‘Kali Kannada’ Says Karnataka Culture Minister As He Himself Takes To Virtually Teaching Those Who Say ‘Kannad Gothilla’

For the past five days, Karnataka’s Minister for Kannada, Culture and Tourism has taken up an additional task of addressing ‘Kannad Gothilla’ — a pertinent issue that has even turned violent often.

In order to push non-Kannada speaking residents of the state to learn Kannada, the minister on Tuesday announced ‘Kali Kannada’ (learn Kannada) on social media platform Twitter.

The initiative has the minister’s team post an image with basic phrases, vocabulary and conversations in English with the Kannada equivalents transliterated using the Roman alphabet, on a Twitter thread everyday.

Acknowledging that there are various apps that have been working in this direction, the minister said this effort was to utilise his influence on social media for the benefit of Kannada.

“I have a considerable social media following and I hope to use that to teach Kannada to those who don't speak the language. Even if just about 2 per cent people learn functional Kannada through this initiative, I will be happy,” said C T Ravi, as quoted.

There has been considerable response to these language learning posts by the minister with many Bengaluru citizens thanking him for making a productive effort.

While the first lesson had basic conversational phrases, the succeeding lessons introduced basic vocabulary, names of vegetables, and quantities to help those conversing with local vegetable vendors, conversations between landlords and tenants and those searching for houses and numbers in multiples of 10.