Numbers and the market
🎯 Count, ask a price and settle it.
🗣️ Say these out loud
- ಒಂದು, ಎರಡು, ಮೂರು, ನಾಲ್ಕು, ಐದು 🔊 on-du, e-ra-du, moo-ru, naal-ku, ai-du 1 to 5 Recognisably the same family as Telugu and Tamil.
- ಆರು, ಏಳು, ಎಂಟು, ಒಂಬತ್ತು, ಹತ್ತು 🔊 aa-ru, ay-lu, en-tu, om-bat-tu, hat-tu 6 to 10 ಏಳು has the ಳ — good practice.
- ಎಷ್ಟು? — eshtu? 🔊 ESH-tu How much? The single most useful word in a Bengaluru market.
- ತುಂಬಾ ಜಾಸ್ತಿ — tumbaa jaasti 🔊 TOOM-baa JAAS-ti Far too much. ತುಂಬಾ tumbaa = very. You will hear it in every conversation.
- ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ ಕಡಿಮೆ ಮಾಡಿ — svalpa kadime maadi 🔊 SVAL-pa ka-di-MAY MAA-di Please make it a little less. The polite -ಇ command ending.
- ಸರಿ — sari 🔊 sa-RI Fine / all right. The word that ends every transaction and most sentences.
Read every line aloud twice before moving on. The mouth learns a language, not the eye.
🔍 Kannada builds long words, one ending at a time
Like Tamil and Telugu, Kannada is agglutinative: each ending adds one idea, and they stack up in order. Read from the root outwards.
- ಮನೆ mane = house
- ಮನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ maneyalli = in the house
- ಮನೆಯಿಂದ maneyinda = from the house
- ಮನೆಗೆ manege = to the house
- One noun, four jobs, no separate words at all.
🌍 Among the people
Karnataka's Rajyotsava on 1 November celebrates the unification of the Kannada-speaking regions in 1956. The red-and-yellow flag on that day is about the language itself.
🔁 Practise today
- Count to twenty aloud.
- Take ಶಾಲೆ (school) and build the four forms above.
- Ask ಎಷ್ಟು? for five items.
