Is Kannada really the simplest language to learn?

Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ), also known as Kanarese, or Canarese, belongs to the Southern branch of the Dravidian language family. It is spoken as a first language by 38 million people and as a second language by another 9 million people in southern India, primarily in the state of Karnataka. It is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra. It is estimated that worldwide it is spoken by upwards of 44 million people, including those who speak it as a second language (Ethnologue).

The Mysore dialect of Kannada has 15 vowel phonemes, i.e., sounds that make a difference in word meaning, All but one vowel (/ə/) can be short or long. Vowel length makes a difference in word meaning. In addition, there are two diphthongs: /ai/ and /au/. Mysore Kannada has a large number of consonant phonemes, i.e., sounds that make a difference in word meaning. The consonant system is characterized by the fact that besides a Dravidian inventory, it includes a number of features typical of Indo-Aryan languages. There are also a number of social varieties of spoken Kannada depending on caste or class. Colloquial Kannada has three dialects based on social class: Brahmin, non-Brahmin, and Untouchable. The standard or prestigious, variety is based on the middle-class, educated Brahmin dialect of the Mysore-Bangalore area.

Like other Dravidian languages, it is agglutinative, which means that suffixes are added to stems to derive new words and to express various grammatical relationships. This can result in very long words such as Shivatatvaratnakara, the name of the world’s first encyclopedia. Like other Dravidian languages, Kannada uses compounding and reduplication to form new words. Along with Telugu, it has been influenced by Sanskrit, Portuguese, and English. Kannada uses postpositions that are added to the end of noun phrases, usually after a case marker, to indicate time, location, instrumentality, and so forth. Postpositions are similar in function and meaning to prepositions in other languages.

The standard word order in Kannada is Subject-Object-Verb. However, other orders are possible because Inflectional endings take care of keeping clear grammatical relations and roles in the sentence.

Let’s discuss the difficulty first!

We know from the live account of several students who after several years of learning and knowing Tamil, Telugu or Malayalam, the closest languages to Kannada, also don’t feel confident with it! Kannada, unlike any other language, is a beautiful learning journey; 

So why is Kannada difficult?

Well, to begin with, Kannada is a highly inflected language with a sound system similar to that of other Dravidian languages.

Common nouns, proper names, pronouns and adjectives. They are inflected for the following categories:

1. two genders: rational and irrational; rational nouns include men and deities; irrational nouns include women, animals, objects, and everything else.
2. two numbers: singular and plural; the singular is unmarked, the plural is marked by the suffix -gɭu, e.g., mane ‘house’ and manegɭu ‘houses’.
3. seven cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, instrumental, and vocative.
4. special pronouns for indicating politeness
5. contrast between proximate and remote demonstrative pronouns
6. Personal pronouns are marked for person, case and number. Gender is marked only in the third person singular.
7. Adjectives share properties with nouns. Some linguists think that they do not constitute a separate word class.
8. Numerals 1-5 are marked for gender.

Verbs and tenses exhibit the following properties:

1. Verbs agree with their subjects in person, number, and gender.
2. Subject pronouns are often deleted because person, number, and gender information is carried by the verb.
3. Verbs consist of a verb stem + tense marker + person/number/gender marker, e.g., hoog ‘go’ + –tt– ‘present tense’ + –iini ‘;1st person singular’ =hoogtiini ‘I go.’
4. Person, number, and gender markers have different forms, depending on the tense.
5. Verbs occur in two forms: finite (imperative, present and past forms, modals, and verbal nouns) which are marked for person, number and gender, and non-finite (infinitives, participles, and verb stems). Finite forms can stand alone, but non-finite forms cannot.
6. Imperatives have various levels of politeness or deference towards the addressee, e.g., impolite, casual, polite, very polite, extremely polite. Optative imperative (Let him go!) and hortative imperative (Let’s go!) have special forms.
7. The future tense is no longer used in spoken Kannada.
8. There are several modal auxiliary verbs (may, must, could, should, etc.) that are attached to the infinitive.
9. Variety of aspect markers add nuances to the basic meaning of the verb, such as relative sequence of two or more actions, completeness, duration, speaker’s attitude towards the action expressed by the verb, etc.
10. Causative verbs are formed from intransitive stems by adding the suffix -(i)su, e.g., kali ‘learn’ + –(i)su = kalisu ‘teach.’
11. There is a special conditional form.

Now coming to the fact that it’s impossible to learn. Well, for those who are under the impression that learning Kannada is impossible, I have the following to add:

• If Kannada appears difficult to you, it might be because it’s probably not been effectively taught to you, which has something to do with the incorrect belief that it is not a spoken language!
• Learning Kannada, from our perspective and experience, does not have to be difficult; on the contrary, it may be simple and enjoyable. Of fact, some people may find it challenging to acquire a language that is not their native tongue. It all relies on a variety of things such as individual learning capacity, age, and so on.
• We can state with certainty that everyone who can learn any other language can learn Kannada and that learning Kannada does not have to be more difficult than learning any other language – provided we study Kannada in a natural fashion that allows us to internalise the language’s living flow.

So how should one learn Kannada?

1. My first suggestion will be to invest time learning the Kannada script first. 
2. To learn Kannada I suggest omitting the grammar in the absolute beginning and stressing to speak Kannada before diving into the vast knowledge of Kannada Grammar. I am not saying that mastering grammar is unimportant. Grammar is highly essential, but it must be taught in the appropriate dosages, at the right time, and in the right way. The most crucial point is that improving one’s capacity to deal with the live flow of language should be the foundation for studying grammar, not the other way around. As previously stated, this is true not only for Kannada but also for all languages. 
3. You can significantly improve your language skills through frequent exposure to the live flow of the language in all possible ways: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
4. Take a step back and go in your childhood; how did you learn your mother tongue? Did you begin by learning and remembering grammatical rules? Were you given lengthy lists of words to memorise? Did anyone ever explain the notion of linguistic roots and the derivation of words to us? No; we just heard the language and then attempted to speak it. You listened and repeated the language. You were corrected occasionally, but most of the time you corrected yourself, and when did you start studying grammar? When you had already grasped the language to a great level. So, all we have to do to make Kannada learning easy and enjoyable is to change our approach by paying attention to the natural way our minds learn new things. Various components of learning should be highlighted and prioritised at the appropriate time and in the correct order.

Kannada is one of the 22 official languages and 14 regional languages of India. Official interstate communication is conducted in Hindi, and English still plays a dominant role in education, particularly at the university level. There is a considerable difference between the spoken and written forms of the language with regard to its phonology, grammar, and lexicon. Spoken Kannada has many regional dialects, while the written form remains relatively uniform.

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