I’m very weak in Kannada. How can I improve it?
Karnataka is home to 86 per cent of the 21.7 million Kannada speakers. Kannada, also known as Kannana or Kanarese, is a Dravidian language spoken by 72 per cent of the population in Karnataka, India’s southwestern state. Kannada is spoken in around 20 dialects (Ethnologue). They’re usually divided into three categories: northern, southern, and central. In 2008, it was designated as a classical language, and it is thought to be as old as 2500 years old, making it India’s third oldest language after Sanskrit and Tamil. Kannada is one of India’s 22 official languages as well as 14 regional languages. The nearby languages, such as Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and others, have influenced many of the dialects. Kannada is a heavily inflected language with a syntax that resembles Tamil. It is agglutinative, like other Dravidian languages, meaning that suffixes are attached to stems to create new words and convey different grammatical relationships.
Learning a language requires a learner to be proficient in all four parameters - reading, writing, speaking, and listening, besides Grammar! In my opinion, the first thing you must focus on when starting with Kannada should be 'Learning to speak Kannada'!
But to reach this stage you should start by:
Listening-
Actively listen to, as many relevant audio resources you find – online, in libraries, repeatedly until the pronunciation, the accent, the pitch, the tone and the speed gets embedded in your subconscious. It is not possible to speak a language if you cannot identify the words being spoken. So this is an important step towards your primary goal of speaking Kannada. This will help you train your ear, identify spoken words and get you ‘in tune’ with the speech. After multiple listening episodes, take the transcript of the audio clip and read along, maintaining the same pronunciation, accent, pitch, tone and speed. You could listen to Podcasts, News, Audiobooks, Kannada songs, Talk Shows, Documentaries and much more! YouTube videos, Spotify Kannada playlists are a few of the top valuable, effective and interesting audio language learning programs that will catapult your learning!
Speaking-
Shadow what you have been hearing all along in the audio clips now with the transcript. Speak as though you delivered the original dialogues. loud and clear.
Writing-
Practice writing the Kannada alphabet. They are fairly easy and a lot of encouragement once you get the hang of it! Start by learning the vowels and consonants present in the language, moving over to two letter and three letter words. Spend considerable time mastering it before moving on to our last stop!
Reading-
Read what you are writing in the Kannada script after regular intervals to memorize the Kannada alphabets and get a grasp on the pronunciation, the accent, the pitch, the tone and the speed. Read children’s storybooks, magazines or newspapers, new articles on food/travel blog, politics/history, etcetera. Lastly, focus on Grammar, which will further strengthen your grasp of the language
Finally,
Kannada employs postpositions at the end of noun sentences, typically following a case marker, to signify time, place, instrumentality, and so on. In role and context, postpositions are similar to prepositions in other languages. The normal, or prestigious, variety is built on the Mysore-Bangalore area’s middle-class, educated Brahmin dialect. Kannada’s sound system is similar to that of other Dravidian languages.
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