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

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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

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