Kannada – Not an Indo European Language

Kannada is not an Indo-European language. It belongs to the Dravidian language family, which is a distinct family of languages spoken primarily in South India and Sri Lanka. The Dravidian family is unrelated to the Indo-European family, which includes most European languages, as well as Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, and other languages spoken in North India.

The Dravidian languages are thought to have originated in South India and to have spread from there to other parts of the subcontinent. Kannada is one of the four major Dravidian languages, spoken by about 43 million people in Karnataka, India. It is also spoken by significant minorities in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Goa.

Kannada has a rich literary tradition dating back to the 9th century AD. It is the official language of the state of Karnataka and is also spoken in parts of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Goa.

Here are some of the key features of Kannada that distinguish it from Indo-European languages:

• Kannada is an agglutinative language, meaning that words are formed by adding suffixes to roots. This is in contrast to Indo-European languages, which are mostly fusional, meaning that words are formed by changing the internal vowel sounds of roots.
• Kannada has a Dravidian numeral system, which is different from the Indo-European numeral system used in most of the world.
• Kannada has a different word order than Indo-European languages. For example, in Kannada, the verb typically comes at the end of the sentence, while in Indo-European languages, the verb usually comes in the middle of the sentence.

Here’s a table summarizing the key differences between Indo-European and Dravidian languages: