Kannada

Kannada () is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly in the state of Karnataka in southwestern India, and spoken by a minority of the population in all neighbouring states. It has 44 million native speakers, and is additionally a second or third language for 15 million speakers in Karnataka. It also has scheduled status in India and has been declared one of the Classical languages of India.

Kannada was the court language of a number of dynasties and empires of South India, Central India and the Deccan Plateau, namely the Kadamba dynasty, Western Ganga dynasty, Nolamba dynasty, Chalukya dynasty, Rashtrakutas, Western Chalukya Empire, Seuna dynasty, Kingdom of Mysore, Nayakas of Keladi, Hoysala dynasty and the Vijayanagara Empire.

Kannada is written using the Kannada script, which evolved from the 5th-century Kadamba script. Kannada is attested epigraphically for about one and a half millennia. Old Kannada Rashtrakuta literature flourished during the 8th-10th centuries. Kannada has an unbroken literary history of around 1200 years. In July 2011, a center for the study of classical Kannada was established as part of the Central Institute of Indian Languages in Mysore to facilitate research related to the language.

Geographic distribution

Kannada had 43.7

It is also spoken as a second and third language by over 12.9 million non-native speakers in Karnataka.

Kannadigas form Tamil Nadu's third-largest linguistic group; their population is roughly 1.23 million, which is 2.2% of Tamil Nadu's total population.

In the United States, there were 35,900 speakers in 2006–2008, a number that had risen to 48,600 by 2015.

There are speakers in Canada (2016 census), 9,700 in Australia (2016 census), 22,000 in Singapore (2018 estimate), and 59,000 in Malaysia (2021 estimate).

Kannada has been considerably influenced by Sanskrit and Prakrit—in morphology, phonetics, vocabulary, grammar, and syntax. The three principal sources of influence on literary Kannada grammar appear to be Pāṇini's grammar, non-Pāṇinian schools of Sanskrit grammar, particularly Katantra and Sakatayana schools, and Prakrit grammar. Literary Prakrit seems to have prevailed in Karnataka since ancient times. Speakers of vernacular Prakrit may have come into contact with Kannada speakers, thus influencing their language, even before Kannada was used for administrative or liturgical purposes.

Kannada includes many loan words from Sanskrit. Some unaltered loan words () include , , , , and . Some examples of naturalised Sanskrit words () in Kannada are , , and from . Some naturalised words of Prakrit origin in Kannada are derived from , from .

History

Early traces

left|upright|thumb|The [[Halmidi inscription at Halmidi village, in old-Kannada, is usually dated to 450 AD (Kadamba Dynasty).]]

thumb|right|Old-Kannada inscription dated 578 AD (Badami Chalukya dynasty), outside Badami cave no.3

thumb|left|upright|Old-Kannada inscription of c. 726 AD, discovered in [[Talakad, from the rule of King Shivamara I or Sripurusha (Western Ganga Dynasty)]]

thumb|upright|Old-Kannada inscription of the 9th century ([[Rashtrakuta Dynasty) at Durga Devi temple in Hampi, Karnataka]]

thumb|upright|The famous [[Atakur inscription (AD 949) from Mandya district, a classical Kannada composition in two parts; a fight between a hound and a wild boar, and the victory of the Rashtrakutas over the Chola dynasty in the famous battle of Takkolam]]

thumb|upright|right|Old Kannada inscription dated 1057 AD of Western Chalukya King Someshvara I at [[Kalleshwara Temple, Hire Hadagali in Bellary district]]

thumb|upright|Old-Kannada inscription ascribed to King [[Vikramaditya VI (Western Chalukya Empire), dated AD 1112, at the Mahadeva Temple in Itagi, Koppal district of Karnataka state]]

left|thumb|Old-Kannada inscription of 1220 AD ([[Hoysala Empire) at Ishwara temple of Arasikere town in the Hassan district]]

thumb|upright|Kannada inscription dated 1509, of King [[Krishnadevaraya (Vijayanagara Empire), at the Virupaksha temple in Hampi describes his coronation]]

thumb|upright|Kannada inscription dated 1654, at [[Gaurishvara Temple, Yelandur|Yelandur with exquisite relief]]

The earliest Kannada inscriptions are from the middle of the 5th century AD, but there are a number of earlier texts that may have been influenced by the ancestor language of Old Kannada.

Iravatam Mahadevan, author of a work on early Tamil epigraphy, argued that oral traditions in Kannada and Telugu existed much before written documents were produced. Although the rock inscriptions of Ashoka were written in Prakrit, the spoken language in those regions was Kannada. He pointed out that Prakrit inscriptions of that period contained large numbers of Kannada personal and place names.

The Ashoka rock edict () found at Brahmagiri contains Kannada words such as words (isila, meaning to fire an arrow).

Old Kannada words are also found in inscriptions in Northern Tamil Nadu and Kerala First-century Sittanavasal Cave inscriptions contain words such as such as erumi-nadu (a location) and pocil (entrance). Other examples include kaavithi (village officer's wife) from 1st century CE Tirumlai and thaayiyaru (mothers) in the 4th century CE Nekanurpatti inscription..

Extensive trade relations between the ancient Kannada lands (Kuntalas, Mahishakas, Punnatas, Mahabanas, Asmakas, etc.) and Greece, Egypt, the Hellenistic and Roman empires and others led to exchange of people, ideas, and literature. The Library of Alexandria contained Kannada palm-leaf book, indicating that Kannada language and literature must have flourished before the library was established in between . This document later played a vital role in establishing Kannada as one of the Classical Languages of India. Pliny the Elder, a Roman historian, wrote about pirates between Muziris and the Netravati River, and also mentions Barcelore (possibly modern Mangaluru, upon its mouth. The Greek geographer Ptolemy (writing ) mentions ten Kannada place names from Northern Karnataka, between Bhima River in the north and Banaouasei (Banavasi) in the south: Nagarouris (Nagur), Tabaso (Tavasi), Inde (Inde), Tiripangalida (Gadhinglaj), Hippokoura (Huvina Hipparagi), Soubouttou (Savadi), Sirimalaga (Malkhed), Kalligeris (Kalkeri), Modogoulla (Mudgal), and Petirgala (Pattadakal).

Pliny also mentions King Sire Polemaios (Vasishthiputra Pulumavi (–125 AD)), whose name is derived from , perhaps indicating a native Kannada origin for the Satavahanas and explaining the presence of Kannada language and culture in the southern Kuntala country during the period when Pulumavi ruled from Paithan in the north and his son or Pulumayi Kumara ruled from Huvina Hipparagi in present Karnataka in the south.

An early ancestor of Kannada (or a related language) may have been spoken by Indian traders in Roman-era Egypt and it may account for the Indian-language passages in the ancient Greek play known as the Charition mime.

Epigraphy

The earliest well-attested example of a full-length Kannada language stone inscription containing Brahmi characters with characteristics of old Kannada script can be found in the Halmidi inscription, usually dated . Its exestence indicates that Kannada had become an administrative language by that time. The Halmidi inscription provides invaluable information about the history and culture of Karnataka.

A set of five copper plate inscriptions discovered in Mudiyanur, though in the Sanskrit language, is whitten in the in the Kadamba script. Some epigraphers have suggested that the plates are contemporary with the Halmidi inscription, but detailed study places them more than a century later, in 338 BE.

The 5th century poetic Tamatekallu inscription of Chitradurga and the Siragunda inscription from Chikkamagaluru Taluk of 500 AD are further examples. Recent reports indicate that the Old KannadaGunabhushitana Nishadi inscription discovered on the Chandragiri hill, Shravanabelagola, is older than Halmidi inscription by about fifty to hundred years and may belong to the period AD 350–400.

Early Kannada inscriptions have been discovered in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat in addition to Karnataka. This indicates the spread of the influence of the language over the ages, especially during the rule of large Kannada empires.

The earliest copper plates inscribed in Old Kannada script and language, date to the early 8th century CE, are associated with Alupa King Aluvarasa II include the double crested fish, his royal emblem.

The oldest well-preserved palm leaf manuscript in Old Kannada is a copy of the of Dhavala, dating to around the 9th century. It is preserved in the Jain Bhandar, Mudbidri, Dakshina Kannada. The manuscript contains 1478 leaves written using ink. A gold coin bearing three inscriptions of Sri and an abbreviated inscription of king Bhagiratha's name called bhagi (c. 390–420 AD) in old Kannada exists. A Kadamba copper coin dated to the 5th century AD with the inscription Srimanaragi in Kannada script was discovered in Banavasi, Uttara Kannada district. Coins with Kannada legends have been discovered spanning the rule of the Western Ganga Dynasty, the Badami Chalukyas, the Alupas, the Western Chalukyas, the Rashtrakutas, the Hoysalas, the Vijayanagar Empire, the Kadamba Dynasty of Banavasi, the Keladi Nayakas and the Mysore kingdom, the Badami Chalukya coins being a recent discovery. The coins of the Kadambas of Goa are unique in that they have alternate inscription of the king's name in Kannada and Devanagari in triplicate, a few coins of the Kadambas of Hangal are also available.

Literature

Old Kannada

thumb|[[Lakshmeshwara Jain temples|Shankha Jain Basadi temple at Lakshmeshwar where Adikavi Pampa wrote the Adipurana]]

The oldest known literary work in Kannada is Kavirajamarga, by King Nripatunga Amoghavarsha I (850 AD), a work of literary criticism and poetics meant to standardise the various written Kannada dialects used in literature in previous centuries. The book makes reference to Kannada works by early writers such as King Durvinita of the 6th century and Ravikirti, the author of the Aihole record of . From this, it can be understood that literature in Kannada must have started centuries earlier. An early extant prose work, the Vaḍḍārādhane (ವಡ್ಡಾರಾಧನೆ) by Shivakotiacharya of 900 AD provides an elaborate description of the life of Bhadrabahu of Shravanabelagola.

The Kavirajamarga, mentions a number of other early writers of prose and verse whose works are now lost include are Vimalachandra , Durvinita, Srivijaya, and Ravikirti.

Works of early Kannada poetry like the Chattana and Bedande, composed in the desi metre, are said to have survived at least until the date of the Kavirajamarga in 850 AD and had their roots in the early Kannada folk literature. Kavirajamarga also discusses earlier composition forms peculiar to Kannada, the "gadyakatha", a mixture of prose and poetry, the chattana and the "bedande", poems of several stanzas that were meant to be sung with the optional use of a musical instrument.

Early Kannada writers regularly mention three poets as of especial eminence among their predecessors – Samanta-bhadra, Kavi Parameshthi and Pujyapada. Since later Kannada poets so uniformly name these three as eminent poets, it is probable that they wrote in Kannada also. Samantabhadra is placed in the 2nd century CE by Jain tradition. Pujyapada, a renowned grammarian and acharya lived around 510 CE to 600 CE. Kaviparameshthi probably lived in the 4th century CE.

The oldest known existing record of Kannada poetry in tripadi metre is the Kappe Arabhatta, a verse inscription of the eponymous Chalukya warrior, inscribed .

The late classical period gave birth to several genres of Kannada literature. The works of this period are based on Jain and Hindu principles, and new poetic forms came into use, including ragale (a form of blank verse established by Harihara), sangatya and shatpadi (six-lined stanzas, a form popularaised by Raghavanka. Another writer of the same period is Janna, who expressed Jain religious teachings through his works.

The Vachana Sahitya tradition of the 12th century is purely native and unique in world literature, and the sum of contributions by all sections of society. Vachanas were pithy poems on that period's social, religious and economic conditions. More importantly, they held a mirror to the seed of social revolution, which caused a radical re-examination of the ideas of caste, creed and religion. Some of the important writers of Vachana literature include Basavanna, Allama Prabhu and Akka Mahadevi.

Middle Kannada

During the period between the 15th and 18th centuries, Hinduism had a great influence on Middle Kannada (Naḍugannaḍa- ನಡುಗನ್ನಡ) language and literature. Kumara Vyasa, who wrote the Karṇāṭa Bhārata Kathāman̄jari (ಕರ್ಣಾಟ ಭಾರತ ಕಥಾಮಂಜರಿ), was arguably the most influential Kannada writer of this period. His work, entirely composed in the native Bhamini Shatpadi (hexa-meter), is a sublime adaptation of the first ten books of the Mahabharata.

During this period, the Sanskritic influence is present in most abstract, religious, scientific and rhetorical terms. During this period, several Hindi and Marathi words came into Kannada, chiefly relating to feudalism and militia.

Hindu saints of the Vaishnava sect such as Kanakadasa, Purandaradasa, Naraharitirtha, Vyasatirtha, Sripadaraya, Vadirajatirtha, Vijaya Dasa, Gopala Dasa, Jagannatha Dasa, Prasanna Venkatadasa produced devotional poems in this period. Kanakadasa's Rāmadhānya Charite (ರಾಮಧಾನ್ಯ ಚರಿತೆ) is a rare work, concerning with the issue of class struggle. This period saw the advent of Haridasa Sahitya (lit Dasa literature), which made rich contributions to Bhakti literature and sowed the seeds of Carnatic music. Purandara Dasa is widely considered the Father of Carnatic music.

Modern Kannada

The Kannada works produced from the 19th century make a gradual transition and are classified as Hosagannaḍa or Modern Kannada. Most notable among the modernists was the poet Nandalike Muddana whose writing may be described as the "Dawn of Modern Kannada", though generally, linguists treat Indira Bai or Saddharma Vijayavu by Gulvadi Venkata Raya as the first literary works in Modern Kannada. The first modern movable type printing of "Canarese" appears to be the Canarese Grammar of Carey printed at Serampore in 1817, and the "Bible in Canarese" of John Hands in 1820. The first novel printed was John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, along with other texts including Canarese Proverbs, The History of Little Henry and his Bearer by Mary Martha Sherwood, Christian Gottlob Barth's Bible Stories and "a Canarese hymn book."

Modern Kannada in the 20th century has been influenced by many movements, notably Navodaya, Navya, Navyottara, Dalita and Bandaya. Contemporary Kannada literature has been highly successful in reaching people of all classes in society. Further, Kannada has produced a number of prolific and renowned poets and writers such as Kuvempu, Bendre, and V K Gokak. Works of Kannada literature have received eight Jnanpith awards, the highest number awarded to any Indian language.

Dictionaries

The oldest known Kannada-Kannada, dictionary, Ranna Kanda was composed by the poet Ranna in 996 AD. Other pre-modern Kannada dictionaries include Abhidanavastukosa, a dictionary of Sanskrit words for Kannada users, composed in 1054 by Nagavarma and 'Abhinavaabhidaana', by Abhinava Mangaraja (1398). Missionary Ferdinand Kittel published a Kannada–English dictionary of more than 70,000 words. and A Grammar of the Kannada language in English (1903).

G. Venkatasubbiah edited the first modern Kannada–Kannada dictionary, the 9,000-page, 8-volume Kannaḍa nighaṇṭu, published by Sahitya Parishat. He also wrote a Kannada–English dictionary and a dictionary of difficult words.

Dialects

thumb|Map of Kannada dialects in the state of Karnataka.

There is considerable difference between the spoken and written forms of the language. Modern standard Kannada and its written form, primarily based on the Mysore–Bangalore variety, is more or less consistent throughout Karnataka. Spoken Kannada tends to vary from region to region, though most dialects remain mutually intelligible. Linguists broadly group Kannada dialects into Southern, Northern, Central, and Coastal varieties, though the boundaries between them often overlap.. Northern Kannada dialects preserve older phonological features not found in southern dialects. Coastal dialects show lexical influence from Tulu and Konkani due to prolonged language contact.

Dialects of Kannada language fall into include:

;Coastal

Mangalore Kannada
Halakki Kannada (Halakki Vokkaligas of Uttara Kannada and Shimoga).
Havigannada (used mainly by Havyaka Brahmins)
Kundagannada (Kundapura, Brahmavara, Bynduru and Hebri)
Nador-Kannada (used by Nadavaru)
Halegannada (spoken by Komarpant in Goa, Uttara Kannada and Khanapur, Karnataka.
Hatkar - a conservative dialect that preserves many Old Kannada terms, spoken by Hatkars in the Nasik district, Maharashtra. Kannada speakers formed 0.12% of Nasik district's population as per 1961 census.

;Northern

Dharwad (Dharwad, Belagavi, Haveri, and Gadag) - preserves some older phonological features not found in southern dialects.

;South-Western

Arebhashe (Spoken in the Gowda community, mainly in Madikeri and Sullia)

;Southern

Bengaluru Kannada
Banakal Kannada

Writing system

The language uses forty-nine phonemic letters, divided into three groups: swaragalu (vowels – thirteen letters); vyanjanagalu (consonants – thirty-four letters); and yogavaahakagalu (neither vowel nor consonant – two letters: anusvara and visarga ). The character set is almost identical to that of other Indian languages. The Kannada script is almost entirely phonetic, but for the sound of a "half n" (which becomes a half m). The number of written symbols, however, is far more than the forty-nine characters in the alphabet, because different characters can be combined to form compound characters (ottakshara). Each written symbol in the Kannada script corresponds with one syllable, as opposed to one phoneme in languages like English—the Kannada script is syllabic.

Phonology

thumb|Spoken Kannada

Consonants

{| class="wikitable" style=text-align:center

! colspan="2" |

!Labial

!Dental/ alveolar

!Retroflex

!Post-alv./ palatal

!Velar

!Glottal

! colspan="2" |Nasal

| (ಮ)

| (ನ)

| (ಣ)

|() (ಞ)

|() (ಙ)

! rowspan="4" |Plosive/ Affricate

!voiceless

| (ಪ)

| (ತ)

| (ಟ)

| (ಚ)

| (ಕ)

!aspirated

| (ಫ)

| (ಥ)

| (ಠ)

| (ಛ)

| (ಖ)

!voiced

| (ಬ)

| (ದ)

| (ಡ)

| (ಜ)

| (ಗ)

!breathy

| (ಭ)

| (ಧ)

| (ಢ)

| (ಝ)

| (ಘ)

! colspan="2" |Fricative

| (ಸ)

| (ಷ)

| (ಶ)

| (ಹ)

! colspan="2" |Approximant

| (ವ)

| (ಲ)

| (ಳ)

| (ಯ)

! colspan="2" |Rhotic

| (ರ)

Most consonants can be geminated.
[ŋ, ɲ] are allophones before other palatal and velar consonants respectively.
Aspirated consonants very rarely occur in native vocabulary only in a few numerals like the number 9 and 80, which can be written with a /bʱ/, as in ombhattu, embhattu. However, it is usually written with a /b/, as in ombattu, embattu; they formed from the Proto Dravidian laryngeal *H, like in Telugu. Most of the aspirated words are loanwords and the aspiration of consonants depends entirely on the speaker and many do not do it in non-formal situations.
The alveolar trill /r/ may be pronounced as an alveolar tap [ɾ].
The voiceless retroflex sibilant /ʂ/ is commonly pronounced as a /ʃ/ except in consonant clusters with retroflex consonants.
There are also the consonants /f, z/ which occur in recent English and Perso-Arabic loans but they may be replaced by the consonants /pʰ, dʒ/ respectively by speakers.

In old Kannada at around 10th-14th century, most of the initial /p/ debuccalised into a /h/ e.g. OKn. paḍagu, balupu, keḍapu, Kn. haḍahu, baluhu, {keḍavu, keḍahu} "ship, strength, to pull down".

Historically, the Tamil-Malayalam languages and, independently, Telugu, phonemically palatalised /k/ before a front vowel; Kannada never developed such phonemic palatalisation (cf. Kn. , Ta. , Te. "ear"); however, phonetically, Kannada speakers frequently palatalise velar consonants before front vowels, for example, realising "ear" as and "parrot" as .

Vowels

{| class="wikitable" style=text-align:center

! rowspan="2" |

! colspan="2" | Front

! colspan="2" |Central

! colspan="2" | Back

! short

! long

!short

!long

! short

! long

|- style="text-align: center;"

! Close

| (ಇ)

| (ಈ)

| (ಉ)

| (ಊ)

|- style="text-align: center;"

!Mid

| (ಎ)

| (ಏ)

| (ಒ)

| (ಓ)

|- style="text-align: center;"

! Open

| colspan="2" |

| (ಅ)

| (ಆ)

and are phonetically central . may be as open as () or higher .
The vowels /i iː e eː/ may be preceded by /j/ and the vowels /u uː o oː/ may be preceded by /ʋ/ when they are in an initial position.
The short vowels /a i u e o/, when in an initial or a medial position tend to be pronounced as [ɐ ɪ ʊ ɛ ɔ]. In a final position, this phenomenon occurs less frequently.
/æː/ occurs in English loans but can be switched with /aː/ or /ja:/.

Initial i/e have a y- onset and w- for u/o.
In many dialects, e/o gets lowered to [æ, ɔ] when followed by non high vowels. Some dialects have /a/ as [ə] when a high vowel comes after it and [a] elsewhere.
Final -e's become i's, in the south its mostly with verbs but in the north it happens everywhere, eg. bere > bære > bæri. This along with the previous change can create some surface minimal pairs, eg. [bæ:ɖə] "don't" vs [be:ɖə] "ask!" (conj of /be:ɖu/).

Grammar

The canonical word order of Kannada is SOV (subject–object–verb), typical of Indian languages.

Kannada is a highly inflected language with three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter or common) and two numbers (singular and plural). It is inflected for gender, number and tense, among other things. The first available Kannada book, a treatise on poetics, rhetoric and basic grammar is the Kavirajamarga from 850 AD.

The most influential account of Kannada grammar is Keshiraja's Shabdamanidarpana (c. 1260 AD). The earlier grammatical works include portions of Kavirajamarga (a treatise on alańkāra) of the 9th century, and Kavyavalokana and Karnatakabhashabhushana (both authored by Nagavarma II in the first half of the 12th century). There are several types of compound bases, based on the rules followed for compounding. The types of compound bases or samāsas: tatpurusha, karmadhāraya, dvigu, bahuvreehi, anshi, dvandva, kriya and gamaka samāsa. Examples: taṅgāḷi, hemmara, kannusanne.

Pronouns

In many ways the third-person pronouns are more like demonstratives than like the other pronouns. They are pluralised like nouns and the first- and second-person pronouns have different ways to distinguish number.

Significance to modern linguistics

While an early account of Kannada's grammar is available in Shabdamanidarpana, it has played a central role in the modern linguistics thanks to its unique semantic and syntactic properties that have been significant to studies of language acquisition and innateness. Jeff Lidz is a significant Western linguist to have studied Kannada. His investigations found at least two properties of Kannada to be very impactful in developing contemporary understandings of language acquisition. The first observation was that Kannada has a causative morpheme (like -ify for English, in personify or deify), which appears whenever a verb with causative meaning is expressed. This was significant, because it allowed him to test whether an observation of English-learning infants, that they worked out novel verb meanings based on the number of overt NPs they took, applied cross-linguistically. Given that the presence of the aforementioned causative morpheme would be a more obvious and reliable indicator for differentiating meanings, Kannada was a perfect language to test this observation; Lidz et al. (2003) found that Kannada-learning infants relied more heavily on the number of overt NPs than the presence of the causative morpheme. This has been used by generativists and UG nativists to argue that verb meaning acquisition based on syntactic bootstrapping is language universal and innate. This observation has been used to argue that infants universally represent sentences not as mere strings of adjacent words, but as hierarchical objects, an important point among Chomskyans and nativists.

English

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Romanisation (ISO 15919)

Ellā mānavaru svatantrarāgiyē huṭṭiddāre hāgu ghanate mattu adhikāragaḷalli samānarāgiddāre. Tiḷivu mattu antaḥsākṣīyannu paḍedavarāddarinda avaru obbarigobbaru sahōdara bhāvadinda naḍedukoḷḷabēku.

Kannada

Geographic distribution

History

Early traces

Epigraphy

Literature

Old Kannada

Middle Kannada

Modern Kannada

Dictionaries

Dialects

Writing system

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Grammar

Pronouns

Significance to modern linguistics

English

Kannada

Romanisation (ISO 15919)

IPA

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

Further reading

External links