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| Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken | Karnataka, India |
| Region | South Asia |
| Total speakers | 45 million |
| Genetic classification | Dravidian Southern |
| Official status | |
| Official language | Karnataka, India |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1: | kn |
| ISO-639-2: | kan |
| Official Color code ( Karnataka flag) | |
Kannada - aptly described as 'sirigannada' (known to few as Kanarese) is one of the oldest Dravidian languages and is spoken in its various dialects by roughly 45 million people. It is the state language of Karnataka, one of the four southern states in India.
The Kannada language has been spoken for about 2000 years, with the Kannada writing system being in use for about the last 1500 years. The initial development of the Kannada language is similar to that of other Dravidian languages, notably Tamil and Telugu. During later centuries, Kannada, along with Telugu, has been highly influenced by Sanskrit vocabulary and literary styles.
Kannada is a higly inflected language with three genders (masculine, feminine, neutral or common) and two numbers (singular, plural). It is inflected for gender, number and tense, among other things.
There is also a sharp distinction between the spoken and written forms of the language. Spoken Kannada tends to vary from region to region. The written form is more or less constant throughout Karnataka, however. The ethnologue identifies about 20 dialects of Kannada. The major dialects are specific to places like Coorg, Dharwad , BidarBidar is a city in Karnataka state, India. It is the administrative seat of Bidar district. Bidar was the capital of the Bahmani Sultanate from 1425 until the sultanate's breakup after 1518. It then became the center of one of the five independent sultana, Udupi, Hassan etc...
Kannada is mainly spoken in Karnataka in India, and to a lesser extent in the neighboring states. There are significant Kannada speaking populations in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Kannada is one of the 22 official languages of India and is the state official language of the state of Karnataka.
Main article: Kannada alphabet
See the Kannada Aksharamaale (alpahbets)
The language has 49 letters and is phonetic. The character set is almost identical to that of other Indian languages. The script itself is fairly complicated like most other languages of India owing to the occurrence of various combinations of "half-letters", or symbols that attach to various letters in a manner similar to the aigue, grave, and cédille marks in Romance languages. The number of written symbols, however, is far more than the 49 characters in the alphabet, owing to the fact that different characters can be combined to form compound characters (ottaksharas). Each written symbol in the Kannada script corresponds with one syllable, as opposed to one phoneme in languages like English.
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