Kannada Language Overview Quiz

Kannada Language Overview

The Kannada language is one of the Dravidian languages spoken predominantly in the Indian state of Karnataka. It has been used by millions of people over thousands of years. In this overview, we'll delve into its history, classification, dialects, grammar, and more.

History

Traces of Kannada can be found in texts dating from around the 6th century AD, but it wasn’t until the rise of the Western Chalukyas, starting with Amma II in the mid-7th century CE, that Kannada became established as a literary language. During their reign, there was a prolific production of an extensive body of literature that included poetry, epics, dramas, songs, and treatises on all subjects, of course written in classical Kannada. This period also saw significant developments in scripture, religious discourses, philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, architecture, fine arts, music, dance, drama, and administration.

Between the late 8th and early 10th centuries, the Rashtrakutas took over power from the Gangas in the region, and, following the pattern set by their predecessors, they too promoted Kannada literature. Some of the greatest figures of medieval Kannada literature emerged during this time, such as Pampa, who wrote works like Vikramarjuna Vijaya and Madavijayam; Dandesha Muni, who produced commentaries on Sanskrit works; Poet Ayyankali, known for his works Lokayata Jnana Malika and Tatta Kaumudi; and Saint Basavanna, who wrote poetry and didactic works.

By the end of the 14th century, the rule passed to the Wodeyar family, which established the modern city of Bangalore and provided patronage to writers such as Kumara Vyasa, Bharucha, Shrungaraguru, Jagannatha Dasa, and Narahari Hemadri, whose work helped establish Kannada literature as the most important regional literature in South India. Today, Kannada enjoys official status in five states including Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Goa, and Kerala.

Classification

Kannada belongs to the Southern branch of the Dravidian family of languages. Other members of this family include Malayalam, Tamil (Tamil and Ceylon), Telugu, Tamul, Sabarimalai, Malabari, Coromandal, Salem, Trichinopoly, Coimbatore, etc., but also languages lost to us entirely now, such as Elu and Nadru. Within the broad Dravidian family, Kannada shares some common features with other related languages, including its alphabetical system consisting of consonants followed by vowels.

Dialects

There are two main dialects of Kannada—Old Monsoon and Dry Monsoon. Old Monsoon (Havyaka) speakers traditionally lived in the highlands while the Dry Monsoon (Malenadu) speakers resided along coastal areas and river valleys. However, these distinctions have blurred due to migration, urbanization, bilingualism, and increased exposure to media. Despite efforts to standardize spelling, pronunciations often vary significantly between regions.

Grammar

In terms of syntax, Kannada displays a subject-object-verb word order similar to English and uses postpositions instead of prepositions. For instance, 'meat' is paaniya, 'eating meat' is paanina avana, and 'eating chicken meat' is paaniya chikkiya avana. Unlike many Indo-European languages, where nouns do not change their form when used with certain verbs, Kannada does exhibit conjugation or declension, even though the process is less complex than that observed among Sanskritists in some cases.

For example, consider the sentence "I am eating meat." Here, the verb remains unchanged whether it occurs alone, after the object, or with the subject present: paila, paila avana, paila paliya, and so forth. Consequently, unlike Sanskrit or Latin, there are no different forms depending upon the syntactical situation.

Moreover, Kannada employs various postpositional cases, including accusative, dative, ablative, instrumental, comitative, locative, vocative, genitive, and nominative. These markers serve multiple functions, making the case system in Kannada quite versatile compared to its counterparts in European languages.

Script

Historically, Kannada lacked a formal writing system before the late fourth century CE. Before this point, it appears to have had only an oral tradition, possibly influenced by Sanskrit learning and Brahmanic culture. The oldest extant document using Kannada characters dates back to the fifth century CE. The earliest documents were composed in Nagari script, reflecting a heavy influence from Sanskrit. Later, Kannada adopted Devanāgarī letters, although Brahmi and Grantha scripts were also employed during the early stages of its development. By the mid-15th century, Kannada came under the sway of the Nambudiri scribes from northern Kerala, who introduced the Vatte script in place of Devanagari.

Vatteluttu evolved into Modi in the 17th century, which spread throughout southwestern India. Until recently, there existed three distinct scripts for Kannada—Devanagari, Kannada (also called Vatte or Modi), and Roman (for print). Currently, however, only the Devanagari and Roman scripts remain in widespread usage.