Writing Kannada no more in vogue

Udupi, Aug 2: Renowned linguist scholar Dr K V Narayana, today exhorted that the literacy would loose its real meaning in the coming days due to the fast developing technology as speech to text and text to speech would become the order of the day in future.

He said that with technology advancement, learning of Kannada script by writing (motor activity) had taken back seat due to computer typing and the use and knowledge of Kannada script had become complex in the 21st century with the advancement in the technology. Lots of changes were being witnessed in the Kannada script which is being surpassed in sending messages through SMS, he said.

He was speaking at a two-day State level Seminar on +Kavya Meemamse, Kannada Lipi Belavanige Mattu Shasana Adhyayana (Poetics, Development Kannada script and study of Epigraphy, jointly organized by University Grant Commission (UGC) and Mahatma Gandhi Memorial College (MGM), as part of its 60th year celebrations here.

Dr Narayana said that among about 6000 languages now existed in the world, only about 100 languages including Kannada have scripts.

Moreover more than one script was used in some language. If we make the list of scripts of languages existed in the world in the last 2000 years, only 10 languages among them were maintained their identity throughout, Kannada being one among those ten languages, perhaps listed the first four or five, he said. Because of this long standing history of Kannada language and script, the foreign language researchers were still attracted towards study of Kannada, he opined.

Referring to epigraphy, Dr Narayana said that all the time, epigraphy had been used as supplementary material to history and not main material. Both the researchers and the teachers have major responsibility to play in arousing interest among the students by preparing proper framework for the study of poetics, script and epigraphy which had immense scope, he added.

Speaking after inaugurating the seminar, Karnataka State Directorate of Archives Director Usha Suresh said that the archives have the collections of over 20 lakh rare and original documents several being 300 years old, epigraphs and inscription which were most useful to researchers and those interested persons in the field. These information could also now be downloaded through internet by the interested persons. The department had also collections of over 100 tape recorded the voices of several eminent personalities for the state.

UNI