Tulu phrasebook

Tulu (ತುಳು) is a regional language spoken in coastal districts of Karnataka, i.e. Dakshina Kannada, Udupi and some areas of Kasaragod District . It is the 24th most populous Indian language according to the 2001 census of India. It is often mistakenly claimed as a dialect of Kannada, but it is actually an independently derived descendent of the proto-Dravidian language. Tulu does not have a widely used script, though efforts are on to discover or construct one. Most writing in the language is in the Kannada script. A lack of a script, however, has not prevented it from developing a vibrant literature of its own, most notably poems and plays.

One remarkable feature of Tulu is the number of dialects that you will find in the small geographical area. Not only are there regional differences, there are also caste-based dialects. Different sub-castes of Brahmins speak different dialects of Tulu, all of them different from the "standard" dialect described here.