Kannada script

Kannada script
ಕನ್ನಡ ಲಿಪಿ
A stanza from Kavirajamarga which praises the people for their literary skills, written in the Kannada script[note 1]
Script type
Time period
4th[1] century CE – present
DirectionLeft-to-right Edit this on Wikidata
LanguagesKannada
Sanskrit
Tulu
Kodava
Badaga
Beary
Sanketi
Konkani
Marathi
Related scripts
Parent systems
Child systems
Goykanadi[3]
Sister systems
Telugu
ISO 15924
ISO 15924Knda (345), ​Kannada
Unicode
Unicode alias
Kannada
U+0C80–U+0CFF
 This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.
This article contains Indic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks or boxes, misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Indic text.
Brahmic scripts
The Brahmi script and its descendants
Northern Brahmic
Southern Brahmic

The Kannada script (IAST: Kannaḍa lipi; obsolete: Kanarese or Canarese script in English) is an abugida of the Brahmic family,[4] used to write Kannada, one of the Dravidian languages of South India especially in the state of Karnataka. It is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic. Kannada script is also widely used for writing Sanskrit texts in Karnataka. Several minor languages, such as Tulu, Konkani, Kodava, Beary and Sanketi also use alphabets based on the Kannada script.[5] The Kannada and Telugu scripts share very high mutual intellegibility with each other,[6] and are often considered to be regional variants of single script. Other scripts similar to Kannada script are Sinhala script[7] (which included some elements from the Kadamba script[8]), and Old Peguan script (used in Burma).[9]

The Kannada script (ಅಕ್ಷರಮಾಲೆ akṣaramāle or ವರ್ಣಮಾಲೆ varṇamāle) is a phonemic abugida of forty-nine letters. The character set is almost identical to that of other Brahmic scripts or often known as Brahmi Lipi.[10] Consonantal letters imply an inherent vowel. Letters representing consonants are combined to form digraphs (ಒತ್ತಕ್ಷರ ottakṣara) when there is no intervening vowel. Otherwise, each letter corresponds to a syllable.

The letters are classified into three categories: ಸ್ವರ svara (vowels), ವ್ಯಂಜನ vyañjana (consonants), and ಯೋಗವಾಹಕ yōgavāhaka (semiconsonants).

The Kannada words for a letter of the script are ಅಕ್ಷರ akshara, ಅಕ್ಕರ akkara, and ವರ್ಣ varṇa. Each letter has its own form (ಆಕಾರ ākāra) and sound (ಶಬ್ದ śabda), providing the visible and audible representations, respectively. Kannada is written from left to right.[11]


Cite error: There are <ref group=note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}} template (see the help page).

  1. ^ "Shivamogga engraving shows Kannada was in use 7 decades earlier than known". 29 August 2017.
  2. ^ "Kannada Language". 12 March 2017.
  3. ^ Ghantkar, Gajanana (1993). History of Goa through Gõykanadi script (in English, Konkani, Marathi, and Kannada). pp. Page x.
  4. ^ Campbell, George L. (6 November 1997). Handbook of scripts and alphabets (1st ed.). Routledge, New York. pp. 84–5. ISBN 978-0-415-13715-7. OCLC 34473667.
  5. ^ Cardona, George; Jain, Dhanesh (2007). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge. pp. 804, 805. ISBN 978-0-415-77294-5.
  6. ^ Hebbi, Chandravva; Mamatha, H. R.; Sahana, Y. S.; Dhage, Sagar; Somayaji, Shriram (2020). Singh, Pradeep Kumar; Panigrahi, Bijaya Ketan; Suryadevara, Nagender Kumar; Sharma, Sudhir Kumar; Singh, Amit Prakash (eds.). "A Convolution Neural Networks Based Character and Word Recognition System for Similar Script Languages Kannada and Telugu". Proceedings of ICETIT 2019. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering. Cham: Springer International Publishing: 306–317. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-30577-2_26. ISBN 978-3-030-30577-2.
  7. ^ "Romanization, Sinhala (Sinhalese) Script" (PDF). KAMALAKAR. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 September 2010. Retrieved 7 May 2009.
  8. ^ "Ancient scripts, hala". Retrieved 7 May 2009.
  9. ^ "Telugu & Sinhalese script similarities". Retrieved 7 May 2009.
  10. ^ "Kannada Language - 56.9 Million Speakers | Amazing Facts". 21 April 2022. Retrieved 12 September 2024.
  11. ^ A Grammar of the Kannada Language. F. Kittel (1993), p. 5