Kannada

About Kannada

Kannada is the official language of the Indian state of Karnataka, whose capital is Bengaluru, with about 44 million native speakers. It is a Dravidian language, related to Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, and has been written for more than 1,500 years.

Use nīvu for a polite "you" with strangers and older people, and nīnu with close friends and children. Kannada has its own rounded script, close to that of Telugu. Long and short vowels change the meaning of a word, and some consonants are said with the tip of the tongue curled back, a sound English does not have.

FamilyDravidian
Native speakersabout 44 million (2019)
Official inIndia (Karnataka)
ScriptKannada script
Codeskn (ISO 639-1), kan (ISO 639-3)

Speaker number: Ethnologue (2019), via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

Scroll to Top