Kannada
Kannada is the state language of Karnataka in southern India where it is spoken
by about 65% of the population. It is also spoken to a lesser extent in the
neighboring states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra. In total,
there are about 33 Million speakers, or about 4% of the population of India..
Kannada is one of the more important members of the Dravidian family of languages,
a group of about 23 languages spoken chiefly in south and central India and
northern Sri Lanka, that appear to be unrelated to any other known language
family. These languages are derived from a language spoken in India prior to
the invasion of the Aryans around.1500 B.C. Kannada has a long literary tradition
dating back to at least the 9th century. It is written in a Bhrami based script
related to, but distinct from the Devanagri script used to write Hindi.
Sources:
Central Institute of Indian Languages
Travel.indiamart.com
Indianlanguages.com
Encyclopedia.com
Information on writing systems:
Geocities.com:
Brahmi descended scripts
omniglot.com
Independent Study Courses Available at UCSD:
Other Local Resources:
UCSD International Center
Mingei museum of folk art
International channel