What are some basic tips to learn Kannada quickly?
Kannada, also known as Kanarese, is a Dravidian language spoken mostly by Karnataka residents in India’s southwestern province. Language minorities in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Kerala, and Goa, as well as Kannadigas living abroad, speak the language. It is one of India’s scheduled languages, as well as the state’s official and administrative tongue. Kannada was the court language of some of the most powerful people in the world. By 2011, there were about 43 million native speakers of the language. Kannada is also spoken as a second or third language by over 12.9 million non-native speakers in Karnataka, bringing the total number of Kannada speakers to 56.9 million. Kannada was the court language of some of South and Central India’s most dominant states, including the Chalukya dynasty, Rashtrakuta dynasty, Vijayanagara Empire, and Hoysala Empire.
Let's now see the tips that can help you enhance your Kannada language skills
Enhance your vocabulary- Once you start learning Kannada, start labelling as many objects possible at home with their Kannada names to get a feel of the immersion method. Start writing a journal, blog, diary, grocery list etc with Kannada phrases, not just the words. You may also start following a Kannada food channel. Once you start picking up then you can move to the next target in writing these names in Kannada alphabets. One word of caution would be, do not exceed more than 10 words per day, otherwise, you may feel overwhelmed. At the end of the week ‘revision’ is equally important. This will enable you to hold your first conversation when you will be able to explain your opinion, need, idea with the simplest of the words to a Kannada speaker!
Leave Grammar for the time being- Every language caters to kid’s stories first. I would like to recommend buying a few children’s storybooks in Kannada and start reading them loudly. Please don’t put stress on yourself regarding grammar at this point because the main idea is to check how quickly and how diligently you are able to understand the gist of the story. This will also enable you to speak Kannada at the earliest.
Watch videos- After understanding children’s stories, you may slowly venture into watching short videos on YouTube. It is imperative to suggest that you should choose video genres related to your likings and level. Watch what interests you because your happiness factor is the key to keep you hooked and motivated. You are also requested to look at videos based on your level of learning. Do not try to be over-ambitious viewing videos beyond your level of learning as they only demotivate you. I also recommend watching movies and TV shows on Netflix Amazon Prime kind of channels which offer these with subtitles in English.
Actively engage yourself in an online or offline community- look for reliable and genuine social media that can help you learn; It is not a hidden known fact that learning has become very approachable and diverse because of access to good online resources. If you have a Kannada community around you, I would sincerely urge you to join the Kannada community with voluntary work, so as to be able to speak to Kannada speakers and get a feel of an immersion learning. An online community, where I can not only get in touch with native speakers but a whole lot of info on the recent trends as well. I would like to suggest that if you are a working professional with a stressful job, join a community like this and it can broaden your horizon without spending a dime. If you choose not to be a part of a community you could also search for some conversation partners online through various sites such as Hello Talk, Tandem, Conversationpartners Languagepartners and Italki.
Do look for a trainer to take this further- Avid travellers learn the basics of foreign languages for commuting purposes. However, if you are learning Kannada for your career, the ideal process would be to start speaking with a native speaker. If that’s not possible, then hiring a trainer is not only rational but also it can add value to your career progression. Hence, I call it an ‘investment’. Multibhashi is one such platform that you may like to consider for accomplished trainers.
Learn with Kannada immersion- It’s a rather courageous choice to make but if you really want to immerse yourself into Kannada then this is a great path (though less taken). In our daily life, we spend a considerable amount of time on our computers be it work or leisure. So, if we can change the language of the device into Kannada then it will not only enhance our vocabulary but also stop us from thinking in English. Within a few days, you will find the brain organically processing data in Kannada.
Finally,
Kannada is a highly inflected language with a grammar that is similar to that of Tamil. 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. 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.
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