IV Script and Spelling

A. Type of the Script/Scripts:

Kannada alphabet is originated from Brahmi script. Kannada is having an alphasyllabic structure.

Special features:

Kannada script belongs to the Southern Indic scripts, which is used to write Kannada language. Because of their common ancestry in Old Kannada script, Kannada script resembles and also is closely related to Telugu script. In 16th century, Old Kannada script splitted into two separate branches, Kannada and Telugu. The introduction of printing press in 19th century sealed the differences between the two. Kannada language is more closely related to Tamil and Malayalam than Telugu language. Kannada demonstrates the major features of Brahmi script which is derived from Indic scripts. Kannada is a syllabic alphabet whose basic unit is the consonant-based syllable with an internal [a] vowel. Like other Southern Indic scripts, Kannada script has typically rounded features.

Kannada is written horizontally from left to right. The basic set of symbols in Kannada consists of 35 consonants and 14 vowels. At the beginning of a word, vowels appear in independent form. When used to replace the inherent vowel of a consonantal syllable, vowels appear in diacritic (or satellite) form before, after, above, below or surrounding the modified syllable. In many cases, consonant-vowel combinations may be written with special ligatures which break the predictable pattern. Consonant clusters, a series of consonants without intervening vowels, are typically written by attaching the secondary component as a reduced subscript to the primary consonant. However, the sub-script form of a consonant may not at all resemble the full form. In Kannada script, the inherent vowel of a syllable is suppressed by a virama which is a small superscript mark on the syllable. Originally devised to indicate vowel nasalization, the ring-shaped anusvara is used for nasal consonants in Modern Kannada. Words are separated by a space and the end of a sentence is signaled by a dot as in European practice. Although Kannada has a native set of symbols for numerals, nowadays Arabic numbers are used.

Kannada is closely related to Malayalam, which is another Dravidian language in its script and vocabulary. Kannada script is also used to write Tulu, which is a related language as it has no script of its own. Kannada script is very close to the Telugu script both with regard to the shapes of the letters and in the way the conjunct consonants behave.

Some other features of Kannada language is as follows:

 
1. Kannada is an alphasyllabary language, in which all consonants are having an inherent vowel. Other vowels are indicated with diacritics which can 
    appear above, below, before or after the consonants. 
2. When they appear in the beginning of a syllable, vowels are written as independent letters. 
3. When consonants appear together without intervening vowels, the second consonant is written as a special conjunct symbol, usually below the first. 

B. Name of the script/scripts:

Kannada language has only one script called ‘Brahmi’. The language has 49 letters and is phonetic. The character set is almost identical to that of other Indian languages. The script itself is fairly complicated like most other languages of India owing to the occurrence of various combinations of "half-letters", or symbols that attach to various letters in a manner similar to the aigue, grave, and cédille marks in Romance languages. The number of written symbols, however, is far more than the 49 characters in the alphabet, owing to the fact that different characters can be combined to form compound characters (ottakṣarās). Each written symbol in the Kannada script corresponds with one syllable, as opposed to one phoneme in languages like English.

1. Geographical Distribution of the scripts:

Kannada is mainly spoken in Karnataka in India, and to a lesser extent in the neighboring states. There are significant Kannada speaking populations in the United States and the United Kingdom.

There is also a large section in the coastal areas speaking a dialect called Tulu. It is perhaps one of the oldest dialects that exist in Karnataka. In all parts of Karnataka, Brahmi script is used.

2. Domain-wise Distribution:

Kannada language has 2000 years of history. From the olden period to modern period, Brahmi script is used in Karnataka state. Only the writing forms of Kannada like Old Kannada, Middle Kannada and Modern Kannada are changed from time to time. But the script remains same.

3. Name of the officially recognized script:

Kannada is one of the 22 official languages of India and is the state official language of Karnataka. In Karnataka the ‘Brahmi’ script is recognized as official script.

3. Distribution of allograph:

In Kannada several graphemes have secondary symbols or allograph, which are complementarily distributed. Dravidian languages are written with syllabic alphabets in which all consonants have an inherent vowel. Diacritics, above, below, before or after the consonant indicate change to a different vowel or suppression of the inherent vowel.

4. Dependent vowel signs (Matras):

The dependent vowel signs serve as the common manner of writing non-inherent vowels and are generally referred to as Swara Chinhas in Kannada or Matras in Sanskrit. The dependent vowel signs do not appear stand-alone; rather, they are visibly depicted in combination with a base-letter form (generally a consonant). A single consonant or a consonant cluster may have a dependent vowel sign applied to it to indicate the vowel quality of the syllable, when it is different from the inherent vowel. Explicit appearance of a dependent vowel sign in a syllable overrides the inherent vowel ಅ (0C85) of a single consonant letter.

There are several variations with which the dependent vowels are applied to the base letterforms. Most of them appear as non-spacing dependent vowel signs when applied to base letterforms; above or to the right side of a consonant letter or a consonant cluster.

Nuktas- Modifier Mark Rules:

In addition to the vowel signs, one more type of combining mark may be applied to a component of an orthographic syllable or the syllable as a whole. The NUKTA sign, which modifies a consonant form, is placed immediately after the consonant (after the terminating vowel in case of a dependent vowel appearing after the consonant) in the memory representation and is attached to that consonant in rendering. If the consonant represents a dead consonant, then the nukta should precede halant in the memory representation. The nukta is represented by a double-dot mark placed at the location 0CBC. Two such modified consonants used in Kannada are ಜ (Pronounced as ZA) and ಫ (Pronounced as FA).

Sorting of Nukta characters

The modifying mark or Nukta located at 0CBC and included in the collation table is enough to take care of the sorting issues of characters ಜ (modified ಜ) and ಫ (modified ಫ).
It also takes care of any other consonant, which may be modified using Nukta.

 
Conjunct formation (consonant cluster): The conjunct formation with two or more consonants and a terminal vowel is as follows:
A. The first consonant of the consonant cluster is rendered with the terminal vowel.
B. The remaining consonants (in between the first consonant and the terminal vowel) are rendered in conjunct consonant glyph forms in the phonetic order.
Example:
KAd + KAn = KAh
Oé + ಕ = ಕ್ಕ  (conjunct consonant glyph of  ಕ  is ್ಕ )
 
Example:
SAd + THd +RAd + Ivs ® SAIvs + THh + RAh
ಸ್ + ತ್ + ರ್ +  ೃ = ಸ್ತ್ರೀ  ( ್ತ and  ್ರ  are the conjunct consonant glyphs of  ತ and ರ)

Consonant Clusters with two different display forms: Consonant RA Rules, whenever a consonant cluster of two or more consonants is formed with the Kannada consonant letter RA (ರ, 0CB0) as the first component of the consonant cluster, the component of this letter RA is depicted with two different presentation forms: one as the initial and the other as the final display element of the consonant cluster as detailed below.

Consonant clusters with RA as the first consonant: General method of rendering:
Rule R4: As explained before, the character ರ is rendered with the terminal vowel (implicit or dependent) and the in-between consonants are rendered below and/or to the right of ರ in conjunct consonant glyph forms (ÁÚQ, ರ್ಗ etc.).

 
Example 1:
RAd + KAl = RAl + KAh
ರ್ + ಕ = ರ್ಕ
Example 2:
RAd + MAl + Uvs ® RAn + MAh + Uvs
ರ್ + ಮ + ು = ರ್ಮು
Example 3:
RAd + TAd + YAn ® RAn + TAh + YAh
ರ್ + ತ್ + ಯ = ರ್ತ್ಯ

Consonant clusters with RA as the first consonant: Alternate method of rendering.

Rule R5: In the alternate representation method also, the above procedure is followed assuming ರ is absent (which means that the conjunct formation starts from the second consonant) to obtain the consonant cluster (conjunct). This is followed by another distinct glyph ರ್ for ರ್ and this new glyph is depicted to the extreme right of the conjunct formed above. As per this representation, the conjuncts ರ್ಕ, ರ್ಮು and ರ್ತ್ಯ rendered in examples 1, 2 and 3 above are rendered as ರ್ಕ, ರ್ಮು and ರ್ತ್ಯ. The corresponding rule is as follows:

 
Example 1:
RAd + KAl = KAl + Arkavottu
ರ್ + ಕ = ರ್ಕ
Example 2:
RAd + MAl + Uvs = MAn + Uvs + Arkavottu
ರ್ + ಮ +  ು  =  ರ್ಮು 
Example 3:
RAd + TAd + YAn = TAn + YAh + Arkavottu
ರ್ + ತ್ + ಯ = ರ್ತ್ಯ.

Exception for the alternate method:
Rule R6: The exception for the rule R4 is that, whenever a conjunct is formed with both the first and second consonants as ರ (RA) (ie. a consonant conjunct using ರ with ರ itself), the rule R5 will not hold good. Instead, the general method of consonant conjunct formation is used (Rule R4). This means the conjunct consonant glyph æ of ರ is rendered.
ರ್ + ರ + ಓ = ರ್ರೋ

5. Phonemic-Graphemic fit:

 
Vowels:
Phoneme			Grapheme
/a/			     ಅ	
/ā/			     ಆ
/i/			     ಇ
/ī/			     ಈ
/u/			     ಉ
/ū/			     ಊ
/ṛ/			     ಋ
/e/			     ಎ
/ē/			     ಏ
/o/			     ಒ
/ō/			     ಓ

          
Diphthongs:
/ai/			     ಐ
/au/			     ಔ

Consonants:
Phoneme			       Grapheme 
/k/			                 ಕ್				     
/kh/				ಖ್ 
/g/				ಗ್
/gh/				ಘ್
/gñy/				ಙ್ 	
/c/				ಚ್
/ch/				ಛ್
/j/				ಜ್
/jh/				ಝ್
/jñy/				ಞ್ 
/ṭ/				ಟ್
/ṭh/				ಠ್ 
/ḍ/				ಡ್
/ḍh/				ಢ್ 
/ṇ/				ಣ್
/t/				ತ್ 
/th/				ಥ್
/d/				ದ್
/dh/				ಧ್
/n/				ನ್
/p/				ಪ್
/ph/				ಫ್
/b/				ಬ್
/bh/				ಭ್
/m/				ಮ್
/y/				ಯ್ 
/r/				ರ್
/l/				ಲ್
/v/				ವ್
/ś/				ಶ್ 
/ṣ/				ಷ್ 
/s/				ಸ್
/h/				ಹ್
/ļ/				ಳ್

6. Directions for writing each grapheme:

7. Special features:

Kannada script belongs to the Southern Indic scripts, which is used to write Kannada language. Because of their common ancestry in Old Kannada script, Kannada script resembles and also closely related to Telugu script. In 16th century, Old Kannada script splits into two separate branches, Kannada and Telugu. The introduction of printing press in 19th century sealed the differences between the two. Kannada language is more closely related to Tamil and Malayalam than Telugu language. Kannada demonstrates the major features of Brahmi script which is derived from Indic scripts. Kannada is a syllabic alphabet whose basic unit is the consonant-based syllable with an internal [a] vowel. Like other Southern Indic scripts, Kannada script has typically rounded features.

Kannada is written horizontally from left to right. The basic set of symbols in Kannada consists of 35 consonants and 14 vowels. At the beginning of a word, vowels appear in independent form. When used to replace the inherent vowel of a consonantal syllable, vowels appear in diacritic (or satellite) form before, after, above, below or surrounding the modified syllable. In many cases, consonant-vowel combinations may be written with special ligatures which break the predictable pattern. Consonant clusters, a series of consonants without intervening vowels, are typically written by attaching the secondary component as a reduced subscript to the primary consonant. However, the sub-script form of a consonant may not at all resemble the full form. In Kannada script, the inherent vowel of a syllable is sup-pressed by a virama which is a small superscript mark on the syllable. Originally devised to indicate vowel nasalization, the ring-shaped anusvara is used for nasal consonants in Modern Kannada. Words are separated by a space and the end of a sentence is signaled by a dot as in European practice. Although Kannada has a native set of symbols for numerals, nowadays Arabic numbers are used.

Kannada, along with other Dravidian languages like Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, etc., has been greatly influenced by Sanskrit in terms of vocabulary, grammar and literary styles. Kannada script is used to write Tulu, which is a related language as it has no script of its own. Kannada script is very close to the Telugu script both with regard to the shapes of the letters and in the way the conjunct consonants behave.

Kannada language has 49 characters in its alphabet and is phonetic, but cannot represent all phonemes. The script itself, which resembles the Telugu script, is fairly complicated like most other languages of India owing to the occurrence of various combinations of "half-letters", or symbols that attach to various letters in a manner similar to the aigue, grave, and cédille marks in Romance languages.

The Kannada language has been spoken for about 2000 years, with the Kannada writing system being in use for about the last 1500 years.

Unlike Devanagari, the Kannada script does not have any character with a left-side dependent vowel sign.

There is a one-to-one correspondence exists between independent vowels and dependent vowel signs.

Consonant letters (Vyanjanas)

Each of the 36 consonant letters in Kannada represents a single consonantal sound but also has the peculiarity of having an inherent vowel, generally the short vowel ಅ (/a/).

Thus the Kannada letter at 0C95 represents not just ಕ್ (K) but ಕ (KA) with the inherent vowel ಅ (0C85). In the presence of a dependent vowel, however, this inherent vowel associated with a consonant letter is overridden by the dependent vowel. The consonants (0CB1) and (0CDE) sound are similar to ರ (0CB0) and ಳ (0CB3) respectively. These two appear in ancient Kannada texts but are not in present use. With this, consonants in modern Kannada are 34 in number (without and ).

Halant

Like Devanagari, Kannada script also employs a sign known as halant or vowel omission sign. A halant sign ( ್, 0CCD) nominally serves to cancel (or kill) the inherent vowel of the consonant to which it is applied. The halant functions as a combining character. When a consonant has lost its inherent vowel by the application of halant, it is known as a dead consonant. The dead consonants are the presentation forms used to depict the consonants without an inherent vowel. Their rendered forms in Kannada resemble the full consonant with the vertical stem replaced by the halant sign, which marks a character core. A live consonant is a consonant that retains its inherent vowel or is written with an explicit dependent vowel sign. The dead consonant is defined as a sequence consisting of a consonant letter followed by a halant. The default rendering for a dead consonant is to position the halant as a combining mark bound to the consonant letter form.

(s):

A spacing mark ‘s’, called avagraha sign is used while rendering Sanskrit tests. This is located at OCBD.

Encoding order:

The traditional Kannada alphabetic encoding order for consonants follows articulatory phonetic principles, starting with velar consonants and moving forward to bilabial consonants, followed by liquids and then fricatives. ISCII (Indian Script Code for Information Interchange) & the Unicode standard both observe this traditional order.

Consonant conjuncts (Samyuktaksharas): Like any other Indian script, Kannada is also noted for a large number of consonant conjunct forms that serve as orthographic abbreviations (ligatures) of two or more adjacent forms. This abbreviation takes place only in the context of a consonant cluster. An orthographic consonant cluster is defined as a sequence of characters that represent one or more dead consonants (denoted by Cd) followed by a normal live consonant (denoted by Cl).

Corresponding to each Kannada consonant, there exist a separate and unique glyph, which is specially used to represent the corresponding consonant in a consonant cluster. Most of these conjunct consonant glyphs resemble their original consonant forms (many without the implicit vowel sign, wherever applicable).

 
In Kannada, there is only one type of conjunct formation (consonant cluster) and it is depicted as follows:

A) The first consonant of the consonant cluster is rendered with the implicit or a different dependant vowel appearing as the terminal element of the 
consonant cluster.
B) The remaining consonants (consonants in between the first consonant and the terminal vowel element) appear in conjunct consonant glyph forms 
in the phonetic order. They are generally depicted directly below or sometimes below but to the right of the first consonant. Thus, the systematically 
designed Kannada script font contains the conjunct glyph components, but they are not encoded as Unicode characters, because they are the resultant 
of ligation of distinct letters. Kannada script rendering software must be able to map appropriate combinations of characters in context to the appropriate 
conjunct glyphs in fonts.

Normally, a halant character serves to create dead consonants, which, in turn, combine with subsequent consonants in order to form conjuncts. This behaviour usually results in a halant sign not being depicted visually. Occasionally, however, this default behaviour is not desired when a dead consonant is needed to be excluded from conjunct formation with the next consonant, in which case the halant sign is visibly rendered.

In order to accomplish this, the Unicode Standard character 200C (Zero Width Non-Joiner) is introduced immediately after the encoded dead consonant that is to be excluded from conjunct formation.
For example, the use of Zero Width Non-Joiner prevents the default formation of the conjunct form gÀÎ, resulting in ರ್್ಗ.

The Kannada script adopts the convention of depicting the character (in this case the halant sign) as appropriate for the consonant to which it is attached.

Further, Kannada script does not allow half-consonants, ligatures and half ligature forms.

The following provides more formal and complete rules for minimal rendering of Kannada as part of a plain text sequence. It describes the mapping between Unicode characters and the glyphs in a Kannada font. It also describes the combining and ordering of those glyphs.

The rules provide minimal requirements for legibly rendering Kannada text. As with any script, a more complex procedure can add rendering characteristics, depending on the font and application.

Diacritics

Diacritics are the principle class of non-spacing combining characters used with the Indian scripts. Diacritic is defined very broadly to include accents as well as other non-spacing marks. Kannada has a number of combining marks that could be considered diacritic. A set of five combining marks Udattha ( | above the character), Anudattha ( _ below the character), Guru ( ¯ above the character), Laghu (ب above the character) and Dīrgha Swaritha ( ‖ above the character) located at 0CD1, 0CD2, 0CD3, 0CD4 and 0CF9 respectively. These are used in the transcription of Sanskrit texts (where ever needed) and for Kannada grammatical notations.

D. History of script:

1. Change of script:

Time 10th century CE to 18th century CE the Old Kannada is essentially the continuation of the Kadamba script. It is used to write South Indian languages of Kannada and Telugu. In fact, Old Kannada is also known as the Kannada-Telugu script. This script is used between 10th century to 18th century.

Differentiation of the Old Kannada script into the modern scripts of Kannada and Telugu began as early as the 13th century CE, but the process did not finish until the early 19th century CE with the arrival of printing. Even so, Telugu and Kannada scripts have remained extremely similar.

 
The Old-Kannada script which was used in the past is as follows:

                     
   a	  ā             i           u          e

 	  	               

 ka	 kha         ga	   gha       ṅa

 	                        

 ca          cha         ja           jha         ña

                                     

  ṭa          ṭha         ḍa          ḍha          ṇ

                                       

  ta           tha         da          dha         na

                                    

  pa          pha         ba          bha        ma

                                     

  ya           ra           la           va          ļa

                                              

śa            ṣa           sa           ha           ẓa           ṛa

At present, Brahmi script is used instead of the old Kadamba script. it has modified in its writing system. There are lot of differences between the 
Old-Kannada and Modern-Kannada script.

2. Development of Script:

Kannada script is the visual form of Kannada language. It originated from southern Bramhi lipi of Ashoka period. It underwent modifications periodically in the reign of Sathavahanas, Kadambas, Gangas, Rastrakutas, and Hoysalas. Even before seventh-Century, the Telugu-Kannada script was used in the inscriptions of the Kadambas of Banavasi and the early Chalukya of Badami in the west. From the middle of the seventh century the archaic variety of the Telugu-Kannada script developed a middle variety. The modern Kannada and Telugu scripts emerged in the thirteenth Century. Kannada script is also used to write Tulu, Konkani and Kodava languages.

Kannada along with other Indian language scripts shares a large number of structural features. The writing system of Kannada script encompasses the principles governing the phonetics and a syllabic writing systems, and phonemic writing systems (alphabets). The effective unit of writing Kannada is the orthographic syllable consisting of a consonant and vowel (CV) core and optionally, one or more preceding consonants, with a canonical structure of (C) (C) CV. The orthographic syllable need not correspond exactly with a phonological syllable, especially when a consonant cluster is involved, but the writing system is built on phonological principles and tends to correspond quite closely to pronunciation. The orthographic syllable is built up of alphabetic pieces, the actual letters of Kannada script. These consist of distinct character types: Consonant letters, independent vowels and the corresponding dependent vowel signs. In a text sequence, these characters are stored in logical phonetic order.

K. Script and technology:

1. Encoding of scripts-ISCII, UNICODE:

UNICODE for Kannada language:

The Kannada script is a South Indian script. It is used to write Kannada language of Karnataka State in India. This is also used in many parts of Tamilnadu, Kerala, Andhrapradesh and Maharashtra States of India. Kannada script is also used to write Tulu, Konkani and Kodava languages. Kannada along with other Indian language scripts shares a large number of structural features. The Kannada block of Unicode Standard (0C80 to 0CFF) is based on ISCII-1988 (Indian Standard Code for Information Interchange). The Unicode Standard (version 3) encodes Kannada characters in the same relative positions as those coded in the ISCII-1988 standard.

The Writing system that employs Kannada script constitutes a cross between syllabic writing systems and phonemic writing systems (alphabets). The effective unit of writing Kannada is the orthographic syllable consisting of a consonant (Vyanjana) and vowel (Vowel) (CV) core and optionally, one or more preceding consonants, with a canonical structure of ((C) C) CV.

The orthographic syllable need not correspond exactly with a phonological syllable, especially when a consonant cluster is involved, but the writing system is built on phonological principles and tends to correspond quite closely to pronunciation.

The orthographic syllable is built up of alphabetic pieces, the actual letters of Kannada script. These consist of distinct character types: Consonant letters and Independent vowels, the corresponding dependent vowel signs. In a text sequence, these characters are stored in logical phonetic order.

Rendering Kannada Characters can combine or change shape depending on their context. A character’s appearance is affected by its ordering with respect to other characters and the application or system environment. This variation can cause the appearance of Kannada characters to be different from nominal glyphs.

Vowels (Swaras):

The independent vowels called Swaras in Kannada are letters that stand on their own. The writing system treats independent vowels as orthographic CV syllables in which the consonant is null. The Unicode character encoding for Kannada uses a distinct set of naming conventions for some mid vowels of the fourteen vowels in Kannada. Of these fourteen vowels, twelve vowels have been divided into six sets, each set consisting of a Hrasva Swara (short vowel) followed by a corresponding Deergha Swara (long vowel). These are two types of Swaras depending on the time used to pronounce them. Hrasva Swara is a freely existing independent vowel which can be pronounced in a single matra time (matra kala) whereas a Deergha Swara is the vowel which can be pronounced in two matra time. The six sets of the swaras are:

 
ಅ , ಆ  (0C85 , 0C86)  
ಇ, ಈ  (0C87 , 0C88)
ಉ, ಊ  (0C89 , 0C8A)
ಋ, ಋ‰ë  (0C8B, 0CE0)
ಎ, ಎH  (0C8E , 0C8F)
ಒ, ಓ   (0C92 , 0C93)

Of these, the vowel ಋ‰ë (0CE0) is not in present use.
The two Deergha swaras ಐ (0C90) and ಔ (0C94) have no Hrasva swara counterparts.
Further, the so-called swaras with code values 0C8C and 0CE1 are not used in Kannada and are not required for Kannada.   

2. Fonts, Glyph encoding:

Fonts

There are a number of TrueType fonts available for Kannada among which some of them follow an encoding standard (like ISCII) and others do not follow any encoding standard and is tied to a proprietary encoding. The Kannada Ganaka Parishat has standardized the glyph set to be used by all the Software that supports Kannada. Annexure-1 displays the glyphs standardized by KGP. Microsoft has released an OpenType font (with TrueType outlines) for Kannada – “Tunga.ttf” that follows Unicode as its encoding standard.

 
Font Developing Tools:

The OpenType font format is an extension of the TrueType font format, adding support for PostScript font data. The following tools can be used for 
designing of the OpenType Font.
FontLab version 4.0 (http://www.fontlab.com/html/fontlab.html#downloads) 
Font Creator Program version 3.0 (http://www.high-logic.com/download.htm) 
Fontographer version 4.1 - http://www.macromedia.com/software/fontographer/) 
Microsoft Visual OpenType Layout Tool "VOLT" provides an easy-to-use graphical user interface to add OpenType layout tables to fonts with 
TrueType outlines. http://communities.msn.com/MicrosoftVOLTuserscommunity 	

Glyph Encoding:

Inputting Kannada or any other Indian language needs Keyboard driver / Input Method, which is a Software Component that interprets user operations such as typing keys. There are many Keyboard Drivers/Input Methods available in the market for Windows Operating Systems like Baraha, Sreelipi, Akruthi, Kalitha etc. They follow different encoding methods (glyph codes) and support different keyboard layouts like INSCRIPT, English Phonetic, Typewriter 1, and Typewriter 2.

Microsoft supports Input Methods for nine Indian languages (including Kannada) in Office XP on Windows XP with INSCRIPT keyboard layout, which is common to all Indian languages and uses Unicode as the encoding Standard.

Government of Karnataka (Kannada Ganaka Parishat) has proposed a Standard Keyboard layout for Kannada. In this layout only 26 keys which are painted with English characters on a Keyboard can be used to represent 51 basic alphabets and special symbols in Kannada (13 swaras, 34 consonants and 4 special symbols). This is possible as each key has a dual function of representing the small case (normal key) and Capital case (Shift key) letters in English.