One state, many languages: Exploring many worlds of Karnataka

As a state, Karnataka lives up to its tourism tagline of being “one state, many worlds”. It has so much to offer from tourism sites to gastronomic adventures, from architectural wonders to a deep-rooted culture that goes back centuries. However, what often misses the spotlight is the wealth of languages this state contains. It was in 1956 that the States Reorganisation Act was created and state borders were redrawn on a linguistic basis. This redrawing is considered to be among India’s largest administrative-based reorganisations. Created as the Mysore state, it was renamed Karnataka in 1973. According to the last census in 2011, the official language of the state, Kannada, was the native language of  66.46 percent of its population.

Travelling across the state, however, one finds several languages such as Tulu (spoken in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi), Kodava (of Coorg), Beary (spoken by the Muslims in Dakshina Kannada, closer to Kerala borders and Udupi), Dakhani Urdu (spoken around Bijapur and Gulbarga in North Karnataka), Koraga (of the Koraga tribe), Sankethi (of the Sankethi people with origins in Tamil Nadu), Navayati (in Bhatkal) and more.

B Shakira Jabeen, a subject specialist in socio-linguistics at the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore and HRDC, Dharwad, has identified over 72 languages in Karnataka in the course of her work and speaks about it passionately. It is important to note here that the distinction between a language and a dialect now does not exist. Many of the former definitions such as mutual intelligibility have fallen away. For example, Austrian and German are mutually intelligible, but they are regarded as two distinct languages. One will find several similarities between languages in Karnataka, but each is considered to be an individual tongue in its own right. Take the similarities between Navayati, a language spoken almost exclusively in the Bhatkal region, with Konkani and Kannada. Syed Zameerulla Sharif, a retired principal and well-known Kannada writer based in Bhatkal, elaborates with examples of words like bhangaar meaning gold which is similar to bhangaar (Kannada) and banggaar (Konkani). The same with gurbini meaning an expectant mother which is similar to gharbini (Kannada) and garbin (Konkani). As newcomers from the Arabian Peninsula, the Nawayaths assimilated words of the local language to help their survival. If one were to examine Dakhani Urdu, says MN Sayeed, former professor of Urdu at Bangalore University and author/editor of 14 Dakhani books, you will find that almost 300 years of knowledge is hidden behind the perception that it is a corrupt dialect of Urdu. “In actuality, no language is corrupt. Each one has a structure of its own. In the case of Dakhni Urdu, it migrated from Delhi to the Deccan region and to survive, borrowed from the geographies around it and has influences of Gujarati, Punjabi, Marathi, and more,” he explains. The future of multilingualism Such similarities are prolific across the many languages of Karnataka. In contemporary linguistics, if the speakers of a language view themselves as speaking a separate language then it is considered so. Redefining dialects, Purushottama Bilimale, folklorist and literary critic believes, is one of the key aspects in the preservation of multilingualism that must be considered in the efforts being made. He also believes that if there is even one speaker of a language, it has to be taken seriously. Currently, if a language has less than 10,000 speakers, it does not get the backing it deserves from authorities. It is dependent on concentrated individual and community efforts to ensure these languages are not lost in history. He cites the example of the Koraga language which was once considered a dialect of Tulu. The number of speakers of this language dropped to just 600 but, with dedicated efforts, it has now come up to 2,000. Another approach to saving endangered languages, especially those like Kodava Takk, Tulu, and Konkani, has been making the scripts of these tongues more accessible to speakers. Kaveri Ponnapa places her recently released book, A Place Apart — a translation and transliteration of poems by BP Appanna — in context. The book has poems in both the Roman and Kannada scripts. Kaveri believes that endangered languages require more speakers with more accessible scripts. But, there are challenges. “When using English, I feel l can bend it to the sounds of Kodava. But with Kannada, I find Kodava is often viewed through its lens, altering pronunciations. Children of the future may not be able to tell the difference,” she says. “To learn Tulu, a revised Roman script can be helpful, especially for those who can’t read Kannada,” says Sayeegeetha Hegde, co-ordinator, Nitte University Centre for Tulu Studies and the Head, Department of Humanities at Nitte (Deemed to be University), who played an instrumental role in the creation of the Tulu Cognate Dictionary. However, this usage of scripts may not be the solution for the Konkani language feels Vivek Shanbhag, a Kannada writer. To help understand why one needs to look back into the history of Konkani and its movement, Shanbhag summarises it and says that around 400 years ago Hindu communities fled from Goa to escape conversion under the Portuguese Inquisition. They settled all through the Konkan coast and adopted the Kannada script in Karnataka and the Malayalam script in Kerala. Those in Goa used the Roman script. Because the Portuguese banned Konkani in Goa, several of its words made their way into Goan Konkani. This moved with the Christians who fled down south due to the inquisition a century later. This is the Konkani spoken by Mangalorean Christians, whereas the Gowd Saraswat Brahmin (GSB) Konkani sounds different. There is also a 5th script, the Perso-Arabian one used by the Nawayaths. “This way Konkani has five scripts. Now if both Christians and the Hindus in Mangalore were to use the Roman script it would not solve any problem because they fundamentally speak different languages. These differences are very important, they are not just words. They each carry a worldview, a method of living, and their relationship with people. There are different ways to preserve a language and it depends on the context and your understanding of it,” feels Shanbhag. The prolific work being done by each of these experts and others to save the many languages of Karnataka, were extensively discussed in a series of panel discussions at the 10th edition of the Bangalore Literature Festival that took place in December 2021. [caption id=“attachment_5461351” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Entrance to Bangalore Literature Festival 2018[/caption] Prateeti Ballal curated these sessions at the festival. She has taught linguistics in universities across the USA and is a musician and dancer with a deep interest in the arts. “The scholarship in these languages and the work done in them are phenomenal. Many of them have dedicated academies and we have seen a lot of good work happening especially in smaller towns and villages, compared to cities, where things may be a bit distracted,” says Prateeti. She speaks admiringly of how in the course of her interaction with the Arabhashe academy she found that they had just completed a translation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and were getting students at a Dakshina Kannada college to perform it. “There are several language worlds out there but, we end up focusing only on English and are not open to all that exists in our state and country”, Ballal adds. It is heartening for the people working to honour linguistic culture that well-known names like Damodar Mauzo, a Konkani writer from Goa was conferred with the 57th Jnanpith Award 2022 recently. He is the second Konkani writer to receive this award. The Jnanpith Committee also made note of the need to recognise smaller languages. As Jabeen aptly says, “I profess that language be the beginning of inclusivity. It does not hurt anyone.” The author, based in Bangalore, is an independent features journalist with a special interest in food and beverages. 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