by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2010/05/13 07:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2010/05/13/10012219.aspx
Please excuse the South Park reference. And the probably terrible transliteration!
"You hear that Mr. Anderson?... That is the sound of inevitability... It is the sound of your LIP..." -- Agent Smith, talking to Neo in The Matrix....
You knew it was going to happen.
It was inevitable.
But like in a good way.
The Kannada Language Interface Pack for Windows 7 is now available!
Currently only in 32-bit, and you must have English resources for language fallback.
You can download it from right here....
The Kannada Windows 7 LIP is produced as part of the Local Language Program sponsored by Public Sector.
And now a little background information about Kannada:
NUMBER OF SPEAKERS:
45 million speakers
NAME IN THE LANGUAGE ITSELF:
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.
FUN FACTS:
- Works of Kannada literature have received seven Jnanpith awards, which is the highest number awarded for the literature in any Indian language.
- Several transliteration schemes/tools are used to type Kannada characters using a standard keyboard. Nudi, the government of Karnataka's standard for Kannada Input, is a phonetic layout loosely based on transliteration.
- Kannada has a non-trivial number of loan words from Sanskrit and Marathi, by report many relate to feudalism and militia.
- The language (and script) is almost perfectly phonetic, but for the sound of a "half n" (which becomes a half m).
- A few letters have dropped out of the language over the years:
- ಱ ('ṟ' or 'rh'), which dropped out in the 12th century. Later Kannada works replaced 'rh' with ರ (ra)
- ೞ ('ḻ', 'lh' or 'zh'), which dropped out in the 18th century. Later Kannada works replaced 'lh' with ಳ (la)
- ( 'nh' or 'inn'), which as observed until the 1980s. This letter has been replaced by ನ್ (consonant n)
CLASSIFICATION:
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).
To some this is known as "The Medical We", like in a doctor who says to the patient "How are we feeling, today?".
SCRIPT:
Kannada is written in its own script, which is also called Kannada. The Kannada script is also used to write several other languages in Karnataka, such as Tulu, Kodava Takk, Beary bashe and Konkani.
Edson on 13 May 2010 11:12 AM:
I don't know Kannada but I believe that Canada is written in Kannada as ಕೆನಡಾ
http://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B2%95%E0%B3%86%E0%B2%A8%E0%B2%A1%E0%B2%BE
Michael S. Kaplan on 13 May 2010 11:54 AM:
Yet another way to extend the pun? :-)
Pavanaja U B on 13 May 2010 10:05 PM:
Do I have to keep cribbing that I need 64bit LIP?
Michael S. Kaplan on 13 May 2010 10:13 PM:
Well, more proof than a single unverified tweet would have more impact and influence.... HINT HINT HINT!!! :-)
Random832 on 14 May 2010 5:47 AM:
Why is it that they aren't all built for 64 bits as a matter of course? You don't see 64-bit being denied keyboard layouts.
Michael S. Kaplan on 14 May 2010 6:09 AM:
After heavy petitioning and work by yours truly, at least. :-)