Kannada language, also called Kanarese or Kannana, member of the Dravidian language family and the official language of the state of Karnataka in southern India. Kannada is also spoken in the states that border Karnataka. Early 21st-century census data indicated that some 38 million individuals spoke Kannada as their first language; another 9 to 10 million were thought to speak it as a secondary language. In 2008 the government of India granted Kannada classical-language status.
Kannada is the second oldest of the four major Dravidian languages with a literary tradition.. The Kannada script evolved from southern varieties of the Ashokan Brahmi script. The Kannada script is closely related to the Telugu script; both emerged from an Old Kannarese (Karnataka) script. Three historical stages are recognised: Old Kannada (450–1200 ce), Middle Kannada (1200–1700 ce), and Modern Kannada (1700 ce–present).
The word order is subject–object–verb, as in the other Dravidian languages. Verbs are marked for person, number, and gender. The case-marking pattern is nominative-accusative, with experiencer subjects taking the dative inflection. Most inflection is rendered through affixation, especially of suffixes. The language uses typical Dravidian retroflex consonants (sounds pronounced with the tip of the tongue curled back against the roof of the mouth), such as /ḍ/, /ṇ/, and /ṭ/, as well as a series of voiced and voiceless aspirates borrowed from the Indo-Aryan language family.
Course: Two Months . Reading Writing and Speaking
