“We were always communicating - and more often than not, we were communicating in Kannada.”įortunately, the dearth of outside exposure did not hurt my mastery of the language.
for years, I had never seen a Kannada movie because they were not even available to rent at my local South Asian grocery store. Kannada media wasn’t even available in the U.S. I remember driving for what seemed like ages to the Massachusetts Kannada Koota (a social organization for Kannada speakers) sponsored variety shows and performances, only to see the same fifty or so faces year after year. This relative lack of population meant that Kannada resources were hard to find, especially in New England, where the Desi community exists in tiny pockets compared to those of Texas or California. However, although it is spoken by vast populations in India, the Kannada-speaking population in America is dwarfed by larger ethnolinguistic South Asian populations, such as Hindi, Telugu, or Gujarati speakers. It is a South Indian language, related to Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam. Whether we were celebrating, or debating, or arguing, we were always communicating - and more often than not, we were communicating in Kannada.īoth sides of my family come from the Indian state of Karnataka, where Kannada is spoken in various forms. Even though there were only four of us - my parents, my brother and me (plus my grandmother, if she was visiting), the house always seemed filled with at least five conversations at once.
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