Kannada
Kannada - aptly described as 'sirigannada' (known to few as Kanarese) is one of the oldest Dravidian languages and is spoken in its various dialects by roughly
45 million people. It is the state language of Karnataka, one of the four
southern states in India.
The language
The Kannada language has been spoken for about 2000 years, with the Kannada writing system being in use for about the last
1500 years. The initial development of the Kannada language is similar to that of other Dravidian languages, notably Tamil and Telugu. During later
centuries, Kannada, along with Telugu, has been highly influenced by Sanskrit
vocabulary and literary styles.
Kannada is a higly inflected language with three genders (masculine, feminine, neutral or common) and two numbers (singular, plural). It is inflected for
gender, number and tense, among other things.
There is also a sharp distinction between the spoken and written forms of the language. Spoken Kannada tends to vary from
region to region. The written form is more or less constant throughout Karnataka,
however. The ethnologue identifies about 20 dialects of Kannada. Notable of
them are Kodava (spoken in Coorg district), Kunda (spoken exclusively in Kundapura), Havyaka (spoken mainly by Havyaka Brahmanas of Dakshina
Kannada, Uttara Kannada and Udupi), Are Bhashe (spoken mainly in Sullya region of Dakshina Kannada), Soliga Kannada, Badaga Kannada, etc...
Geographic distribution
Kannada is mainly spoken in Karnataka in India, and to a lesser extent in the neighboring states. There are significant Kannada speaking populations in the
United States and the United Kingdom.
A Kannada language sign board
Official status
Kannada is one of the 22 official languages of India and is the
state official language of the state of Karnataka.
Kannada script
Main article: Kannada alphabet
See the Kannada Aksharamaale (alphabets) here
The language has 49 letters and is phonetic. The character set is almost
identical to that of other Indian languages. The script itself is
fairly complicated like most other languages of India owing to the occurrence of various combinations of "half-letters", or
symbols that attach to various letters in a manner similar to the aigüe, grave, and cédille marks in Romance
languages. The number of written symbols, however, is far more than the 49 characters in the alphabet, owing to the fact that
different characters can be combined to form compound characters (ottaksharas). Each written symbol in the Kannada
script corresponds with one syllable, as opposed to one phoneme in languages like English.
Transliteration
Several transliteration schemes are used to type Kannada characters using a standard keyboard. These include ITRANS, Baraha (http://www.baraha.com) and
Nudi. The Government of Karnataka standard for Kannada transliteration is
the Nudi (http://www.bangaloreit.com/html/education/Nudi.html) transliteration scheme.
Few unique things about Kannada
Kannada has a few firsts. The first encyclopedia was written in Kannada. This was later translated to Sanskrit under
name Shivatatvaratnakara.
See also
External links
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