Preserve Kannada dialects

[Harold Schiffman]

SOUTHERN NEWS - KARNATAKA Dec 16, 2007

Preserve Kannada dialects: Prof

Saturday December 15 2007 11:49 IST
Jagadeesh Sampalli


UDUPI: Well-known linguist and Hampi Kannada University professor K V
Narayan has said; "advocating the use of pure Kannada in our daily
activities is like practicing orthodoxy which always keep others away
from its ambit." "We should reject this kind of notion. If not, it
will deceive the common people," he said presiding over a session on
'Usage of Kannada' on the third day of the 74th Akhila Bharata Kannada
Sahitya Sammelan held at M Gopalkrishna Adiga Vedike here on Friday.
"There are many dialects within Kannada itself. Out of total people in
the state, around 64 per cent people use Kannada as their first
language and only 24 per cent of people, who knew another language,
use Kannada. We should not destroy these dialects,'' he said.

On using Kannada in FM radios and electronic media, Narayan giving an
example of -e song simply superb", said that the sentence, which has
only one Kannada word (Ee), might be a bad Kannada sentence, but not a
bad English sentence. Because, they "who have been distorting Kannada"
had been following the sentence structure of Kannada language which
expanded its usage possibilities. He advocated the need of using
Kannada as 'ear language' instead of 'eye language' or 'reading
language' in order to increase its usage.
Narayan also said that the government should provide opportunities to
use Kannada compulsorily. "As we have given dual opportunities for
using both Kannada and English, people have chosen English as priority
which declined the promotion of Kannada language," he added.

Speaking on the use of Kannada in media, T C Poornima said that media
had played a vital role in promoting language, coining new words, and
experimenting them in their daily usage. Kannada was also influenced
by the impact of globalisation and information technology which made
the world as global village. Mentioning the use of Kannada in FM Radio
and electronic media, she said that for the latter, audience and
capitalists were important and they concentrated more on them by using
the language as per their needs.

In order to avoid this, the government and experts should enforce a
publicity policy and language policy.Speaking on use of Kannada in
education, Prof Mallikarjuna Meti said that the essence of regional
languages should be retained in primary education.
B Mallikarjun spoke on use of Kannada in administration.

http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEK20071215012801&Page=K&Headline=Preserve+Kannada+dialects%3A+Prof&Title=Southern+News+-+Karnataka&Topic=0

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