As of today, my new book A Manual of
Modern Kannada has become
available as an Open Access publication at
https://crossasia-books.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/xasia/catalog/book/736 (The
clickable button “Buch herunterladen” means “Download book”; “Buch
kaufen” means “Buy book”.)
Indologists on this list: please
bear in mind that there is also a wealth of highly interesting
secondary literature in Kannada on classical Indological matters… (this
is a hint. Encouragement. Prodding). Kannada is a conservative language,
which has remained largely unchanged for the past several centuries.
Once one has learnt modern Kannada, it is not a big jump to Old Kannada
(yes, it is a jump, but not gigantic).
(Warning: now comes a shameless
act of advertising –)
This learner’s manual of
standard modern written Kannada was written for use at the University of
Munich and tested in teaching practice with students over the past few
years, but it can also be used for self-learning. The focus is on the
written language (which is the only truly sensible thing to do, as is
explained on pp. x-xi), but there are occasional remarks about speech
variations in regional and colloquial usage. The grammar is covered in
19 lessons, followed by appendices about the phonemic system and script,
numerals, strong verbs, colloquialisms, and sandhi. Experience has
shown that the material in the book can be studied in the classroom with
4 hours of weekly teaching very easily within an academic year (30
weeks of teaching), and a few times this was accomplished with a group
of students within a single winter term.
Robert Zydenbos
--
Prof. Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos / ಪ್ರೊ.
ಡಾ. ರೊಬೆರ್ತ್ ಜೆಯ್ದೆನ್ಬೊಸ್
Institute of Indology and Tibetology
Department of Asian Studies
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (University of Munich – LMU)
Germany