How it works
The Kannada alphabet to copy, letter by letter: the 13 vowels and the marks ಅಂ and ಅಃ, the 34 consonants in row order, the vowel signs shown on ಕ, five letters that went out of use, and the digits.
Read the full guide
Five rows of five
The first 25 consonants are sorted by where in the mouth the sound is made, a row each: velar, palatal, retroflex, dental, labial. Every row runs voiceless, voiceless aspirated, voiced, voiced aspirated, nasal: ಕ ka, ಖ kha, ಗ ga, ಘ gha, ಙ ṅa. The other nine, ಯ ya to ಳ ḷa, stand outside the rows.
How a consonant loses its vowel
ಕ alone is read ka. A sign changes the vowel, as in ಕಾ kā and ಕಿ ki, and the mark called halanta removes it: ಕ್ is a bare k. Consonants with no vowel between them join into one cluster, and most have a small form for it, written below.
- A nasal in front of another consonant is usually written as the dot ಂ, the anusvara, not as a cluster.
- Short vowels are called hrasva and long ones dīrgha: ಇ i and ಈ ī, ಉ u and ಊ ū.
- Unicode calls ೞ Kannada letter fa and notes that the name is a mistake for llla.
Questions and answers
How many Kannada letters are there?
49: 13 vowels, 34 consonants and the two marks ಂ and ಃ, called yōgavāha, part vowel and part consonant. The five old letters are not counted.
Are Kannada and Telugu letters the same?
Close, but not the same. The two scripts are so alike that they are often considered regional variants of a single script; they separated around 1300.
Which Kannada letters are no longer used?
Three vowels of Sanskrit, ೠ, ಌ and ೡ, and two consonants: ಱ ṟa, out of use since the 12th century, and ೞ ḻa, since the 18th. Later works write ರ and ಳ.
What are the Kannada numbers from 0 to 9?
೦ sonne, ೧ ondu, ೨ eraḍu, ೩ mūru, ೪ nālku, ೫ aidu, ೬ āru, ೭ ēḷu, ೮ enṭu and ೯ oṃbattu.