया जा रहा है।
Tulu Nadu · Western Coastal Strip
बोली और मौखिक परंपरा
Tulu is a South Dravidian language, not a dialect of Kannada, and its separation from the Tamil–Kannada line is old. It returned about 18.5 lakh speakers in the 2011 Census, is not in the Eighth Schedule, and is taught in only a small number of schools. It has a script of its own — Tigalari — which was used for centuries for Sanskrit manuscripts on this coast and for the Tulu epics, and which almost nobody now reads; everyday Tulu is written in the Kannada script. The language's practical problem is arithmetic: its speakers are divided between two states, and in neither are they numerous enough to be the majority.
बोलियाँ
Brahmin Tulu (Shivalli)Dravidian, South Dravidian
A distinct register with its own pronouns, verb endings and a heavier Sanskrit lexicon — different enough that linguists describe the two as separate dialects rather than as class variation.
Beary basheDravidian
The speech of the Beary Muslim community of the coast: a Malayalam-derived vocabulary carried on Tulu and Kannada structure, with Arabic and Persian trade and religious terms. It has its own state academy in Karnataka and no script tradition of its own.
Karnataka KonkaniIndo-Aryan
Spoken by Gaud Saraswat Brahmin and Catholic families whose ancestors moved south along the coast from Goa from the sixteenth century. Written here in Kannada script by the Saraswats and historically in Roman script by the Catholics — one language, two orthographies, along one street.
Kundapura KannadaDravidian, South Dravidian
The register of the northern taluks, where Tulu gives out. Speakers are Kannada-speaking but hold the whole Tulu ritual calendar, which is why the region's boundary is argued about.
KoragaDravidian
A separate language with a few thousand speakers, classified as endangered, spoken by a community listed as a particularly vulnerable tribal group. Ajalu, a degrading practice imposed on Koragas, has been prohibited by Karnataka statute.
स्थानीय शब्दावली
| शब्द | अर्थ |
|---|---|
| Daiva ದೈವ | A named, local, embodied spirit with a territory, a shrine, a story and obligations — not a god of the pan-Indian pantheon, and approached before one. |
| Daivasthana / Bhutasthana ದೈವಸ್ಥಾನ | The shrine of a daiva, attached to a household, a lineage or a village, and administratively separate from any temple. |
| Kola / Nema ಕೋಲ / ನೇಮ | The possession performance itself. Kola is the general term; Nema is the larger, multi-night observance for a major daiva. |
| Paddana ಪಾಡ್ದನ | The sung epic of a daiva, in Tulu, performed before and during the possession. |
| Patri ಪಾತ್ರಿ | The oracle — a person, often from a different community than the costumed performer, who is possessed and speaks for the daiva. |
| Aliya Santana ಅಳಿಯ ಸಂತಾನ | Literally the nephew's line: inheritance through the sister's son. It governed property and headship among Bunts, Billavas, several Jain families and others, and was codified in colonial law as the Madras Aliyasantana Act, 1949, before partition and modern succession law dissolved it in practice. |
| Guttu ಗುತ್ತು | The manorial house of a matrilineal landholding family, with its own daivasthana and ritual duties. Land has long since been divided; the guttu survives as an address, a name suffix and a set of obligations at the annual Kola. |
| Garodi ಗರಡಿ | The Billava community's combined gymnasium and shrine, dedicated to Koti and Chennaya, where martial training and worship happened in one building — the structural cousin of the kalari on the coast to the south. |
| Kambala ಕಂಬಳ | Paired-buffalo racing down a flooded paddy track, run between November and March, in categories that differ by whether the runner holds a plough, a rope, a plank or a round block. |
| Aati ಆಟಿ | The lean lunar month inside the monsoon — no weddings, no new ventures, medicinal food, and the one figure who visits houses in it. |
| Gassi ಗಸ್ಸಿ | A curry built on a wet-ground roasted-coconut masala. The word describes the base, not the meat. |
| Tigalari ತಿಗಳಾರಿ | The historic script of this coast, related to the script from which Malayalam's descends, used for Sanskrit manuscripts and for the Tulu epics. Preserved in palm-leaf collections; read by a handful of specialists. |
कहावतें
| कहावत | शाब्दिक अर्थ | अर्थ |
|---|---|---|
| Parashurama Srishti | Parashurama's creation | The coast's own account of itself — land won back from the sea when the sage threw his axe from the mountains. It is used from Gokarna to Kanyakumari and explains why this whole strip thinks of itself as one made thing rather than as the edge of anywhere. |
| Kudla, Kodial, Maikala, Mangalapuram | The same town in Tulu, Konkani, Beary and Malayalam | Four communities, four names, one estuary — and none of the four is the English name the railway uses. Which name a person reaches for tells you which street they grew up on. |
| Hittalada gida maddalla | The plant in the backyard is not medicine | A Kannada proverb in constant use along this coast: what is near at hand is undervalued. Often said about the language itself. |
Tulu Nadu की बोलियाँ, स्थानीय शब्दावली और कहावतें। (15)