Kannada

Kannada (/ˈkɑːnədə, ˈkæn-/; Kannada: ಕನ್ನಡ, ; also known as Kanarese) is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by people of Karnataka in southwestern India, and by significant linguistic minorities in the states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Kerala and abroad. The language has roughly 45 million native speakers, who are called Kannadigas. Kannada is also spoken as a second and third language by over 12.9 million non-Kannada speakers in Karnataka, which adds up to 56.6 million speakers. It is one of the scheduled languages of India and the official and administrative language of the state of Karnataka. The Kannada language 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, and literary Old Kannada flourished in the 6th-century Ganga dynasty and during the 9th-century Rashtrakuta Dynasty. Kannada has an unbroken literary history of over a thousand years. Kannada literature has been presented with 8 Jnanapith awards, the most for any Dravidian language and the second highest for any Indian language. Based on the recommendations of the Committee of Linguistic Experts, appointed by the ministry of culture, the government of India designated Kannada a classical language of India. In July 2011, a center for the study of classical Kannada was established as part of the Central Institute of Indian Languages at Mysore to facilitate research related to the language. Kannada is a Southern Dravidian language, and according to Dravidian scholar Sanford B. Steever, its history can be conventionally divided into three periods: Old Kannada (Halegannada) from 450–1200 CE, Middle Kannada (Nadugannada) from 1200–1700, and Modern Kannada from 1700 to the present. Kannada is influenced to an appreciable extent by Sanskrit. Influences of other languages such as Prakrit and Pali can also be found in the Kannada language. The scholar Iravatham Mahadevan indicated that Kannada was already a language of rich oral tradition earlier than the 3rd century BCE, and based on the native Kannada words found in Prakrit inscriptions of that period, Kannada must have been spoken by a widespread and stable population. The scholar K. V. Narayana claims that many tribal languages which are now designated as Kannada dialects could be nearer to the earlier form of the language, with lesser influence from other languages. The sources of influence on literary Kannada grammar appear to be three-fold: Pāṇini's grammar, non-Paninian schools of Sanskrit grammar, particularly Katantra and Sakatayana schools, and Prakrit grammar. Literary Prakrit seems to have prevailed in Karnataka since ancient times. The vernacular Prakrit speaking people may have come into contact with Kannada speakers, thus influencing their language, even before Kannada was used for administrative or liturgical purposes. Kannada phonetics, morphology, vocabulary, grammar and syntax show significant influence from these languages. Some naturalised (tadbhava) words of Prakrit origin in Kannada are: baṇṇa (colour) derived from vaṇṇa, hunnime (full moon) from puṇṇivā. Examples of naturalized Sanskrit words in Kannada are: varṇa (colour), arasu (king) from rajan, paurṇimā, and rāya from rāja (king). Like the other Dravidian languages Kannada also has borrowed (tatsama) words such as dina (day), kopa (anger), surya (sun), mukha (face), nimiṣa (minute) and anna (rice). Purava HaleGannada: This Kannada term literally translated means 'Previous form of Old Kannada' was the language of Banavasi in the early Common Era, the Satavahana, Chutu Satakarni (Naga) and Kadamba periods and thus has a history of over 2500 years. The Ashoka rock edict found at Brahmagiri (dated to 230 BCE) has been suggested to contain words in identifiable Kannada.