Oh Kannada... (ಕನ್ನಡ)
by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2006/03/16 02:44 -08:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2006/03/16/552695.aspx
Not since We're drowning in LIPs!, Microsoft, you giving us some LIP?, Let there be LIPs, and Oops, we did it again has there been such a powerful pun in title of a post about Language Interface Packs....
But I could not resist now that the Kannada LIP is available for download, right here!
A little information about Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ):
Kannada is the state language of Karnataka, where it is mainly spoken, and one of India's many official languages. Sometimes also called Kanarese, Kannada is one of the Dravidian languages spoken in the South of India. It has about 20 dialects which can differ considerably, though the written form is rather consistent throughout.
Kannada, together with Tamil, Malayalam and others, belongs to the Southern group of the Dravidian languages. These form a language family on its own. Its languages are spoken on the Indian subcontinent, but are not related at all to Indic languages of the Indo-European family (like Hindi): The Dravidian languages are agglutinative (Words are formed by joining morphemes together) and have the interesting feature of an exclusive "we" (in which the addressee is not included).
Kannada is written with the Kannada script, which is supported by the Tunga font in Windows (which is used in the Uniscribe font fallback list on XP machines that have the font correctly installed, for a seamless Kannada user experience!)
This post brought to you by "ಕ" (U+0c95, a.k.a. KANNADA LETTER KA)
# Phylyp on Thursday, March 16, 2006 7:33 AM:
As an Indian, currently working in Karnataka, I got the Indian reference of Kannada first.
Took a bit of thinking and a subsequent Google to work out the pun in reverse.
I'm betting Indians - especially South Indians who've not been to N. America - will face a similar experience :)
# abhinaba on Thursday, March 16, 2006 7:37 AM:
Bangalore, India's Silicon-City is the state-capital of Karnataka, and hence the home of Kannada. Its one of the largest hub of software engineers in the world. So it high time MS came out with a LIP in Kannada.
# Karl on Thursday, March 16, 2006 11:20 AM:
Oh no Telugu :-) How come Kannada comes first before Telugu, when they have borrowed their script from Telugu. And on the software front, Hyderabad can rival Banglore!
# Michael S. Kaplan on Thursday, March 16, 2006 11:24 AM:
Don't worry, Karl -- the future looks reasonably bright, I think....
# Maurits on Thursday, March 16, 2006 12:44 PM:
Hockey fans will get the pun right away
# Michael S. Kaplan on Thursday, March 16, 2006 12:51 PM:
It looks like (so far at least) I have more readers in India than readers who are hockey fans? :-)
# Maurits on Thursday, March 16, 2006 1:19 PM:
# Mihai on Thursday, March 16, 2006 1:27 PM:
SPOILER WARNING!
At some point I did some digging and the following LIP where tagged "Windows Language Interface Pack Available Soon" (I have removed the ones released meantime):
- Afrikaans
- Georgian
- Maltese
- Sepedi (Northern Sotho)
- Norwegian (Nynorsk)
- Punjabi
- Quechua
- Telugu
- Tswana
- Urdu
- Xhosa
- Zulu
Now you know what to expect :-)
# Mihai on Thursday, March 16, 2006 1:36 PM:
<<SPOLER WARNING!>>
should be
SPOILER WARNING!
(damn)
# Michael S. Kaplan on Thursday, March 16, 2006 1:51 PM:
Hi Mihai --
Look again -- it is!
# Alun Jones on Thursday, March 16, 2006 3:01 PM:
Karl, if we're going by who devolved what later language from what earlier language, Microsoft would have developed an English version of Windows and derived the American version from that. There is, as yet, no English version of Windows, nor (AFAICT) any plan to have one.
# Mihai on Thursday, March 16, 2006 3:04 PM:
Thanks for the correction.
And congrats for the new release :-)
# Dean Harding on Thursday, March 16, 2006 10:18 PM:
I got the pun because I watch too much South Park :-)
# Michael S. Kaplan on Friday, March 17, 2006 12:11 AM:
I could have gone with Blame Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ), instead. For the South Park case? :-)
# anutthara on Friday, March 17, 2006 1:02 AM:
As someone with Kannada as my mother tongue, I am thrilled to bits to see this! Many times when I am so lost and deeply involved in debugging the code or the problem at hand, I blurt out the potential solution in Kannada much to the bewilderment of my colleagues :-) I guess now I can interact with my comp in Kannada at least! Thanks Michael and congrats!
# Pavanaja U B on Friday, March 17, 2006 12:51 PM:
It is a good news. I have already downloaded it and playing with it. I am bit unhappy with the somewhat inferiror quality of the translations. Consistency is missing at some places. Context of the word is not given importance at some places while translating.
Coming to the comment by Karl-
> Thursday, March 16, 2006 11:20 AM by Karl
> Oh no Telugu :-) How come Kannada comes first before Telugu,
> when they have borrowed their script from Telugu.
This is not true. The oldest Dravidian script is Tamil. Then Kannada, followed by Telugu and the youngest one is Malayalam.
There are other Dravidian languages like Tulu, Kodava (Coorgi), which had their own script once upon a time, but have lost them. Kodava, Tulu and some Konkani speakers use Kannada script nowadays.
Regards,
Pavanaja
# Pavanaja U B on Sunday, March 26, 2006 12:23 AM:
Hi Michael Kaplan,
Where can I post bugs? After downloading, I am taken to a page at the bottom of which, there is a link to the newsgroup for related discussions. The link for the newsgroup is
http://communities.microsoft.com/newsgroups/default.asp?ICP=WGA&sLCID=us. I clicked on the link. I was taken a page for signing with Passport. I signed with Passport. But after that a message appeared which said "Enter the Secure Code provided by your Site Administrator". There was a textbox to enter this code. What is this code and where do I get it?
Regards,
Pavanaja
# Michael S. Kaplan on Monday, March 27, 2006 12:09 PM:
Hello Pavanaja,
The feedback program is closed for suggestions at this point, so no more codes are being provided....
Michael
# Satish on Tuesday, March 28, 2006 11:06 AM:
karl, what are you really talking about??
# KBhatta on Tuesday, March 28, 2006 11:58 PM:
> Monday, March 27, 2006 12:09 PM by Michael S. Kaplan
> Hello Pavanaja,
>
> The feedback program is closed for suggestions at this point, so
> no more codes are being provided....
>
> Michael
Do you mean to say that We Kannadigas have no other option but to accept whatever crap is thrusted on us as Kannada?
-K Bhatta
# Michael S. Kaplan on Wednesday, March 29, 2006 4:04 AM:
I don't think that is what I said at all, sorry. I was answering a specific question about a specific dialog.
# K Bhatta on Friday, April 14, 2006 1:17 PM:
# Michael S. Kaplan on Friday, April 14, 2006 2:26 PM:
Threre are many factual inaccuracies in the thread there (such as claiming that Windows Server 2003 comes *before* XP?)....
But to answer your specific question, the fact is that those who build fonts, those who get locale data,l those who translate, etc. -- they are not the same people. They all work together, to be sure, but different people work on different projects.
The font works for me, in XP SP2. It also works for me on my Server 2003 and my Vista installs.
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