Kannada

Kannada, a language that is thousands of years old, spoken mainly in the state of Karnataka in the southwest of India. There are also Kannada speakers in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Goa and Kerala, and in the USA, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. In 2011, there were about 56.4 million speakers of Kannada, including 43 million native speakers.

Kannada is one of the 22 official languages and 14 regional languages of India. Kannada is the official and administrative language of Karnataka, and was officially designated a classical language of India in 2011. It is also known as Canarese, Kanarese.

Written Kannada

Kannada first appeared in writing as words in Tamil inscriptions dating from the 3rd-1st centuries BC. The earliest known texts in Old Kannada were written in the Brahmi script and are dated at 450 AD. Poetry in Kannada started to appear in 700 AD, and literary works from 850 AD.

From the 14th century Kannada was sometimes written with the Tigalari alphabet, which developed in the 12th century in Karnataka.

The Kannada alphabet (ಕನ್ನಡ ಲಿಪಿ) developed from the Kadamba and Cālukya scripts, descendants of Brahmi, which were used between the 5th and 7th centuries AD. These scripts developed into the Old Kannada script, which by about 1500 had morphed into the Kannada and Telugu scripts. Under the influence of Christian missionary organizations, Kannada and Telugu scripts were standardized at the beginning of the 19th century.

Spoken Kannada

There is a considerable difference between the spoken and written forms of the language with regard to its phonology, grammar, and lexicon. Spoken Kannada tends to vary from region to region. Spoken Kannada has many regional dialects, while the written form remains relatively uniform.

There are about 20 spoken dialects of Kannada (Ethnologue). Kannada has many dialects like Bengaluru Kannada (Liberal usage of English or Kanglish), Mysuru Kannada (spoken majorly around Mysore, Bengaluru), Mandya Kannada, Uttara Karnataka Kannada(Jawari Kannada), Mangaluru Kannada (Text book Kannada), Beedar Kannada (Matathi mix Kannada) and many more. Dialects are usually grouped into three major groups: Northern, Southern, and Central. All the dialects are influenced by the neighboring languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and others. In addition to the regional dialects, social varieties can also be found depending on the caste or community.