Today we start our Kannada learning journey with some basic words and expressions. This includes how to greet other people and introducing yourself. At the bottom of the page, you can find the vocabulary list for this lesson.
Please study it in the vocabulary trainer (you can find it on the top when you click at “vocabulary” and then choose lesson 1).
You can notice that there is always a formal and an informal way to address other people. In English, we only use “you”. In Kannada, we use nivu for elders and strangers. This is what we will call the formal version. Ninu is how we say “you” if we address younger people or close friends. This is called the informal version from now on.
Hint:
If we want to ask somehow “How are you doing?”, we don’t use the word ninu/nivu and instead we say “Hegidira?”(formal) or “Hegidiya?” (informal). Here the same principle applies. As an answer, you can use “Chanagidini”.
This means “I am fine”.
Pronouns are used to talk about a person or group of persons without using their name. Examples are I, you, he, they, we. Above, we already learned two pronouns – nivu and ninu.
In this lesson, we learn two more:
You (formal) - Nivu
You (informal) - Ninu
I - Nanu
We - Navu
When we start building proper sentences, we will have to change the verbs according to the pronoun. This will follow in later lessons.(Lesson 3).
One thing to note is that the formal you is also the plural version. This means, if we want to address several people, we use nivu as well. Therefore, we will call nivu You (plural) and ninu you (singular).
If we want to be polite, three important words to learn in other languages are:
Thank you - Dhanyavadagallu
You are welcome - Parvagilla
Please - Dayavittu
The most common way to greet someone in Kannada is to use “Namaskara”. This can be used at any time of the day. There are also other greetings for specific times:
Good morning – Shubhodaya
Good evening – Shubha sanje
Good night – Shubha raatri
Shubha here means blessed. Apart from greetings, it’s important to introduce yourself and ask others for their name. Here you need to pay attention to formal/informal again.
My name is… - Nanna hesaru…
What is your name? (informal) - Ninna hesaru yenu?
What is your name? (formal) - Nimma hesaru yenu?
Below you can find the complete vocabulary list for this lesson. Every lesson has a vocabulary list at the bottom. You can use the vocabluary trainer to study it.