Kannada

Being one of the most spoken languages in India, Kannada, also called Kanarese or Kannana, member of the Dravidian language family and the official language of the state of Karnataka in southern India. It is characterized by an unbroken literary history of over a thousand years. It has been presented with 8 Jnanapith awards, the most for any Dravidian language and the second highest for any Indian language. Therefore, this language has a certain specialty in Indian diversity.

Along with Prakit, Sankrit, and Tamil, Kannada is the oldest language that branched off even before the Christian Era, meaning that it was probably spoken before English and Hindi. It is also labeled as 'The Queen of Languagues' of thousands of different languages around the world. Not only due to its long existence, but Kannada is special by lots of other extraordinary features such as no silent letters, ending-with-a-vowel words, its popularity in ancient Greek plays, etc.

Kannada is also the only Indian language for which a foreigner Ferdinand Kittel wrote a Dictionary. All of these features put a high position on this language to the overall Indian languages.

Numbers of Kannada speakers in India (2023 census): 4.4 crore individuals