Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxKannada
"I presume you know at least three Indian languages, English, Hindi, and Bengali, yet you find it so difficult to communicate here. And three languages you could be masters of Europe."
—English, August
—English, August
After 16 years in Bangalore, the law of averages caught up with me. When i meet someone new of the non-office types, i'd start off in Telugu and it'd work, most of the time. Now we have a maid who speaks only Kannada, an unusual situation in Bangalore, where folks speak many languages on the average.
So when i ran into Anuj last Sunday, i was wondering whether he knew anyone who could teach me Kannada (i am OK with languages if i learn them formally). He said that he could do it himself!
Last evening, we started off with all the letters (ಸ್ವರಗಳು/ವ್ಯನ್ಜನಗಳು). He had the works, an easel with a dry-erase board. The script is easy, as it looks quite like Telugu.
Anuj was talking in Kannada most of the time. That reminded me of how James A. Michener learned French in five days flat. As he writes in The Drifters, his teacher spoke only in French those five days. After a while, he figured out!
I could even read a kid's story in Kannada at the end; that killed me.
Anyway, i loved this Basavanna vachana, which Anuj translated for me while he was explaining the wonderful Baraha Indic language transliteration tool.
ಕಳಬೇಡ ಕೂಲಬೇಡ
ಹುಸಿಯ ನುಡಿಯಲುಬೇಡ
ಮುನಿಯಬೇಡ
ಅನ್ಯರಿಗೆ ಅಸಹ್ಯ ಪಡಬೇಡ
ತನ್ನ ಬಣ್ಣಿಸಬೇಡ
ಇದಿರ ಹಳಿಯಲುಬೇಡ
ಇದೇ ಅಂತರಂಗ ಶುದ್ಧಿ
ಇದೇ ಬಹಿರಂಗ ಶುದ್ಧಿ
ಇದೇ ನಮ್ಮ ಕೂಡಲಸಂಗಮನೂಲಿಸುವ ಪರಿ
