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Techies move on from Kannada gottilla to namaskara, hegidira?

The young techies planning to settle down in the tech hub, which has over 37% Kannadiga population, are making a beeline to learn Kannada.

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They learn Kannada to sink in with local culture

BANGLORE: This might be some news for the disgruntled Kannada pundits. The young techies planning to settle down in the tech hub, which has over 37% Kannadiga population, are making a beeline to learn Kannada.

 The code jocks living in Bangalore for years, who never thought of learning Kannada earlier, are now enthusiastic over learning the language, not simply because they want to bargain with their vegetable vendor or give proper instructions to the maid servant or a cook but to understand the local language and local culture and hence submerge with the environment they live in.

 Most IT companies such as Infosys, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Google, Cisco and so on are encouraging their employees to learn the language. The trend that started six years ago is gaining popularity only recently. They are thousands in number learning the language and growing. 
 
What initially started as learning a few words to interact with the local people for a senior design engineer at Texas Instruments, Monika Sane, has now become a tool to understand the Kannada culture and traditions. “It is four years since I came to Bangalore and now I can speak, read and write well in Kannada and I love the language,” said Sane, who has moved on from ‘Kannada gottilla (I don’t know Kannada) to ‘namaskara, hegidira? (Greetings, how are you?).

 At Infosys, though Kannada Kali (learn Kannada) group was formed by fellow Kannadigas in 2004, a professional teacher was hired only a year ago. “Whenever we send an e-mail about Kannada classes, there is a huge queue and we have to ask them to wait at least for a month to begin with the course. We have also extended it our Mysore campus,” said the one of the organising members of Kannada Kali, Karthik Bhat at Infosys, who is now on with the 17th batch.

 For Aalok Kumar Jain, a software engineer at Oracle hailing from Sagar in Madhya Pradesh, life has become easier after learning the local language. “I have been living in Bangalore from past five years and did not learn the language for four years. Only last year did I feel that I should be one with the city and people I live with. That is when I moved on from ‘Kannada gottilla’ to making a good conversation and thus made friends,” he said, who is also an organiser of Kannada classes at the company.

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