Kannada, Culture and Tourism Minister C T Ravi on Tuesday launched online Kannada classes, in an effort to encourage non-Kannadigas in the state to learn the language.
The initiative 'Kali Kannada' will be available on the minister's official Twitter account, with the first two lessons put up on Tuesday. He said the initiative was meant for non-Kannadigas in Karnataka. "They are in our state and they are our people. So it is our responsibility to teach them our language," he said.
Each day, his team will post spoken Kannada lessons online, he said. The first two lessons had a list of conversational Kannada phrases which included greeting and introductions in Kannada. That apart, a list of beginners' vocabulary was also posted.
Speaking to DH, Ravi said this was an attempt to create a learning atmosphere for the language.
"Today, all regional languages are under threat. We have to begin by taking small steps to keep the language alive. One cannot impose language learning on anyone. This attempt is just to generate interest among people to learn Kannada. There are many apps teaching the language. Once they pick up interest by using this twitter class, they can continue learning the language in depth by enrolling themselves on apps or offline classes," he said.
The department wanted to keep it going for at least 100 days, he added. The module for these online lessons is being developed by staff in his office.
The minister's move comes at a time when there is a statewide demand to offer government services in Kannada under the #ServiceInMyLanguage campaign.
Recently, the government asked banks to offer services in Kannada and even redo their signboards, after complaints that people in rural areas were finding it hard in banks with employees not conversing in the local language.
Within hours of the announcement, the minister's decision garnered much interest online with several welcoming the move and a few others expressing willingness to take part in the classes.
However, there were also demands that the government ensure that Kannada was the language of transaction in banks and that the Sarojini Mahishi report on reserving jobs for locals was implemented.