MANGALURU: Tulu, which is widely spoken in Dakshina Kannada, Udupi and Kasaragod districts, has been added to the Unicode, a text encoding standard, by the Unicode Consortium. The language has been added in the Unicode Standard Version 16.0, and around 80 Tulu characters have been added to the Unicode. Tharanath Gatti Kapikad, chairman, Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy, in a statement, said the recognition of the Tulu script by adding the language to Unicode has fulfilled the long-cherished dream of the Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy and the entire Tulu-speaking community across the world.
Kapikad said many experts had worked on this effort after the then academy president AC Bhandary formed an expert committee to coordinate the matter and extended support on behalf of the academy in 2017. In subsequent years, experts submitted requests and revisions to push for the acceptance of the Tulu script by Unicode continuously.
He said experts, including KP Rao, UB Pavanaja, Vaishnavi Murthy, SA Krishnaiah, Radhakrishna Belluru, Bhaskar Sherigar, SR Vighnaraj and Akash Raj contributed to make this dream a reality.
“With Unicode recognising the Tulu script under another name, Tulu- Tigalari, people across the world will have access to texts written in Tulu script.”