Kannada alphabet

The Kannada alphabet (IAST: Kannaḍa lipi) is an abugida of the Brahmic family, used primarily to write the Kannada language, one of the Dravidian languages of South India especially in the state of Karnataka, Kannada script is widely used for writing Sanskrit texts in Karnataka. Several minor languages, such as Tulu, Konkani, Kodava, Sanketi and Beary, also use alphabets based on the Kannada script. The Kannada and Telugu scripts share high mutual intellegibility with each other, and are often considered to be regional variants of single script. Similarly, Goykanadi, a variant of Old Kannada, has been historically used to write Konkani in the state of Goa.

History

The Kannada script derives from the Old Kannada script, which evolved around 10th century as the continuation of the Kadamba alphabet of the fourth century. This evolved from the ancient Brahmi script of the third century BCE.

Evolution

Over the centuries some changes have been made to the Kannada script. These changes consist of: