Kannada script explained

Kannada script
Also Known As:Kannada: ಕನ್ನಡ ಲಿಪಿ
Type:Abugida
Time:4th[1] century CE – present
Languages:Kannada
Sanskrit
Tulu
Kodava
Badaga
Beary
Sanketi
Konkani
Marathi
Fam1:Egyptian
Fam2:Proto-Sinaitic
Fam3:Phoenician
Fam4:Aramaic
Fam5:Brahmi script
Fam6:Kadamba alphabet
Fam7:Kannada-Telugu alphabet[2]
Sisters:Telugu
Children:Goykanadi[3]
Unicode:U+0C80 - U+0CFF
Iso15924:Knda
Sample:Stanza from Kavirajamarga.svg
Caption:A stanza from Kavirajamarga which praises the people for their literary skills, written in the Kannada script

The Kannada script (IAST: Kannaḍa lipi; obsolete: Kanarese or Canarese script in English) is an abugida of the Brahmic family,[4] used to write Kannada, one of the Dravidian languages of South India especially in the state of Karnataka. It is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic. Kannada script is also widely used for writing Sanskrit texts in Karnataka. Several minor languages, such as Tulu, Konkani, Kodava, Beary and Sanketi also use alphabets based on the Kannada script.[5] The Kannada and Telugu scripts share very high mutual intellegibility with each other,[6] and are often considered to be regional variants of single script. Other scripts similar to Kannada script are Sinhala script[7] (which included some elements from the Kadamba script[8]), and Old Peguan script(used in Burma).[9]

The Kannada script (Kannada: ಅಕ್ಷರಮಾಲೆ akṣaramāle or Kannada: ವರ್ಣಮಾಲೆ varṇamāle) is a phonemic abugida of forty-nine letters. The character set is almost identical to that of other Brahmic scripts. Consonantal letters imply an inherent vowel. Letters representing consonants are combined to form digraphs (Kannada: ಒತ್ತಕ್ಷರ ottakṣara) when there is no intervening vowel. Otherwise, each letter corresponds to a syllable.

The letters are classified into three categories: Kannada: ಸ್ವರ svara (vowels), Kannada: ವ್ಯಂಜನ vyañjana (consonants), and Kannada: ಯೋಗವಾಹಕ yōgavāhaka (semiconsonants).

The Kannada words for a letter of the script are Kannada: ಅಕ್ಷರ akshara, Kannada: ಅಕ್ಕರ akkara, and Kannada: ವರ್ಣ varṇa. Each letter has its own form (Kannada: ಆಕಾರ ākāra) and sound (Kannada: ಶಬ್ದ śabda), providing the visible and audible representations, respectively. Kannada is written from left to right.[10]

History

The Brahmi script evolved into the Kadamba script, through the Bhattiprolu Brahmi variant, which later evolved into the Telugu-Kannada alphabet.[11] [12] The Kannada and Telugu scripts then separated by around 1300 C.E.[13]

Over the centuries some changes have been made to the Kannada script. These changes consist of:

  1. Modification of existing glyphs: In the early Kannada script, no orthographic distinction was made between the short mid pronounced as /[e, o]/ Kannada: ಎ, Kannada: ಒ and long mid pronounced as /[eː, oː]/ Kannada: ಏ, Kannada: ಓ. However, distinct signs were employed to denote the special consonants viz. the trill pronounced as /[r]/ Kannada: ಱ the retroflex lateral pronounced as /[ɭ]/ Kannada: ಳ and the retroflex rhotic pronounced as /[ɻ]/ Kannada: ೞ, by the 5th century.
  2. Introduction of new characters: Kannada script includes characters like pronounced as /[ɕ]/ Kannada: ಶ, pronounced as /[ʂ]/ Kannada: ಷ,pronounced as /[ru]/ Kannada: ಋ, pronounced as /[ruː]/ Kannada: ೠ, pronounced as /[lu]/ Kannada: ಌ, pronounced as /[luː]/ Kannada: ೡ, pronounced as /[ai]/ Kannada: ಐ, pronounced as /[au]/ Kannada: ಔ, pronounced as /[am]/ Kannada: ಅಂ, pronounced as /[ah]/ Kannada: ಅಃ, and mahāprāṇa characters like pronounced as /[kʰ]/ Kannada: ಖ, pronounced as /[ɡʱ]/ Kannada: ಘ, pronounced as /[tʃʰ]/ Kannada: ಛ, pronounced as /[dʒʱ]/ Kannada: ಝ, pronounced as /[t̪ʰ]/ Kannada: ಥ, pronounced as /[d̪ʱ]/ Kannada: ಧ, pronounced as /[ʈʰ]/ Kannada: ಠ, pronounced as /[ɖʱ]/ Kannada: ಢ, pronounced as /[pʰ]/ Kannada: ಫ, pronounced as /[bʱ]/ Kannada: ಭ. The introduction was done so that Sanskrit (and loanwords into the Kannada language from the donor language Sanskrit) could be written using the Kannada script. These changes have facilitated the use of the Kannada script for writing many of the literary Indic languages, including Sanskrit.

Vowels

There are thirteen vowel letters (Kannada: ಸ್ವರ svara) in modern Kannada.The Kannada script is an abugida, where when a vowel follows a consonant, it is written with a diacritic rather than as a separate letter. There are also three obsolete vowels, corresponding to vowels in Sanskrit.

Written Kannada is composed of akshara or kagunita, corresponding to syllables. The letters for consonants combine with diacritics for vowels. The consonant letter without any diacritic, such as Kannada: ಕ, has the inherent vowel Kannada: ಅ. A consonant without a vowel is marked with a 'killer' stroke, such as Kannada: ಕ್ . This silencing diacritic and process is known as Kannada: ಹಲಂತ , whereas the resulting letter is called an Kannada: ಅರ್ಧಾಕ್ಷರ .

Kannada has a phonemic vowel length distinction, so like many other Brahmic scripts, the writing system has two sets of diacritics, one for short vowels and one for long vowels. Short vowels are referred to as Kannada: ಹ್ರಸ್ವ, while long vowels are referred to as Kannada: ದೀರ್ಘ .[14]

Yōgavāha

There are two yōgavāha (part-vowel, part consonant) letters, known as ardhavisarga, used in modern Kannada and two others used in Sanskrit transcription.

Consonant letters

Two categories of consonant letters (Kannada: ವ್ಯಂಜನ vyan̄jana) are defined in Kannada: the structured consonants and the unstructured consonants.

Structured consonants

The structured consonants are classified according to their place of articulation, that is, where the tongue touches the palate.

Unstructured consonants

The unstructured consonants are consonants that do not fall into any of the above structures:

Unstructured consonants

Obsolete Kannada letters

Kannada literary works employed the letters Kannada: ಱ (transliterated '' or 'rh') and Kannada: ೞ (transliterated '', 'lh' or 'zh'), whose manner of articulation most plausibly could be akin to those in present-day Malayalam and Tamil. The letters dropped out of use in the 12th and 18th centuries, respectively. Later Kannada works replaced 'rh' and 'lh' with Kannada: ರ (ra) and Kannada: ಳ (la) respectively.[15]

It is still used to write the Badaga language and a vowel + virama + ḻ is used to transcribe its retroflex vowels.[16]

Another letter (or unclassified vyanjana (consonant)) that has become extinct is 'nh' or 'inn'. Likewise, this has its equivalent in Telugu, where it is called Nakaara pollu. The usage of this consonant was observed until the 1980s in Kannada works from the mostly coastal areas of Karnataka (especially the Dakshina Kannada district). Now, hardly any mainstream works use this consonant. This letter has been replaced by Kannada: ನ್ (consonant n).

Consonant conjuncts

The Kannada script is rich in conjunct consonant clusters, with most consonants having a standard subjoined form and few true ligature clusters. A table of consonant conjuncts follows although the forms of individual conjuncts may differ according to the font.

Of special note is the sequence concerning the letter Kannada: ರ (ra). Unlike other letters, the conjunct form is written second even if it is pronounced first in the sequence.

For example, the /rnaː/ in the word Karnāṭaka (ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ) is written ರ್ನಾ rather than ರ‍್ನಾ.

The nasal consonants Kannada: ಙ (ṅa), Kannada: ಞ (ña), Kannada: ಣ (ṇa), Kannada: ನ (na), and Kannada: ಮ (ma) are usually written as an anusvara Kannada: ಂ when preceding another consonant rather than a consonant conjunct.

For example, the /ŋg/ in the word Beṅgaḷūru (ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು) is usually written Kannada: ಂಗ rather than Kannada: ಙ್ಗ (ಬೆಙ್ಗಳೂರು).

Complete list of consonant conjuncts

Full list of consonant + vowel combinations

The formations shown boldface above are seldom used.

Numerals

The decimal numerals in the script are:

Kannada numerals

Transliteration

Several transliteration schemes/tools are used to type Kannada characters using a standard keyboard. These include Baraha[17] (based on ITRANS), Pada Software[18] and several internet tools like Google transliteration, Quillpad[19] (predictive transliterator). Nudi, the Government of Karnataka's standard for Kannada Input, is a phonetic layout loosely based on transliteration.

In popular culture

Due to its resemblance to an eye and an eyebrow, the Kannada letter Kannada: ಠ ṭha is used in the "look of disapproval" (displayed as "ಠ_ಠ"), a popular emoticon used to convey disapproval or contempt.[20] Similarly, the akshara Kannada: ರೃ rr̥a has been used in emoticons to represent a monocle, while Kannada: ಥ tha has been used to represent a tearing eye.

Unicode

See main article: Kannada (Unicode block).

Kannada script was added to the Unicode Standard in October 1991 with the release of version 1.0.

The Unicode block for Kannada is U+0C80–U+0CFF:

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Shivamogga engraving shows Kannada was in use 7 decades earlier than known. 29 Aug 2017.
  2. Web site: Kannada Language. 12 March 2017.
  3. Book: Ghantkar, Gajanana. History of Goa through Gõykanadi script . 1993. Page x. en, kok, mr, kn.
  4. Book: Campbell, George L. . Handbook of scripts and alphabets . limited . . 1997-11-06 . 1st . 84–5 . 978-0-415-13715-7 . 34473667.
  5. Book: The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cardona. George. Jain. Dhanesh. Routledge. 2007. 978-0-415-77294-5. 804, 805.
  6. Hebbi . Chandravva . Mamatha . H. R. . Sahana . Y. S. . Dhage . Sagar . Somayaji . Shriram . 2020 . Singh . Pradeep Kumar . Panigrahi . Bijaya Ketan . Suryadevara . Nagender Kumar . Sharma . Sudhir Kumar . Singh . Amit Prakash . A Convolution Neural Networks Based Character and Word Recognition System for Similar Script Languages Kannada and Telugu . Proceedings of ICETIT 2019 . Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering . en . Cham . Springer International Publishing . 306–317 . 10.1007/978-3-030-30577-2_26 . 978-3-030-30577-2.
  7. Web site: Romanization, Sinhala (Sinhalese) Script. KAMALAKAR. 2009-05-07. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20100918013724/http://atla.com/tsig/Foreign_Lang_presentation/files2/9_22SinhalaRomanization.pdf. 18 September 2010.
  8. Web site: Ancient scripts, hala. 2009-05-07.
  9. Web site: Telugu & Sinhalese script similarities. 2009-05-07.
  10. A Grammar of the Kannada Language. F. Kittel (1993), p. 5
  11. Web site: Encyclopedia Britannica .
  12. Book: Diringer . David . Alphabet a key to the history of mankind . 1948 . 381.
  13. Indian Epigraphy: a guide to the study of inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the other Indo-Aryan languages, by Richard Solomon, Oxford University Press, 1998, p.41,
  14. Web site: Srinatha Sastry . C. V. . UNICODE for Kannada, General Information & Description . UNICODE . 2024-07-31.
  15. Rice, Edward. P (1921), "A History of Kannada Literature", Oxford University Press, 1921: 14–15
  16. Book: The Unicode Standard, Version 15.0 . 12.8 Kannada . Unicode, Inc . September 2022 . Mountain View, CA .
  17. Web site: Baraha – Free Indian Language Software . baraha.com.
  18. Web site: Pada Software – For Indic Scripts. pada.pro.
  19. Web site: QuillPad – Typing in Kannada has never been easier . Quillpad.in . 7 November 2008 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20081104021158/http://quillpad.in/kannada/ . 4 November 2008 . dmy-all .
  20. News: Browser Extension of the Week: Look of Disapproval. Pcgamer. Maximum PC. 2013-04-24.

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