Tulu language
Spoken in
- Dravidian Süddravidisch Tulu
-
Dra
Tcy
Tulu ( Tulu ) is a Dravidian language in southwest India, which is spoken by about 1.7 million people in the coastal area of the states of Karnataka and Kerala as their mother tongue. Many native speakers are bilingual in Kannada. Tulu is usually expected to south- Dravidian subgroup, some researchers suggest it is also the south- central Dravidian group.
Dissemination
The Tulu Nadu or as Tulunad ( " Tulu - land") called Tulu - speaking area comprises a coastal strip in the south west of India to the city of Mangalore around. It is for the most part to the state of Karnataka, to a lesser extent to Kerala, covering the southern part of the district of Udupi, Dakshina Kannada District and the northern part of the district of Kasaragod. The northern boundary is marked by the river Suvarna, the southern of the Chandragiri River, to the east the Tulu - speaking region is bounded by the mountains of the Western Ghats. In the region of Tulu Nadu speaker of many languages live ( Tulu, Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Malayalam, Koraga ), but all use the Tulu as a lingua franca for informal and formal affairs for Kannada.
In the Indian census 2001, about 1.7 million people Tulu reported as mother tongue. Of these, 1.5 million lived in the state of Karnataka.
Linguistic history
Although Tulu probably one of the first individual languages split from the süddravidischen original language, the earliest language monument is an inscription from the 15th century. In the 17th century two epic poems, Sri Bāgavato and Kaveri emerged. Therefore, almost nothing is known about the development of the language until the 15th century. In the following centuries, there was only a weak literary tradition.
Tulu was revived in the first half of the 19th century by German missionaries. They printed Tulu literature and Christian texts ( Bible translation in 1872 ), although they used for the Kannada script, which even then only rarely used Tulu script was further pushed back. In 1900, the old script was therefore advised almost entirely out of use.
The British orientalist Robert Caldwell took in his major work, A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages in 1856 as the first systematic, scientific study of language Tulu ago. Another grammar was created in 1872 by a British linguist. In the 20th century, especially U. S. V. Ramaswamy Iyer and L. Panniyadi looked closely at the grammar of the Tulu. They also set up the controversial theory that Tulu is older than the other major süddravidischen languages Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam. In the 1970s, the Tulu literature experienced a renaissance. Since then, numerous novels, collections of poetry, short stories and dramas on Tulu have been published.
Linguistic characteristics
Phonology
The phoneme inventory of Tulu has 14 vowels, seven short and seven long. Striking is the most other Dravidian languages unknown vowels ɛ and ɯ. They only come in certain positions before, but there contrasting with e and u, cf debate " he came " with battɛ " I came " and pattu " it will catch " with pattɯ " start ".
In Tulu 21 consonant phonemes occur. The plosives come in rows of five (labial, dental, retroflex, palatal and velar ), each in a voiceless and voiced variant before. In some dialects, there is the retroflex lateral l, in others, however, s and ¶ c collapsed. Consonant clusters in word-initial are rare and occur mainly in Sanskrit loanwords ago.
Morphology
Tulu has three parts of speech: nouns, verbs, and Indeklinierbare. Nouns take suffixes, case and number show the, verbs suffixes show by the person, number and gender, as well as categories such as Kausativität, reflexivity or Kompletivität. The Indeklinierbaren include adjectives and adverbs, which are generally not bowed.
The plural suffix is - rɯ, allu - or - kulu. The Tulu knows eight case: nominative, accusative, dative, ablative, two locatives, Soziativ and genitive. The nominative is unmarked, the remaining cases are expressed by suffixes that are appended to the plural suffix in the singular of the verb stem, in the plural. The case suffixes have allophones that occur under certain circumstances. Some strains undergo changes when they take suffixes, so kudka "fox" is in the accusative to kudke - nɯ.
In addition, there is a vocative, which is formed by changing the vowel stammauslautenden, eg bave > Bava " brother ". More specific issues are expressed by postpositions, which usually govern the genitive, eg gudde -da mittɯ " on the hill ".
The personal pronouns are declined irregularly: yānɯ " I " makes Kasussuffixen the oblique strain en- in. For "we" there is an inclusive and exclusive pronouns: eṅkulu " we ( without you) " and nama " we ( you) ". The verb forms but this distinction does not exist. Are the personal pronouns of the second person ī ( oblique - ni ) "you" and nuwgulu " her ". In the third person is between masculine, feminine and neuter, as well as proximal and distal deixis distinction, eg imbe / rename " ( this one) he " aye " ( that ) he ". In the personal pronouns can (also in the third person ) formed a polite form of the suffix - rɯ: īrɯ "you", ārɯ " he ( respectfully ) ".
Font
Tulu was formerly written in its own typeface similar to that of Malayalam, which is now used only by Brahmins for religious texts. Otherwise, use is nowadays exclusively fixed by Christian missionaries in their present form in the 19th century Kannada writing, although not all Tulu - sounds can be played back in this document.
Dialects and sociolects
The Netravati River divides the Tulu - speaking area in a northern and a southern dialect area. In total there are five spatially separate dialects of Tulu. The south-western dialect, which is spoken in the Kasaragod District in Kerala, is influenced by Malayalam, while the other, common in Karnataka dialects have mainly influences from Kannada.
Besides Tulu has several sociolects. So stands out as the linguistic form of the Brahmin elite by a particularly high number of loanwords from Sanskrit from which are often even more pronounced with aspirated consonants that do not actually exist in Tulu.