Kannada, threatened at home
Karnataka's biggest native language is losing ground
By S.A.P. | LOS ANGELES
KANNADA is ailing.
It has speakers, of course—nearly 50m of them, mostly in southwestern India. It’s the official language of the state of Karnataka, where active film, television, and music industries broadcast Kannada voices to millions of people. Writers have written in Kannada for nearly 1,500 years, producing a body of literature that includes a complex grammar written in 850. Kannada was the administrative language of some of the subcontinent’s most powerful kingdoms. There are Kannada newspapers and books published constantly. And writers in Kannada, an officially designated “classical language” (referring to its age), have achieved some measure of national prominence.
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