No technical hurdles to use Kannada, says Pavanaja

'Unicode can reach more people as its universal in approach'

Most of the technical problems of Unicode, an international standard for using languages which was introduced in 2001 have been solved. However, because of lack of information, people still hesitate to use it, opined wellknown columnist Dr U B Pavanaja. 

Speaking on ‘Maahiti tantrajnana mattu Kannada’ during Alva’s Vishwa Nudisiri Virasat at Rathnakaravarni Vedike here, on Saturday, Pavanaja said that Unicode files can reach more number of people as it is universal. The problems of Unicode have been solved and it was submitted to the State government in 2012, but there is a lack of will power in administration-level,” he said. There is no need of using ‘Kanglish’ when there are softwares to support Kannada, he said. 

Pavanaja said the protests won’t help in saving Kannada, but one should provide global knowledge through the language. “Common man should be able to get information in Kannada. We have an opportunity to provide information about our language through Wikipedia. In Wikipedia, there are only 15,000 Kannada articles, a mere number compared to the number of articles in Tamil, Telugu and other languages. Now, it is not possible to upload copy righted articles to Wikipedia, mainly the research articles of our various universities. The government and universities should allow uploading such articles through Creative Common Right,” he urged. 

Pavanaja said that other than Kannada, regional languages like Konkani, Tulu, and Beary can also make use of Unicode. Konkani is on its way to get Unicode fonts, but Tulu should be included in the eight schedule of the Constitution to progress in the way, he said.
 ‘Learning in Kannada’

Speaking on ‘Shikshana mattu Kannada,’ Tumkur University Kannada PG unit Head Dr Nithyananda B Shetty also said that Kannada should be the medium of study for Kannadigas. However, he emphasised on grabbing knowledge of other languages with right definitions. “We don’t have an extraordinary historian, economist, administrator or a world-class leader. This happened because we are like trees with broken roots. Mahatma Gandhi became an extraordinary personality because he read Tolstoy and other world leaders through English. Though he didn’t know Russian or French, English provided just what he wanted,” he said. 

He also said: “French and Arabic languages dominated the world before English. English was popularised only after America’s economic growth and because of Shakespeare and other writers. Even Christ gave his messages in Aramaic language which is similar to Hindi than English. English came to India through administration which should be done through culture. English is not culture but it always used as weapon by capitalists.” 

“Baby can play well only with its mother. We can express our language only through our mother language. English is needed to collect knowledge, but craze of English only increases interest towards capitalism and not in culture or knowledge,” he said.

 However, he added that children should learn Kannada at least till 10th Standard to achieve something using the language.