University of Chicago:: Guidelines and Priorities: Kannada

University of Chicago:: Guidelines and Priorities: Kannada

Guidelines and Priorities: Kannada

Priorities in Ranked Order

1. 1st year textbook
2. 1st year reader, closely integrated with textbook
3. Musical recordings of folk, modern, and traditional songs from Karnataka

Other Materials of Lower Priority

1. 1st year audio for textbook
2. 2nd year textbook
3. 2nd year grammar (translation of grammar from Kannada to English or improvement of an existing grammar)
4. 2nd year Kannada-English dictionary
5. 2nd year reader with English translation
6. 3rd year textbook

Suggestions Potentially of Interest for the Broader Pedagogical Materials Project

From the Group on Bengali, Kannada, Marathi, and Telugu.

1. Annotated bibliographies of resources available for language teaching.
2. Collaboration with the Central Institute of Indian Languages to refit some of their publications for use with U.S. students.
3. The following might be examined as productive models and resources for pedagogy:
4. Marathi in Context, forthcoming.
5. Teaching Language in Context by Alice Omaggio Hadley.
6. Make available Amar Chitra Katha comic books, published in all the major languages of India from Bombay by Anant Pai.
7. Katha prize stories. Published annually since 1991. Contain stories translated into English from various Indic languages. The objective would be to collect the original short stories and augment them with glossaries for use in readers.
8. Rapidex volumes for English instruction, mostly for the sake of the vocabularies, which might be used as core vocabularies. One example is the Bengali conversation and phrase book, Rapidex English speaking course. Delhi : Pustak Mahal, 1988.
9. A vehicle for capturing Web documents in various idiosyncratic encoding systems and converting them to Unicode for use in language pedagogy.

Working group for Bengali, Kannada, Marathi, and Telugu.
Pedagogical Materials Project
March 7- 8, 2003
University of Pennsylvania

http://salrc.uchicago.edu/grants/guidelines/kannada.shtml

 _______________________________________________________

 Subj:    Kannada Chair
Date:    5/4/01 8:23:53 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From:    haroldfs@ccat.sas.upenn.edu (Harold F. Schiffman)
To:    NovaMed@aol.com

Dear Mr. Kumaraswamy,

This is a start on getting some information to you about the place of
Kannada at the University of Pennsylvania, now and in the future.

The South Asia Regional Studies department is the oldest department in the
US devoted to the study of South Asia.  A year or two ago we celebrated
our 50th anniversary, and the department obviously has played a strong
role in the development of South Asian studies in this country. Many of
its graduates have gone on to teach in other programs that have come up
since the founding of this one.  (I will supply you with supplementary
information about the history of the program and department.) The program
has also been the beneficiary of a U.S. Department of Education Title 6
grant for a “Center for South Asian STudies” and there is more information
about this at the website:
http://www.southasia.upenn.edu/html/center.html

My own history of involvement with Kannada is as follows.  I studied Tamil
and Kannada at the University of Chicago with Prof. A. K. Ramanujan, who
was the supervisor of my M.A. (1966) and Ph.D. committees (1969) in
Linguistics. After I went to India in 1965, I also studied Kannada there
at Annamalai University, and completed my M.A. thesis on Kannada
(“Morphophonemics of the Kannada Verb”) which was also published in the
journal Glossa in 1968 as an article.

In the summer of 1970 I taught Kannada at the University of Washington,
and in summer 1972 also at the University of Texas, under a program of
summer institutes then sponsored by a consortium of western universities.
(This consortium has since lapsed, so Kannada is not taught anywhere in
the western states, except for the times I taught it.)  While at the
University of Washington, I received a grant from the Office of Education,
Institute of International Studies, for a “Reference Grammar of Spoken
Kannada,” which I produced in 1979; this was subsequently published by the
University of Washington Press in 1983.  In 1991, I also published a short
entry entitled ” Kannada” in the Oxford International Encyclopedia of
Linguistics, Vol.  II, pp. 266-268. Oxford: the Clarendon Press, edited by
Wm. Bright.

After I came to the University of Pennsylvania in 1995, we made some
efforts to try to get Kannada taught and this began in a small way in
1997, with courses mostly for “heritage” learners (children of
Indo-Americans at Penn) but with some non-heritage learners as well who
are doing research in India on Karnataka etc.  This has continued to the
present, taught by a local Kannadiga lady who does this part-time, mostly
as a “labor of love.”  Our mutual friend Ananthamurthi has also visited
here and will probably come again to grace us with his presence.

I would like very much to visit any of the Kannada Koota’s that are having
meetings either in this area, or in California when I am there. (I will
be visiting my mother in San Diego from July 21 to 25, and after that am
free to meet with people either in southern or northern California.) I
could also go to Triveni in Baltimore, and since I live in New Jersey,
could easily attend a meeting of the NJ Koota, too.

I very much liked hearing about the idea of an exchange with the
University of Hampi, since that might make it possible for young scholars
from there to come here and vice versa.  Perhaps someone could come from
there to teach elementary courses etc.  (details to be worked out).
I would like to see many research projects that such a collaboration could
entail–work on electronic dictionaries, Kannada software for research,
perhaps a modern grammar of literary Kannada (to replace Spencer’s out of
print work), and all kinds of other things.

I am assembling some printed materials to send you about the history of
our program, and will also send this email as a printed letter.

With best wishes,

Harold Schiffman

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
——————————————————————————
Harold F. Schiffman

Professor of Dravidian Linguistics and Culture Acting Director
Dept. of South Asia Regional Studies      Penn Language Center
820 Williams Hall, Box 6305                715-16, Williams Hall Box  6305

University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-5825                                        (215) 898-6039
Fax:  (215) 573-2138                          Fax (215) 573-2139

Email: haroldfs@ccat.sas.upenn                  plc@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
WWW: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/ http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~plc/
_______________________________________________________________

UPENN:BEGINNING KANNADA – COURSE OBJECTIVES AND DESCRIPTION

UNIVERSITYOF PENNSYLVANIA

South Asia Regional Studies Department

BEGINNING KANNADA – COURSE OBJECTIVES AND DESCRIPTION

Course Title   SARS 260560 – BEGINNING KANNADA

Instructor       Humsini Arakali

Objectives

The overall objective of the course is to introduce new language learners and heritage learners to spoken and written forms of Kannada as currently used by the native speakers of the language.  Specifically, the course aims at achieving levels of proficiency in various areas as indicated below.

a.       Reading

–         Mastery of Kannada alphabet and the table of consonants with various vowel combinations

–         Ability to read and comprehend simple stories in Kannada

b.      Writing

–         Ability to write all the letters of the alphabet and consonant-vowel combinations, and conjuncts

–         Improved penmanship through learning the formation of letters and proper strokes to use, by using standard printed aids.

–         Ability to write short narratives

–         Write letters to native Kannada speaking relatives (heritage learners).

c.       Speaking

–         Ability to pronounce Kannada sounds correctly (vowels, consonants, compound sounds, aspirates, etc.

–         Acquisition of essential vocabulary words to make simple day-to-day conversation in variety of situations using idiomatic Kannada with proper syntax

–         Ability to ask questions and get information using appropriate words and phrases in the context of given situations, e.g., visit to a restaurant, meeting an elder relative, asking for directions, shopping (using role playing and cue cards)

d.      Comprehension

–         Ability to listen to, comprehend, and summarize extempore in simple words, a passage, audio/film clip, or simple song

Instructional Media  

 

Large-scale alphabet charts, Karnataka map, pictures, CD and cassette tapes, film clips

 

References

 

Spoken Kannada, by William Bright, Shanta Rau, and Meera Narvekar

Conversational Kannada, by U.P. Upadhyaya and N.D. Krishnamurthy

Kannada-English Dictionary, by Prabhu Shankara, R.L. Anantharamaiah, and B.V. Sreedhar

Kannada Teacher, by N.N. Kulkarni

Kannada Primer, Government of Karnataka

Sumana, A Language Course in Kannada, Book III, Oxford University press  

 http://www.southasia.upenn.edu/home/language/01languageCourses/kannadaCourseOutline.htm

______________________

 Subj:    Kannada Chair at U. of Pennsylvania
Date:    8/21/01 8:24:21 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From:    haroldfs@ccat.sas.upenn.edu (Harold F. Schiffman)
To:    cm@kar.nic.in
CC:    smkrishna@bangaloreit.com, cmk@bangaloreit.com, NovaMed@aol.com (V. M. Kumaraswamy)

The Honorable Chief Minister
Hon. Sri S. M. Krishna,

Respected Sir,

I am writing to you at the suggestion of Mr. V.M. Kumaraswamy, of the
Association of Kannada Kuuta’s of America, which has been recently
proposing the establishment of a Chair for Kannada Studies at an American
University.  We at the University of Pennsylvania have welcomed this
endeavor, as we have an interest in Kannada that dates back a long time,
and have other resources that would help nurture this position were it to
be established.  The University of Pennsylvania has the oldest department
of South Asian Studies in the US and teaches a number of modern and
classical South Asian Languages, either in the department itself or in
collaboration with the Penn Language Center. I recently completed a term
as Director of the Penn Language Center and have worked on Kannada and
Tamil languages over a 35-year career in academia.

I think there are a number of reasons why establishment of a Kannada chair
would redound to the benefit of Kannadigas everywhere.  One is that, as
you know, the International Literacy Institute here at Penn has recently
concluded an agreement with your government to work on literacy in
Karnataka State.  Presumably this will take the form of literacy in
Kannada, since that is the greatest need for the people.  We in the Penn
Language Center (PLC) and South Asian Studies (SARS) have the expertise in
the language that will be an integral part of such a program;
additionally, we have the expertise both in pedagogy (how best to teach
South Asian languages to Americans) and web-based resources for
language teaching.  Our Language Resource and Research Center (LaRRC) is
specifically devoted to providing these kinds of assistance.  We have
recently started a Kannada page which can be viewed at
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/kannada which will be modeled on our more
extensive web pages for other S. Asian languages such as Tamil
(http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/tamilweb/tamil.html), Hindi, and others.

As you know Bangalore is the center for IT initiatives in India, and as
more and more foreigners come to Bangalore, being able to learn some
Kannada for getting around in local places would be an advantage. One of
the things we have learned about teaching Indian languages to foreigners
is that spoken language must be taught in addition to, but separately
from, the literary languages, such as formal literary Kannada.  The page I
mentioned above concentrates on such spoken material; the next step in
offerings there will be a grammar of Spoken Kannada which is now being
converted to html and will be a resource where students can look up
questions they have about the grammar.

Eventually we would propose, as part of the Kannada Chair, to develop more
extensive materials, such as a collection of readings in modern Kannada
(selections from the best writers) which we would provide with vocabulary,
grammatical explanations, cultural notes, and other resources.  As an
example of this you could see our Tamil page:

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/tamilweb/yukam/yukamcol.html

Beyond this, we would also ideally have on line a grammar of literary
Kannada (in English) but there is now no recent book in print for this;
even the missionary grammar by Spencer is not available.  Hopefully an
updated grammar of Literary Kannada could also be provided, were funds
available.

As part of the AKKA initiative we have been discussing how to collaborate
with other India-based resource networks so that materials and other
things available in India could be put on line.  Recently we began
discussions with the Director of the CIIL in Mysore, Dr. Udaya Narayan
Singh, on how to tap into the CIIL’s resources that will be put on line
there.  Dr. Singh will be coming to America in October and we hope to
finalize some agreements with him at that time.

There are many more things I could say about this, but suffice it to say
that we are very excited to be part of this project.  I first began
studying Kannada in the summer of 1964 and continued studying the language
when I was in India in 1965-66, then taught it in Peace Corps and in other
venues (U. of Washington, U. of Texas).  Now it would be the culmination
of a dream if we could establish a program here that Kannadigas of America
could be proud of, which would make the Kannada language known far beyond
its roots in Karnataka.

With best wishes,

Sincerely,

Harold F. Schiffman

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
——————————————————————————
Harold F. Schiffman

Professor of Dravidian Linguistics and Culture          Research Director
Dept. of South Asia Regional Studies      Penn Language Center
820 Williams Hall, Box 6305                715-16, Williams Hall Box  6305

University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-5825                                        (215) 898-6039
Fax:  (215) 573-2138                          Fax (215) 573-2139

Email:  haroldfs@ccat.sas.upenn                  plc@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
WWW:  http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/    http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~plc/

——————————————————————————