science

Kannada

Kannada is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Kannada rather than just read about it. In short: Kannada (Kannada: [ˈkənːəɖa] ) 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.

Key takeaways

Kannada belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Kannada to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Kannada from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Kannada (Kannada: [ˈkənːəɖa] ) 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 is the official and administrative language of Karnataka. It also has scheduled status in India and has been declared one of the Classical languages of India. Early Kannada literature was composed predominantly by Jaina court poets, and many texts from before the 12th century were religious narratives about the Jain Tīrthaṅkaras. 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 CE. Kannada has an unbroken literary history of around 1200 years. In July 2011, a centre 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 million native speakers in India at the time of the 2011 census. It is the main language of the state of Karnataka, where it is spoken natively by 40.6 million people, or about two-thirds of the state's population. There are native Kannada speakers in the neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu (1,140,000 speakers), Maharashtra (993,000), Andhra Pradesh and Telangana (533,000), Kerala (78,100), and Goa (67,800). 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 4,000 speakers in Canada (2016 census), 9,700 in Australia (2016 census), 22,000 in Singapore (2018 estimate), and 59,000 in Malaysia (2021 estimate).

Development Kannada, like Malayalam and Tamil, is a South Dravidian language and a descendant of Tamil-Kannada, from which it derives its grammar and core vocabulary. Its history can be divided into three stages: Old Kannada, or Haḷegannaḍa from 450 to 1200 AD, Middle Kannada (Naḍugannaḍa) from 1200 to 1700 and Modern Kannada (Hosagannaḍa) from 1700 to the present. 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 Kātantra and Śākaṭāyana schools, and, to a lesser extent, 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. The scholar K.V. Narayana claims that many tribal languages now designated as Kannada dialects could be nearer to the earlier form of the language, with lesser influence from other languages. Based on native Kannada words in Prakrit inscriptions of that period, Kannada must have been spoken by a broad and stable population. Kannada includes many loan words from Sanskrit. Some unaltered loan words (Sanskrit: तत्सम, romanized: tatsama, lit. 'same as that'') include dina, 'day', kōpa, 'anger', sūrya, 'sun', mukha, 'face', and nimiṣa, 'minute'. Some examples of naturalised Sanskrit words (Sanskrit: तद्भव, romanized: tadbhava, lit. 'arising from that') in Kannada are varṇa, 'colour', pūrṇime, and rāya from rāja, 'king'. Some naturalised words of Prakrit origin in Kannada are baṇṇa, 'colour' derived from vaṇṇa, huṇṇime, 'full moon' from puṇṇivā.

History

Early traces

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Kannada

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Kannada claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Kannada before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Kannada ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Kannada

In research: Kannada appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Kannada in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Kannada is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Classical Language in India, Dravidian languages, Kannada language, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Kannada outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Kannada in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Kannada means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Kannada out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Kannada in simple terms?

Why does Kannada matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Kannada?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Kannada.