Can I master Kannada in a year?

Kannada is a language and it is a script used for writing the language. Most people in the southern Indian state of Karnataka speak Kannada, and there are speakers in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Kerala and Goa. There are some differences in the way Kannada is spoken in these places. There are about 44 million people who speak the language.

Kannada is a Dravidian language, which is a different language family from the Indo-European or Aryan languages of the north, such as Hindi but close to the other southern languages like Telugu. It has about 1500 years of written history. The first version is known as the Old Kannada script. By about 1500 it had morphed into the Kannada and Telugu scripts. Printing presses introduced by Christian missionaries at the beginning of the 19th century standardized the Kannada and Telugu scripts.

The Kannada script is a type of writing system called an alpha syllabary. All consonants have a built-in vowel. Other vowels are indicated with diacritics, which appear next to the consonants. When they appear at the beginning of a syllable, vowels are written as separate letters. When consonants appear together without intervening vowels, the second consonant is written as a special joint symbol, usually below the first. The direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines.

It has the highest number of Janapeeta literary awards compared to any Indian language. Kannada had a huge boost during the Vijayanagar period. Shri Vinoba Bhave called “Kannada” script the “Queen of World Scripts” – “Vishwa Lipigala Raani”.

There is nothing better than trying to speak in a language that helps you learn the language better. If you follow the above-mentioned steps, it is fairly possible to speak at least broken Kannada and make meaningful conversations within some time.

There are many avenues to learn Kannada such as Spoken Kannada classes, online classes, websites and books. But face to face learning in a group with the help of a tutor is the best way. A number of organisations are teaching spoken Kannada as well as written Kannada to non-Kannadigas in Bangalore.

learn to speak Kannada first. 

• interact with the local people
• Make friends with such people who want to teach you Kannada
• repeat aloud what they say in Kannada
• Start talking in bits and pieces
• Ask for Kannada translation to whatever you want to say
• Listen to Kannada songs
• Watch Kannada news on TV
• Learning to speak may take a few months depending on your interest and efforts.

Since our learning curve for such things should be faster when we are older, it shouldn’t take that much time if you end up taking 30 mins a day for this specifically. Maybe 3–4 months, while you put into practice speaking Kannada in your everyday interactions with people who already know Kannada fluently.

A year is more than enough to acquire fluency in Kannada so keep practising and be consistent with learning!