JOIN USVeteran litterateur and lexicographer Prof G Venkatasubbayya appealed government to make Kannada education compulsory from 1st to 10th standard, in order to avoid the extinction of Kannada speaking people.
Speaking after handing over the ‘Kadangodlu Shankara Bhat Award-2012’ in a programme organised by the Academy of General Education in association with Rastrakavi Govind Pai Research Centre, Udupi and Mahatma Gandhi Memorial College, the lexicologist said that Kannada language adorns the status of 30th position among as many as 10,000 languages across the globe, as far as number of speakers are concerned. It is saddening to observe that the language is slaughtered with the intrusion of other language words in Kannada.
Bangalore is one of the places which is massively affected with this phenomena and the language is slowly loosing its roots from the state’s capital. In this backdrop, it is very much essential that government should come up with the steps to mak Kannada language study compulsory. However, the language has command in the regions like rural Mysore, Dakshina Kannada and Udupi regions owing to the still existing Kannada medium schools, he added.
He stressed that there should be no attempt done to forcefully add other language words in Kannada language. Kannada language is maligned with countless words from other languages that deserve no meaning. He said government should take measures to
activate the motionless dictionary making department in Kannada Sahitya Parishath.
Stating that the Oxford dictionary office in London is actively working following its 150 years of existence, he said that the Karnataka government should come forward to revive the dictionary office. He demanded that government should appoint experts and young people to take up the responsibility. He said the mistakes done in the eight editions of Kannada language dictionary should be rectified immediately.
“I have urged Chief Minister over the revision of the Kannada dictionary, however, I declined the offer of taking the responsibilities and I have also written a letter to Kannada Sahitya Parishath president Pundalika Halambi concerning the issue,” he added.
He said there are many English words found that give meaning to Kannada words and there is a need for the publication of bilingual and trilingual dictionaries. Retorting to a query, he said that there is no need to drop any Kannnada words owing to the difficulties in pronunciation.
“If we have to go for dropping these words, then we have to destroy all the manuscripts and other valuable Kannada texts of the past 20 years,” he added.
The ‘Kadangodlu Shankara Bhat Poem Award-2012’ was given to M S Rudreshwara Swami from Bangalore.