Nitte to release Tulu cognate dictionary

Mangaluru: At a time when there are serious and passionate attempts to secure recognition for Tulu in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, works relating to the linguistic features of the language and cognate dictionary for Tulu has come in handy to support its claim for such an honour.
In order to support the cause, Nitte (deemed to be university) is all set to release a Tulu-Centred Dravidian Cognate Dictionary on Friday. The dictionary comes with four years of continuous hard work by involving several linguistic experts, and has more than 37,300 cognates. The Dictionary of Dravidian Cognates has Tulu words recorded as main entries. It is followed by Kannada, Kodava, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu words, which follow in respective order.

Sayeegeetha, HoD, department of Humanities, K S Hegde Medical Academy, told TOI that the work on a cognate dictionary took place during the 1960s, which was done by foreign scholars. It just an etymology dictionary then. The work was again taken up a few years later. “However, the work taken up under Nitte (deemed university) for the dictionary has been done by putting in a lot of effort,” said Sayeegeetha.

N Vinaya Hegde, chancellor of the varsity, with his love and commitment to Tulu, gave the green signal for the project. On September 24, 2014, the project on compiling the Tulu Cognate Dictionary was launched. Prof K P Rao provided the ‘Apaara’ software he had crafted for the project. The committee to make the dictionary consisted of Padmanabha Kekunnaya and Sayeegeetha as the executive editors, Vamana Nandavara and Bennet Amanna as members and Pradyoth Hegde as the technical assistant.

She added that the dictionary work has been carried out in a record period of just 4 years, employing more than 2,000 man hours. The work has a very detailed introduction both in Kannada and English, which gives a clear picture of the Tulu language, literature and a critical appraisal of the dictionaries produced hitherto in Tulu.

Salient features

#A dictionary of Dravidian cognates in which Tulu words are recorded as main entries.

# Kannada, Kodava, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu words follow in respective order.

# Cognates from Havyaka, Moya Malayalam, Koraga and Belari languages are also considered and recorded in due places.

# Every cognate word (i.e main entry and its variation, if any) is first given in revised Kannada script followed by transliteration in revised Roman script.

#Cognate words from languages other than Tulu are recorded only in revised Roman script.

# All the cognates are given according to the visual form as seen in the indigenous scripts of respective languages, without following the pronouncing form.

#Meanings of Tulu words are given both in Kannada and English languages.

# Shades of meaning are shown by differentiating them with serial numbers.

# Different font types are employed to make the dictionary more lucid and attractive.

#The dictionary has seven indices, given in the beginning, to facilitate an easy search of cognate words.

#Two appendices and fourteen annexures follow the main body of the dictionary.

#There are 7,064 main entries and meanings are given for more than 37,300 cognates.